Change Plan and Process in Dryburgh Footwear Company - Case Study Example

Change Plan and Process in Dryburgh Footwear Company Student Name Institution Change Plan and Process in Dryburgh Footwear Company In the business environment, the management has a role of motivating the workers to come to work to remain with the organization and be ready to knowledge and insights. The overall cooperation of the management and well-motivated workforce help to boost the performance of the company. Motivated workers are ready to share their knowledge and insight into the product and process needs of the organization. Dryburgh Footwear Company, which despite its history of industrial disruption has a high percent of employee turnover. The company has 100 per cent employee turnover rate and an average annual level of absenteeism of slightly under five per cent among its production workers. According to the personnel officer costing, the total financial burden of these forms of withdrawal behavior was placed at more than $1.5 million per annum. The company has a less than 500 workers making it a medium size business. The company has most of the workers as women with families and its manufactures fashion and casual shoes for both sexes (Deery, 1995). The company tries to expand both its production at home and overseas. This puts the business of the company vulnerable to international competition. The management is put in the fear of the competition. Others in the management felt that the company’s variability was in the question too. The company also realizes that it is losing $lightly less than $700 000 per year following absenteeism. The general manger seems not to care about the loss but fear losing workers. The company, due to low profits is reluctant to involve technology in its production. Use of technology would improve the working condition and boost production. This will mean an addition to revenues. With higher revenues, the company will be able to motivate the workers through incentives such as bonuses. The case now shows a workforce that is less motivated and an authoritarian management (Deery, 1995). The company should rebuild the business and motivate the employees. The business may employ modern technology that will help increase revenue. The increase will eventually lead to the increment to the workforce. To motivate the employers, the management may include incentives that cater for the needs of employers. The management may establish a day care centre for the workers' children. This will not only motivate the workers, but also take care of some of the parenting needs. This will eventually make the workers realize that the management prioritizes their needs. The management should ensure the workers understand the motives behind the establishment of such facilities as day care. The main reason the employees are working is to meet their needs and if the company will motivate the workers if they meet some of the needs (MANSO, 2011). Employee motivation is the key to improving the business revenue. Motivation can ne don using various aspects of human resources. In a case where employees have gone for a set time without increment, raising their salaries may seem the best way to motivate them. Sometimes, raising the salaries may not be possible due to financial constraints that the company may be facing. The HR manager should come up with ways that will motivate the employees and at the same time rebuild the business. Employee motivation also plays a vital role in the organizations’ performance. According to Herzberg, for satisfactory workroom motivation, it is vital that leadership understands the active needs of individual employees. Herzberg theory indicates similarities with Maslow’s argument. Maslow’s model showed that basic needs like safety and physiological wants to have to be satisfied for one to pursue higher-level motivations in the lines of self-fulfilment. According to Maslow, these physiological needs are organized in a hierarchical manner called the hierarchy of needs, with the vital needs at the bottom and less important needs at the top. Dryburgh Footwear Company has problems that reflect the need for change. This problem calls for organizational development that will involve restructuring the organization level. The change involves individuals and groups. The main goal is to change to create widespread changes encompassing beyond the individual group to an entire organization or a major department of the organization. As the organization passes through their life cycle, many changes occur naturally. The person in power, such as the top management initiates the changes. A change plan process in the organizational development is a process that requires collection of data, diagnosis, planning action, change, and intervention, and eventually evaluation of the result applied in the part of the organization of the whole organization (MANSO, 2011). In Dryburgh Footwear Company, the problem of the movement calls for change. The top management is rigid to change controlled by the fear of losing their workers. The use of the 'Taylorised' production methods did little to encourage the development or use of skills or help to create a sense of job satisfaction. However, several just-in-time (JIT) lines were introduced, and there were early signs of enhanced job satisfaction and lower turnover and absenteeism among the group of fifty to sixty employees who worked under this more participative and multi-skilled arrangement. Apart from JIT lines, the company should come up with a more effective plan that will enhance the working conditions; hence improving job satisfaction. Worker motivation is the key to improving the productivity of the workers. To curb the problems of absenteeism, the company should create a plan for leaves. System of production and absenteeism and turnover are the areas that warrant immediate managerial attention because of the substantial cost burden that they impose on the company. The proposed change plan is workers motivation. Every organization follows a set of rules in its operations. The rules are organizational procedures. Organization procedures refer to laid down rules and regulations developed in an organization constitution concerning with dealing with issues. The procedures are the foundations within which the organization operates. Every organization has a different set of procedures in dealing with issues and scenarios. As the procedure differs in every company, so are procedure of dealing with each issue and scenario are different. For instance, how on company deals with the scenario of poor performance is different from the other company. In the same way, the procedures used in dealing with poor performance differ from the procedures for dealing with termination. An organizational change plan organizational following strategies and plans must conform to the organizational procedures. To carry out the scenarios, plans, and strategies that in accordance with the organizational procedures must be followed. A correctly designed recognition and reward plan and strategies will strengthen the behaviours and actions management want employees to have, celebrated success and the earnings in a symmetric way. It will also encourage the sharing of feedback and information, motivate staff and lessen the chances for burnout, productivity, and customer satisfaction, reduce costs, improve team and individual performance, motivate staff to become more involved, and improve quality. Reward and recognition plan and