Blue Marina Restaurant - a Need for Change according to Kirkpatricks Theory - Essay Example

? Blue Marina Restaurant 26th, October, Blue Marina Restaurant This is a critical examination of the possible types of employee reactions to the proposed change. It looks at the positive, negative, and mixed reactions of the employees and the processes necessary to contain the reactions. This editorial also contains recommendations necessary for the owners of the Blue Marina Restaurant in order to bring change to the restaurant. Employees are likely to react differently to different changes in the restaurant. This reaction is formed under dynamics of change as noted by Ken Blanchard in 1992. The changes noted various types of responses that occur and recur over. According to Paton and McCalman (2000), it is important for leaders to form a strategy that they will employ in order to cope with and understand the different reactions that employees will produce if a different change is introduced in the company. Understanding the employees' reaction and behaviors will allow business managers to avoid overreacting to the behaviors of the employees who seem to react adversely and with resistance (Tosey & Robinson, 2002). The Blue Marina Restaurant employees will feel awkward, uneasy, and self-conscious when the changes are introduced. This is because it will cause disruption of the habitual ways of how they do business. Changes tend to feel awkward for the employees and give them a sense of discomfort as they strive to eliminate the traditional ways of doing business and learn the new means of handling their duties. Changes introduce a feeling of self-consciousness to employees and this will be the same reaction to the Blue Marina Restaurant employees. Moreover, they fear that they might become inadequate to the needs of the restaurant and so will fear losing their jobs (Carnall, 2003). Whenever a change is introduced even in the Blue Marina Restaurant, the employees will focus on what they have to lose. This reaction trend is more common in areas where there is a change, whether a positive one such as promotion, or those that result in more autonomy or authority. In order to avoid these reactions, Blue Marina Restaurant managers should acknowledge the loss of the traditional ways of doing business. Moreover, the employees can get irrational or tentative to the changes. Resistance to any change is commonly due to some fear of loss to occur in the future or due to the change (Armenakis & Harris, 2001). The Blue Marina Restaurant employees will feel as if they are alone whenever the change is introduced. This feeling will increase the sense of isolation for the sectors undergoing the change in the restaurant. Moreover, employees in the restaurant will want to feel that their case is unique, special and will not be subjected to the change. For the management to cope with this kind of employee reaction, they need to be proactive and gentle in showing that the employees' situation is contained. Moreover, the employees will need support emotionally and practically in order to enhance the change (Ford, Ford, & McNamara, 2002). At a personal level, Blue Marina Restaurant employees will develop resistance to the many changes expected in such a little time. This feeling of unease will lead them to becoming dysfunctional. It is, therefore, important not to pile up too much change upon the employees so that the employees themselves can develop control over their situations. If the Blue Marina Restaurant decides to downsize, other opportunities will be created that will bring positive development to its employees (Armenakis & Harris, 2001). Mixed reaction will be seen in the way people react to the changes introduced by the Blue Marina Restaurant. This will happen in that some employees who are ready for the change will have a positive attitude towards the change while those with a negative attitude to change will develop resistance. Therefore, employees with a positive attitude will influence those with a negative attitude to accept the change. Open discussion is allowed to influence the process. Blue Marina Restaurant employees will develop mixed reactions to this kind of change introduced by the Blue Marina Restaurant. This is because employees will perceive that the changes will take time to be implemented, and may require a lot of time and workload. Moreover, this will require time and resources to be put into practive fully. The Blue Marina Restaurant employees will go through the coping cycle in order to fully implement the changes put in place. The coping cycle includes denial, defense, discarding, adaptation, and internalization. The employees will deny the changes in order to protect certain status quo. The employees will then defend their actions to resist any alteration in their previous positions. In the discarding stage, the employees will discard their previous traditions and behaviors and adapt to the new behavior introduced. According to the coping cycle, the new behaviors introduced require adaptation for the employees to be fully conversant with them. This process will require more time and money to be implemented. Lastly, the coping process will involve internalization. Internalization is a process where changes in an organization are only implemented internally (Hayes, 2007). The management should set up a procedure to follow in order to come up with the best strategy to manage the changes. In Kirkpatrick’s model for change, I will evaluate the process necessary for the Blue Marina Restaurant to cope with the resistance to change. Communication is one of the vital parts of the organisation. To manage communication in Blue Marina Restaurant, I would encourage the employees of the organization to present their information clearly and in detail to the management of Blue Marina Restaurant. This would radiate the integrity and authenticity of information. Moreover, the management of Blue Marina Restaurant must decide to listen, ask relevant questions for clarity, and trust its employees as the sender of the information. According to Kirkpatrick, empathy is an important tool for managing change. Empathy is getting into someone’s minds, having an insight into the thoughts, and trying to solve them on behalf of the person affected by them. In Blue Marina’s case, the management should suspend judgment of the employee’s action and reactions while they try to understand them. However, this might involve gentle questioning and probing in order to clarify the real situation on the ground. In order to get into this situation, the restaurant must participate in the changing