Queensland Rail - Development Plan and Process - Case Study Example

320 АSS2-Change management project Name Institution Option 2:- the integrative case study Case; Strategic and cultural change in railways Section 1; Summary of the case context Queensland Rail (QR) is a bureaucratic, public sector organisation existed before the introduction of ‘radical transformational change’. QR operated through transportation of minerals and coal whereby it incurred large losses on freight traffic and passengers, thus some economic burden to the public and the government. The geographic and economic separation led to lagging behind of the real change in the organisation. The organisation experienced high demand for some change from the state and federal government, as well as other stakeholders. The corporate turnaround of QR was done with the aim of getting some positive and substantial business change. QR was employing over 20,000 employees in Queensland for transportation of passengers and goods. Various Australian rail organisations had experienced some transformational change that QR was avoiding (Gollogly, & Callan, 1995). Among the changes introduced in the organisation include; changing from functional to divisional organisational structure and reduction of the structure from nine reporting levels to seven reporting levels. In addition, the accountability and authority were changed from diverse centralised functions to personal business elements. The functions of ‘five centralized staff’ were put together to a single strategic role directed to the human resource. There was also the advertisement of the ‘senior management positions to external people with some internal roles being disbanded to take part in decentralisation of the organisation. The staff was required to agree with customer-centred or commercialized outlook of the organisation where it changed from public provider to business focused organisation. The old culture prevented the change because of avoidance of diversity in the interactions among members, role relationships that are strongly explained, inadequate members’ trust, and role culture. There was introduction of a directive style to enable change management within the set periods by the stakeholders (Gollogly, & Callan, 1995). There was outside recruitment, downsizing, changes in delegation of power and empowerment, cultural changes, augmented employee involvement, and improved training programs. Staff adopted a reliable high-task orientation through examination of the old habits and cultural values for offering of quality services. The change and period of change led to confusion to workers who practiced with low morale. Section 2: The Development/Change Plan and Process: The problem and the need for change; QR was going through major economic losses in its operations. QR was facing the problem of being public organisation whereby it was not doing its business as per the expectations. QR organization was a functional organisation where bureaucracy was practiced in delegation of authorities. According to the argument put forth by Crawford and Nahmias (2010), this made the management of the staff to be problematic because of ineffective division of labour method applied by the management team. In addition, the organisation structure of QR comprises of ‘nine reporting levels’, which made it difficult for the staff to reach the top management whenever they had an issue. The amount of workforce was very high compared to the productivity of the staff in the organisation, thus the need of reduced workforce to avoid increased expenses. The organisation was operating through ‘separate centralized functions’ in its authority and accountability. This made the conduct of functions in the organisation to be ineffective where all activities were conducted through a single place (Reynolds, & Holwell, 2010). This hindered the expansion of organisational facilities to different locations. The organisational functions were in the form of ‘five centralized staff’ and this made the human resource management to face difficulties trying to control the workforce. People who were not competent for their job occupied the senior management positions and they required high training in order for them to deliver and enable the organisation to experience some growth. As articulated by Branson (2008) whenever an organization is led by a management team that does not have the right and effective skills and experience, the performance of that organisation tends to go down. The company recruitment was done to the railway families and this led to poor functioning because it was not done as per the qualifications of the employees, but the relatives of the management team. In addition, since the management was from relatives of the railway employees, the conduct of activities was not done with the aim of achieving the goals, thus the need of some changes (Crawford & Nahmias, 2010). Employment in QR was done to anyone who lacked job elsewhere, thus making the organisation to be full of unskilled and ineffective workers leading to poor performance. Members were not allowed to interact with each other and this hindered diversity of operations in the organisation. In addition, the member’s trust to the organisation was inadequate because of strict definition of the role relationships. Ways of approaching the change task as an agent/organisational consultant; In order to have effective change it is necessary to approach the change task in a beneficial way to the organization as an organisational consultant. I would call for a meeting with the management team of QR and discuss the them about the need for change (Van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008). I would advise the organisational management to reduce the organisational structure from the functional to ‘divisional organisational structure’ because with lesser reporting levels, it would be easier for its management. I would also ensure proper communication with all the staff members about the planned change in order to prevent having change resistance. I would use examples of organisations, which experienced change and realized success in their operations and this will enhance convincing of the organisational staff about the importance of having some changes in the workforce, organisational structure, and the organisational culture (Crawford & Nahmias 2010). It would be necessary to do a thorough investigation of what the changes are likely to do to the organisation as postulated by Muayyad (2012), thus I would carry out a research for efficient and effective information. I would encourage diversity of the members’ interactions to improve the level of member’ trust and to ensure handling of role relationships in a more friendly and customer oriented manner. I would ensure that the human resource practices outside