strategies reinforce and set the expectation of an organization to high performance behaviours. If an organization lacks the reward and recognition plans and strategies for work well done, it risks to loose enthusiasm among its workers. Reward and recognition act as a motivator. If it lacks the levels of energy will drop. Communication and readiness are an essential part of a change plan process. The workers as well as the management should have the information about the changes taking place in the organization. In the case of Dryburgh Footwear Company, the workers should be made ready so that they can adopt the changes in the management and in the introduction of reward and recognition programs. Making the whole system ready for the upcoming changes will help to prevent resistance to change. The changing management should effectively overcome any instance of resistance to change. Avoiding resistance means mean the organization undergoing change will precede to the oriented future goals at a lower cost. A democracy as opposed to authoritative management will drive the changes considering the wellbeing of the whole organization. This means the organization will consider the opinions of the workers. Involving the employees in the decision-making process helps to diagnose the current state of the organization and highlight the areas that need changes. For instance, the Dryburgh Footwear Company management should involve the workers to know their reason for turnover and absenteeism. In this way, the employee feel important and will be ready to work with the organization to identify the area that need change, and analyse the required change that will help solve the problem. The communication and readiness help to design the future state of the organization. The future state involves picturing and idealizing the perfect situation of the company once the change takes place. It also helps to bring the changes in everyone’s notice especially those who would be part of the change. The company should design a way of transition to the implemented new state of the organization. For example, the management in the Dryburgh Footwear Company and the workers should be noticed on the proposed changes in the structure of the management and the introduction of the reward and recognition. Maintaining stability is the significant part of transition. The main objective and some of the key personnel should not be changed. Maintaining the personnel and key objective helps to alleviate the employees’ anxiety. The manner in which the organization implements the changes determines the effective management actions. It includes managing the transition in a manner that is effective. Drawing up a plan and assigning the necessary resources will help. A key person should be appointed to monitor the changes in the process. The appointed person will be the facilitator of the proposed changes. The leaders in the organization should act as role models and keep the spirit of the workers high by communication their goals for everyone. The organization should start with small victories and proceed to big success later. This means the change process should be a systematic process and gradual. Facilitating readiness successfully creates wisdom, incentives, timing, education, persistence, prescience, communication, energy, and training. The change movers should always take the lead from their contemporaries. Such steps will enhance job satisfaction and lower turnover and absenteeism among the employees who worked under this more participative and multi-skilled arrangement. This will improve the Dryburgh Footwear Company management, workforce and increase their revenues. To test the effectiveness of the change plan, evaluation should be put into place. The change initiator should bear in mind that the stakeholders in the organization should be involved in the planning. A plan with the stakeholders participate yields positive incomes. The stakeholders identify and set goals and objectives that they follow in the order of their preferences so that they can come up with a practical solution for the problems they are facing. They synthesize the areas with problems turning them into clear goals. To make changes in the Dryburgh Footwear Company, all the stakeholders must be involved. This will avoid conflict between change initiators and the management. The agents of change and the stakeholders should work together to synthesize the problematic areas and turn them into goals. This will result to effective and realistic plans and policies and eventually an improved implementation. The improvements are results of effective decision making by the stakeholders. They make it possible and effective for the change initiators to have effective and realistic policies, laws, and regulation. In addition, they help project by focusing on significant information and vital experiences. The stakeholders, as decision makers, introduced new initiatives into the already existing appropriate local organizations and institutions. They also culture the values needed to push the changes. They help to reduce opposition to the proposals. In most cases, the management will tend to hide the problems from the fear the employees may leave the job for good. This is the case of Greg Jackson, the general manager, when Brown brings to his attention the problem facing the company (Deery, 1995). The manager fears that the employees may leave their jobs since he believes that they do not like to work. Rumors of the problem among the workers make the situation more intense. If the company came out sincerely, they should be able to explain the problem to the workers. Explaining the problem when the workers are already tense will make the situation even worse. Honesty and communication are very critical to the running of the organization. The last stage of the developing a change plan and process is evaluating the implemented changes. The evaluation shows the success rate of the process. The weak points can be addressed as the project is running. Evaluation should include all the people who were involved in the change. In this case, the opinion of the workers and the management should be considered in evaluating the progress of the project. The proposed project in the Dryburgh Footwear Company in to change the structure of the company and focus on reducing turnover and absenteeism. In doing this, the management will be changed from the authoritarian to a democratic management. They will be the introduction of reward and recognition program that will help motivate the workers. These areas need to be evaluated to assess their success. The workers’ and the stakeholder’s attitude towards the change will be considered. The workers' attendance will be evaluated against the overall revenue for the period of the change. The efforts put forward by the workers will be used to determine the success of the project. The main purpose of the change is to improve the management and alleviate the problems of turnover and absenteeism. In addition, the success of the implements change plan will be measured against objectives and goals. References Deery, S.J. 1995, 'Absenteeism and employee turnover: Dryburgh Footware Company', in Organisationalchange strategies: Case studies of human resource and industrial relations issues, ed.M. Patrickson, V. Bamber,& G.J. Bamber, Longman, Melbourne, Chapter 21, pp. 240-250. Manso, Gustavo. 2011, Motivating Innovation. Journal of Finance 66.5: 1823-1860. Business Source Complete. Web. 29 Dec. 2013. Read More