Organizational Change Management at Suffolk County Council - Case Study Example

Organizational Change Management Contents Contents 2 Part A 3 Introduction to the report 3 Background 5 Problems – Findings 5 Conclusions 12 Limitations 12 Recommendations 13 Implementation – recommendations 13 References 15 Part A Introduction to the report The research study is based on Suffolk County Council which is an administrative authority in England. The council represents 63 divisions comprising of 75 county councillors who are elected. The council was established in the year 1974 and has gone through a lot of controversies of outsourcing various services in an attempt to cut down various costs. The Suffolk County Council is subdivided into four different areas each of which has a specific responsibility of statutory requirements and even a range of services. The areas of concern for the council are – children and young people services, community and adult people services, public protection, environment and economy skills. There is another work area of the council that covers all the areas stated above and it does internal auditing of the council as well as enables various legal and registry services. The SCC is responsible for various services that it provides across countywide such as trading and business standards, providing education, environmental protection and minimizing waste disposal and natural resources consumption, culture and leisure, public safety, registration for deaths, marriages and births, social care, streets and transport. The organization is facing a lot of challenges and pressure from the external environment that has enforced upon the system for a change. A change is usually initiated by external drivers that influence upon the internal conditions for a change. The change theory states that external factors drives the change and the implementation of the change takes place considering three important factors such as visionary leaders who get involved into various forms of strategic planning, developing a team who would carry on with the change management program and then final implementation of change involving all the individuals of the organization and even other teams. The diagram for this change theory is given below- (Hayes, 2010, p. 156) The external factors of SCC were the financial crisis that were about to hit it operations. The organization was facing a lot of financial problems and even experienced a financial budget gap of £153 million. SCC is not in a financial stable condition which has even resulted into a number of job cuts so as to control the cost associated with over staffing. The rising demand for SCC’s services has forced the organization to restructure its operations. The key issues that surround SCC is that if it plans to cut down cost they need to eliminate the non performers from the system, the organization even needs to compromise on their services, the sector in which SCC operates and not meant to be without any problems in the future so the demand would be existing, outsourcing such services would not be accepted by all as the structure of the organization is not that flexible and the less stable political conditions of its business operations also is a major concern area for SCC apart from the financial crisis that it is facing. Change management is an approach through which individuals, organizations, and teams are shifted from the current state to a desired future state. There are various types of changes such as technological changes; business process re-engineering in which the entire process of a business is restricted instead of modifying any sub processes, and incremental changes that encompasses small logical changes in the business process rather than focusing on any kind of major changes. However any kind of change needs proper communication flow with all team members or else there may be certain resistance towards such change in the system. The visionary leaders are the ones who can invent and incorporate a change faster. The major challenges that SCC is facing is that of rising demand, its slow operations, financial instability, etc., and the method of change that it is designed of cutting down staffs would not be much beneficial for long term. Part B Background Problems – Findings The burning platform issue for SCC is the evolution of financial crisis that has hit the shores of Louisiana. SCC is under great pressure that this crisis would also hit its business operations and it already has a financial budget gap. The organization finds it a need to implement certain changes into the system so that they can perform well for long run. The major problem is that it focus on reducing the demand level of its services so that it can control its budget and even aims to eliminate many people from its council so as to reduce the cost associated with staffing. However the staff cost reduction cannot do much towards reducing the financial gap. The change that SCC has considered is that eliminating those individuals who are not working as per the performance standards set by the organization and motivating and encouraging those individuals to stay on the board of council, who are creative, innovative, possesses the necessary skills, and are hard working. The other key areas of change is to reduce the waste in the organization and aim at meeting the actual demand of the people rather than focusing on any kind of perceived demand. This according to SCC board can reduce much of the cost and even control the demand to an extent where any unnecessary demand would not be addressed by the council. SCC faces a major problem of its excessive spending on public services and even to reduce the overall cost. They have thought of some new ideas for change such as working together with district councils, voluntary sector, health and police so as to provide services to the public sector following a lean approach through which the actual demand would be met and the waste can be reduced (Tsoukas and Robert, 2002, pp. 567-582). Other approach is that of developing funds for communities so that they can help themselves and identifying the root cause for any problem related to the society and fix it permanently which is not possible always and hence restricts SCC to resolve its issues. However the change can be brought through developing a team within the organization who would understand the goal for the change and even would possess the capability to design strategies so as to implement such a change. The Kotter’s theory of change depicts very clearly the way in which a change can be brought into an organization through a guiding alliance which focuses on implementing the suggested change throughout the various departments of an organization. (Burnes, 2009, p.102) The two major changes that needs to be addressed by the authority of SCC is about process