Ajax Minerals and Perrier - Essay Example

? Ajax Minerals and Perrier Ajax Minerals and Perrier There are at least two sources of resistance in Ajax. The first source of resistance is the middle level management and the second source of resistance is from employees. Both the employees and the managers were concerned about the change because of a bad history of change management in the organisation. Ajax has in the past made the mistake of making critical changes which affected the employees in serious ways. This was done without making a point of informing the employees in time and also failing to involve them in the development of the solution. However, Ajax has learnt from its mistakes and has sought another strategy of making sure that the employees are not only informed about the change but also by trying to involve the employees in the development of the strategy and making sure that they develop a solution that is useful in the long run. This approach is particularly necessary and is seen as a very famous strategy of change (Secord, 2003). The strategy that Ajax has come up with has two important aspects that help in making any organisational change management easy and important. This involves the following; Communication Communications is highly necessary in regard to change management because it helps in creating mutual trust. The first way that communication to employees and the middle level management will help is in creating trust by the employees. This can be seen in the history of Ajax. In the past, Ajax failed to communicate to employees, and this led to the employees being suspicious any time the firm is about to make any changes. Communication is seen as a way to create trust because through good communication, it helps in making sure that the employees understand the need for change rather than leave the employees to speculate. The same kind of speculation has been the cause of resistance to change because the employees are extremely suspicious that any change process will affect the negatively. Involvement Involving the employee and the middle level managers is essential in helping to smooth out the process of change (Bohlander & Snell, 2009). When communication and involvement is used in concert, the best result will be achieved. Ajax is trying to involve the employees in the development of the solution and this will be necessary due to a number of reasons. The first reason is the fact that the involving the employees and the middle level managers will result in a change solution that will be accepted by the employees. Involvement will create minimal resistance from the employees. It will also be good in creating a solution that is most holistic in the way the firm deals with future problems. Will it succeed? Although Ajax has chosen to use this particularly valuable strategy to change management, there cannot be a guarantee that the strategy will succeed. This is because Ajax failed to use this strategy right from the beginning and there is a lot of suspicion in among the employees. Perrier case Perrier has at least two sources of resistance. The first source of resistance is from the worker union CGT, which believes that Nestle does not have the right to cut off the number of workers in Perrier. The second source of resistance is definitely from the employees who feel that they need to protect their jobs. Nestle has tried to cut down employees in order to salvage the Perrier brand. When the employees could not allow the firm to cut the employees, the management placed the product of another brand in their cafeterias as a way to have the employees see the sense in trying to change. This method of trying to deal with the issue of change resistance did not help the firm to do away with resistance. If anything, this method of dealing with the issue made things between the management and the employees worse. Comparison There are a number of differences in the way the managers in both of these cases handled the case. Although the Perrier case was more complicated by the issue of the worker union that was refusing to have any useful negotiations, the way the management handled this case was quite crude, and the management could have done better. The approach at Perrier was less strategic and failed to consider some truly useful and critical factors for a successful change management plan. This is because unlike Ajax, management in Perrier had already established what they wanted to do and what they thought was the solution. In Ajax however, the management had realized the critical mistakes they had done in the past and this time they refrained from making the same mistakes. In this regard, instead of approaching the employees with an already done decision, they chose to first consult with supervisors and middle level managers as a way to ensure that the firm is the solution that will be developed will be one that will receive acceptance among the employees. This is the critical mistake that the managers at Perrier were making. They had already decided what was important was to cut off the human resource. The methods which the two firms used to solve the problems were however similar in at least one critical way. For instance, both Ajax and Perrier tried to deal with the issue of resistance by educating the employees why the change was necessary. They tried to show the employees that if they did not accept the change, it would eventually be for their own calamity. The other way in which the way these two firms tried to solve the problem is similar is in the fact that they both refrained from trying to understand the situation from the employees point of view. This alone undermined the way in which the management was able to work with the employees to get a viable solution (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). Advice to Ajax Ajax has tried to correct its mistake that it has done in the past. In this regard, it has taken a new strategy to change management that is supposed to reduce change resistance. By involving the employees in the process of developing the solution, they have tried to reduce resistance. However, there are a few things that Ajax can do in order to ensure that its dark past in the area of change management will not prevent it from benefiting from this new strategy. To begin with, Ajax should try to focus on solutions which are oriented towards other areas apart from cutting off employees. Ajax should come up with different solutions as a way to prove to the employees that it is not happy to lay off its employees. This will help Ajax to be able to deal with the past and regain the confidence of the employees. The other thing that Ajax will need to do is to restructure the nature of communication between the firm (management) and he employees. This is because although the Ajax has done a good job in creating a communication between the employees and the management, it has focused in giving the employee’s information in order to convince them that the change is needed and this as Bohlander and Snell (2009) says is always detriment in managing human resources. However, the management has not done anything to have a two way communication between the employees and management. Ajax should restructure this communication and ensure that they are also able to get information from the employees; it is only by hearing from the employees and getting to know the issues which face them that Ajax will be able to develop a good solution. At the same time, making the communication a two way communication will also help in increasing trust by the employees because it will make the employees understand that their interests are taken care of and that the firm is caring enough to look at the issues they are facing (Secord, 2003). Advice to Perrier Two problems arise with regard to the approach that the managers at Perrier decided to use. The first one is that deciding to reduce the number of employees is usually one that will receive resistance. This, as the Harvard Business School Press (2005) asserts, is even worse when an employee union is involved, like it was the case for Perrier. Perrier should have approached the employees and their union with issues and not with an already decided solution for the problem. If they did this, it would be easier to collaborate with the employees. Perrier should therefore have a different approach in the way they try to solve the issue. They should drop down their already decided solution and work with the employees and the union from a clean slate about the issues. The employees and the union should then be a part of the solution development. This way, Perrier will benefit in different ways. To begin with, it might even develop a better solution than cutting off 15 percent of the employees. The employees could for instance agree to work longer hours in order to increase output. Secondly, if it remains that Perrier has to cut off part of its employees, it will be easier to convince the union to accept that kind of proposal when they have participated in developing this solution. References Bohlander, G.W. & Snell, S.A. (2009). Managing Human Resources, 15th Ed. Stamford, CN: Cengage Learning. Harvard Business School Press. (2005). The essentials of managing change and transition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Secord, H. (2003). Implementing Best Practices in Human Resources Management. Toronto: CCH Canadian Limited. Read More