policies by the management. This can be done through questioning and probing. The company needs to look at the reaction level of its employees. At this level, the company will evaluate how the employees feel when the change is introduced. The company will also determine their personal reaction to the changes and the experience. In this model, the company will determine the level of satisfaction of its employees after the change, the benefits the employees enjoyed after the change, and the benefits the company will gain from the change. Moreover, it will determine the venue, style, timing, and the level of participation of the employees (Kirkpatrick, 2001). Determining the reaction of the employees will ease the comfort of the experience of the employees and those who had a negative attitude towards the change. It will also help to determine the level of perceived practicability and the potential for applying the new changes. This can be done through requesting feedback based on the subjective personal reaction of the employees. Moreover, it can be determined through subsequent verbal or written reports given by the employees to the employer at the restaurant. This method is advantageous in that it can be done immediately after the change is implemented. Moreover, the method is very easy to obtain the reaction of the employees and is cheap to conduct (Kirkpatrick, 2001). I will also recommend the Blue Marina Restaurant to implement Kirkpatrick’s study of behavior that is very important for the purpose of communication in the workplace. It involves behavior evaluation, which is the extent to which the employees applied the change and adapted new behavior. This can be done immediately or several months after the change, depending on employee satisfaction (Kirkpatrick, 2001). The purpose of learning the employee's behavior after the change is introduced is to realize the level of skills and knowledge used. It will also help to determine the level of noticeable and measurable change in the activity and the performance of employees when the change is introduced. This move will also help determine the level of participation of the employees after the change is implemented, as well as the level of perceived practicability and the potential for applying the changes to different levels of employees (Ford, Ford, & McNamara, 2002). According to Coram and Burnes (2001), the Blue Marina Restaurant should also employ a learning process for the employees so that they can cope with the implemented change. This process will increase the knowledge and the intellectual capability of the employees who will be subjected to the change. In order to do this, the Blue Marina Restaurant will have to assess the needs of the employees in order to align them with the aims and objectives of the company. This measure will enable the employees to be reliable, clear, and meet the newly set targets brought about by the change implemented. This will also reduce the risk of inconsistence by the employees (Kirkpatrick, 2001). I will also recommend the Blue Marina Restaurant to evaluate the results of the change introduced. The result evaluation is the effect on the business or environment resulting from the improved change in the employees. O’Brien (2002) notes that the Blue Marina Restaurant would have to put in place some business or organizational key performance indicators. Such indicators include volumes of sale, the value of the change, the time scale required to implement the change, the return on investment, as well as other quantifiable aspects of the organizational performance. Using this technique will enable the Blue Marina Restaurant to analyze the impact of the change such as the numbers of complaints from the employees, employee turnover, abrasion, failures, level of wastage in matters of time and resources, non-compliance with the set regulations, quality ratings of the employees, achievement of standards and accreditations set by the restaurant, and growth and retention of the restaurant (Nutt & Backoff, 1997). This model can be implemented when most of these standards are already in place through normal management systems and reporting. However, it will be hard to identify how it relates to the employees’ input and influence. It is, therefore, important to identify and agree accountability and relevance with the employees at the start of the change implementation so that they understand what is to be evaluated in the change. This model will overlay normal good management practices and simply needs employee coordination (Kirkpatrick, 2001). In order to achieve these changes, I am going to use the step-by-step model as described by Kirkpatrick’s theory. One of the basic steps for the restaurant is to determine and evaluate the need for change. Secondly, the restaurant should prepare a tentative plan to be implemented during the change. Then, the restaurant management should analyze the probable reactions of its employees before making the final decision on the change. The restaurant should then establish a timetable to be followed during the change. Lastly, the restaurant implements the change when the above steps have been fully followed (Kirkpatrick, 2001). References Armenakis, AA & Harris, SG 2001, ‘Crafting a change message to create transformational readiness’, Journal of Organisational Change Management, vol. 15, no. 2, pp.169-183. Carnall, CA 2003, Managing change in organizations, 4th ed., FT Prentice Hall International, Harlow. Coram, R & Burnes, B 2001, ‘Managing organisational change in the public sector’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 94-110. Ford, JD, Ford, LW & McNamara, RT 2002, ‘Resistance and the background conversations of change’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 105-121. Hayes, J 2007, The theory and practice of change management, 2nd ed., Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Kirkpatrick, D 2001, Managing change effectively, Butterworth Heinemann. Nutt, P & Backoff, R 1997, ‘Facilitating transformational change’, The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, December. O’Brien, G 2002, ‘Participation as the key to successful change – a public sector case study’, Leadership and Organization Development Journal , vol. 23, no. 8, pp. 442-455. Paton, RA & McCalman, J 2000, Change management: a guide to effective implementation, 2nd ed., SAGE publications ltd, London. Tosey, P & Robinson, G 2002, ‘When change is no longer enough: what do we mean by “transformation” in organisational change work?’, The TQM Magazine, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 100-109. Read More