oriented changes so as to enable minimal utilization of resources and maximize the returns, and people oriented change that would focus on improving the skills, behaviour, and performance level of the people working in the organization. The first step of the Kotter’s model is to create an urgency amongst the team that there is a need for change and this can be done by SCC through communicating well with all the members the financial budget gap the organization is undergoing and the rising demand in the public sector services. The next step is of forming a powerful coalition and this requires the organization to identify the best employees in the system that has an experience and knowledge to perform according to standards. These members can be included to form a team that would be responsible for driving the change in the system. This step of change coalition requires involving true leaders from SCC for the change, and then developing emotional bonds so as to support the change, then developing all the effective practices that are required for team building, and then identifying the weak areas within the team (Kets de Vries, 2011, pp. 145-146). The team that is formed can be most effective if the each and every department’s members are involved in the change management. The next step is creating a vision for change such as for SCC it would the need to meet the actual demand of the public and even reducing on some of the cost of its operations. SCC needs to build strategies on this vision so that the change it is focusing on can create value for each of the individuals associated internally or externally with the organization. The next step is of communicating the vision on a continuous basis so that all the operations that are performed by the organization are linked with the change objective. The fifth step of the model is to remove all obstacles and this can be achieved through the team of change leaders that SCC develops whose responsibility would be to acknowledge those people in the system with rewards and awards who are forming an integral for making the change happen, and identifying those individuals who are resisting towards any such change and resolving the issues with them as fast as possible. The next step is that such a change should be focused on short term wins and achievement on such changed operations should be appreciated. The seventh step is of building the change into the system and constantly monitoring so that there is a continuous improvement. The final step that needs to be followed by SCC is to make the change incorporated into core of its corporate culture. The leaders of SCC as per the behavioural theory of leadership needs to be flexible for new ideas, must follow a participative and visionary style of leadership for carrying on with the proposed change, and should act as a guide as well as support all the team members for productive results. Employee engagement is very important in change management as though the leaders may lead the change but it is completely on the workforce on how much efficient the change would be in the coming days. Solutions Focus – Findings There are different methods of organizational development that are opted by an organization. However the models that can be used by SCC for further development of organization are three stage change model theory of Kurt Lewin’s, Burke Litwin’s first and second order change, and Porras and Robertson model. These four models can be used by SCC for implementing change in the system and even for further development. The Kurt Lewin’s three stage model states that there are three different stages through which an organizational development can be achieved and the change can be implemented. The three different stages of the model comprise of unfreezing, changing, and freezing. The first phase of unfreezing can be created by SCC through a readiness amongst the team members that in order to sustain their services for long run there is a great need to be cut down on their costs. The second stage of the model is of change through which the organization can identify a new mentor, scan the environment and view all things in a different context. This can be done by SCC by conducting a workshop where the change and its motives can be communicated to all the other team members and their opinions can be recorded so as to derive at a more innovative idea. The third stage is of refreezing through which new relationships can be developed by SCC and the various methods for restricting the entire organizational process can be made a part of the organizational culture. The second model of OD that can be adopted by SCC is Burke-Litwin model of change. This model comprises of two different form of change one is transformational change that relates to major fundamental changes in the organization and the second is that of transactional change through which only certain factors are changed in the system. SCC does not have much of funds left to recruit further individuals so the best method would be to place the individuals having many years of experience in the system as the leaders or managers who in turn can impart the necessary skills to the employees whose performance have decreased down the line and it would enable the organization to eliminate the cost associated with training and development (Huffington, Armstrong and Halton, 2004, pp. 167-169). This would form a transactional form of change in SCC. The transformational change would be the steps undertaken by SCC towards analyzing the problems associated with public sector by panel of experts so that the services are given to the actual need of the customers. The structural model for such organizational development in SCC is explained in the diagram given below- (Poole and Van de Ven, 2004, p. 76) Porras and Robertson model states that the improvements of such developments are totally based on OD interventions as they cause an effect on the overall work setting. The work setting comprises of four important factors such as organizational arrangements, social factors, technology and physical setting as stated in the diagram below- (Senior and Swailes, 2010, p. 56) The organization needs to adapt the change management practice of reducing the staff count and keeping only those members in the system that are productive and have high level performance in the system. SCC needs to work together with other communities and even with some of the voluntary organizations so that they can gain the expertise on how to control the excessive demand and even achieve financial stable position after which it can start of its services on its own without any support. As per this model the appropriate OD interventions for the organization would be developing effective teams based on strategic planning, organizing different workshops so that the ideas of different individuals can be taken