recruitment and increase the level of employee involvement in organisational decision-making. I would encourage conduct of ‘improved training programs’ to improve the skills and knowledge of the employees in the organisation (Edmonds 2011). The planned change process/ways of creating readiness and the interventions; There are various change ways that would be involved to have successful change at QR and these include; being involved in the organisational activities for a while. This will enhance understanding of the need for a change and things to be done in order to have effective change, as well as how change will be implemented. It is clear that QR was going through economic challenges because of application of the old culture, and the ineffectiveness of its organisational structure. As stated by Thurnell-Read and Parker (2008), planned change requires undertaking of investigations and research in order to understand the practices of the competitors and what a company requires to do in order to have improved performance. Diagnosing the problem and creating awareness to the staff of the need for a change is very essential for effective change in an organisation. Making critical and informed decision regarding the need of fixing the problem is also necessary where courses of actions will be compared. It would also be very important to plan to have the change being implemented and plan on how the change would be managed. According to (Mannion, Konteh, & Davies, 2009), it is necessary to adjust and reassess the change plan against the business plan of the respective organisation to ensure that they fit each other and they focus at enabling organisational success. Communication of the change; Communication of the change to the QR staff members would be done through explaining the change in a way that would enhance clear understanding of the effectiveness of the change to the organisation. As articulated by Edmonds (2011), people fear being changed, but they do not go against change, thus the need of convincing the staff about the essence of having organisational change. The employees require to know about the consequences of the change to their functions and positions. All the positive outcomes of the changes will be analysed and put down in some documents to be read and be issued to the employees during the meeting of informing then about the planned change. In addition, the negative consequences would also be analysed and be compared to the positive consequences to understand the essence of having the respective change in the organisation Thurnell-Read, & Parker, 2008). During the meeting addressing issues associated with the specific change, it is very essential to learn the attitudes of the employees and how they react by hearing about the planned change. There will be an oral talk and some documents issued to the employees about the change, its outcomes, and how it would be implemented (Brocke, Simons, & Cleven, 2008). It would also be necessary to have the supervisors talk to the employees about the change in their departments and to take their opinions about the particular change. There would be conduct of training in order to allow the left employees after the reduction of the workforce to be effective and improve their performance. This would ensure improvement of the skills and experience of unskilled employees in the QR organisation (Muayyad, 2012). Evaluate the change effort Evaluation of the change effort would be done through looking at the changes in the performance of the organisation in the areas influenced by the change. In addition, it would be assessed through looking at the level of achievement of the set goals and objectives of the particular changes. All activities conducted towards implementation of the planned change will be evaluated against the aims of the change in order to understand their effectiveness and their capability in enhancing successful organisational change (Branson, 2008). There would be monitoring of the activities conducted by the employees to understand the level of achievement of the target goals and objectives. This would be done during the process of change whereby supervisors would be required to report regularly about the performance of their departments especially the departments influenced by the organizational change. According to the argument put forth by Smith (2011), it is necessary to check the results of the planned change process in relation to achievement of the change objectives and strategies. The success of change would be monitored to understand the specific step undertaken to enhance the respective change success or failure. It would be done through the key performance indicators (KPIs) method of change evaluation, as it would show the progress of the change step by step (Thurnell-Read & Parker 2008). In case of some challenges during the evaluation of the change, it would be possible to come with them and apply the necessary solution. References Gollogly, K. & Callan, V. (1995). ‘Strategic and cultural change in railways.’ In: Organisational change strategies: Case studies of human resource and industrial relations issues / edited by Margaret Patrickson, Val Bamber, Greg J. Bamber. Melbourne: Longman Australia, Chapter 7: 98-106. Muayyad, J. (2012). Managing organisational change: process, social construction and dialogue. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, I. (2011). Organisational quality and organisational change: Interconnecting paths to effectiveness. Library Management, 32(1/2), 111-128. Crawford, L., & Nahmias, A. H. (2010). Competencies for managing change. International Journal of Project Management, 28(4), 405-412. Reynolds, M., & Holwell, S. (2010). Systems approaches to managing change: a practical guide. London: Springer. Edmonds, J. (2011). Managing successful change. Industrial and Commercial Training, 43(6), 349-353. Brocke, J. V., Simons, A., & Cleven, A. (2008). A business process perspective on enterprise content management: towards a framework for organisational change. Mannion, R., Konteh, F. H., & Davies, H. T. O. (2009). Assessing organisational culture for quality and safety improvement: a national survey of tools and tool use. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 18(2), 153-156. Thurnell-Read, T., & Parker, A. (2008). Men, masculinities and firefighting: Occupational identity, shop-floor culture and organisational change. Emotion, Space and Society, 1(2), 127-134. Van Dam, K., Oreg, S., & Schyns, B. (2008). Daily work contexts and resistance to organisational change: The role of leader–member exchange, development climate, and change process characteristics. Applied Psychology, 57(2), 313-334. Branson, C. M. (2008). Achieving organisational change through values alignment. Journal of Educational Administration, 46(3), 376-395. Read More