into consideration, and solve the various team problems and effectively eliminate the factors that lower downs the moral level of the members (Hughes, 2010, pp. 154-156). The time frames for these change management practices would be the time till SCC is rescued of the financial crisis it is currently facing and till the time to which such change do not affect the quality level of service that is performed by SCC. Even the OD interventions and various practices should be in common benefit of the organization, and the employees. The best time based organizational development method that can be used by SCC is future search through which the leaders and well performing employees would be gathered in a room for meeting and the main focus of the meeting would be tasks and to transform the capability into well planned actions as fast as possible. The action plans are developed for the future on the basis of sharing of knowledge, expertise and resources. For all this approaches the perfect time scale is the present of SCC till it is able to achieve a stable position after which it can resume back to its original structure and spending more on recruiting individuals to the board. Conclusions Limitations Organizational changes are at times not accepted by the employees and even may cause a drastic impact on the motivational level of the employees and even disrupt the performance level of the employees. The changes are associated with more of employee involvement and the leaders take an effective role in designing as well as implementing such a change. The leaders need to follow more of participative style so that the initiatives taken by them are well supported by their team. The solutions that are derived for this case particular case of SCC has certain limitations such as one of the solutions aims at eliminating the non performers from the organization so that SCC can control the cost associated with such low performance level, but this approach can be very disruptive in relation to other members of the systems as they might be under the dilemma that if they do not perform well then can be thrown out of the organization this would in turn result a job security issue of the employees. On the contrary some of the members may not possess that amount of psychological stability so as to accept such changes in the system and may prefer the current way of operating as the best approach. The second option of working together with other communities may have that limitations that the other bodies may not consider working with SCC much beneficial and if they do the expertise of SCC would be shared which can be not profitable for long run. However the approach of making the experienced members and leaders of the organization impart the necessary skills to the employees is suitable as it would help in controlling cost and making the operations faster. The other option of maintaining a panel of team consisting of experts who would firstly analyze the issue and then provide service can be time consuming which is the only limitation of such change option. There are some of the practical difficulties of an organizational development that is people who are associated with working in a significant way needs time to adapt themselves to the changing situation. The issue of cutting down cost in today’s scenario is very common for most organizations that greatly affect the human resources as they are exploited. Organizational development restricts the senior employees towards such change as the face a difficulty towards grasping such change. If the employee involvement is less than such change do not prove to be very advantageous for the system as it is accepted across all the departments of the organization. Recommendations Implementation – recommendations The challenges that had been addressed in the case of SCC are addressed by some of the change options that are provided on the basis of the organizational development models. The options that are outlined in the report can be implemented through various programs that can be incorporated in the system. Often it has been observed that leaders are the most important role model surrounding which the entire change takes place. The changes in an organization are initiated by leaders which are further communicated to all the other team members so that the change can be well implemented across the organization. The leaders of SCC needs to follow a democratic approach which would enable them to interact with other team members and even develop a common strategic plan that would help in encountering various issues. SCC can incorporate a leadership program through which the leaders and the employees would come together to discuss and solve their issues which would help them to increase their performance level and even enhance their morale. Through this program the leaders can impart their skills on the other team members and can even give them the direction through which they can achieve higher performance standards. The leadership program also would help to build harmony amongst the group as the problems would be resolved and the current issues facing the organization can also be addresses so that the members come up with their innovative ideas. The other approaches through which the change options can be implemented would be following team building approach where the main focus would be building effective teams so that they are able to address the various change issue and even develop the necessary skills to perform in the changed environment. The team building sessions can be conducted in a way through which many such practices related to team building can be implemented into the system so that the members of SCC can develop strong bonds. The SCC can also hire some consultants or experts who can provide a clear picture on the factor that needs to be considered for such change and its impact on the internal and external environment after implementation of such a change. References Burnes, B. 2009. Managing Change: A Strategic Approach to Organisational Dynmaics . Harlow: Financial Times/Prentice Hall Hayes, J. 2010. Theory and Practice of Change Management. Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan. Huffington, C., Armstrong, D., and Halton, W. 2004. Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organisations. Karnac: London. Hughes, M. 2010. Change Management: A Critical Perspective. CIPD Kets de Vries, M. 2011. Reflections on Groups and Organizations. San Francisco : Jossey- Bass. Poole, M.S., and Van de Ven, A.H. 2004. "Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation". New York: Oxford University Press. Senior, B., and Swailes, S. 2010. Organizational Change. New Delhi : Pearson ed. Tsoukas, H., and Robert, C. 2002. "On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change." Organization Science. Vol. 13, pp.567-582. Read More