Understanding the Impact of Organizational Change on Human Resources - Essay Example

Understanding the impact of Organisational Change on Human Resources: "The roles, processes and challenges" Human resource is tremendously impacted by organizational change. This is because it is responsible for handling the workforce in an organization. It recruits individuals, and trains and upgrades employees with newer skills required. It also deals with handling employee problems faced at work. With these responsibilities come additional roles to play each time there is a change in an organization. When an organization goes through change, human resource has to consider everything that comes in its path. All departments that fall under its control need to be examined closely, particular those that are most affected by an organizational change. Human resource needs to see to the careful implementation of an organization change through careful planning in consultation with key employees from other departments. They also have to set short-term targets that need to achieved, and these achievements over a period of time will present a picture that can describe how effectively organizational change is implemented under human resource efforts. Introduction: It is logical to consider how one action can induce or stimulate another in any system. While people generally are aware of the manner in which a change in one system can impact another system altogether, the impact that the same change may have within its system might be even greater. When an organization undergoes change, it is bound to affect many main areas within its system. Human resource being affected by organizational change is one example. It is important to understand how human resource is affected by organizational change. In doing so, it is important to understand why this department would be impacted by organizational change and how much it would be affected. Given that human resource is in fact the backbone of operations in an organization, any change brought to an organization would automatically see its human resource department over viewing and considering the change. This department has to do this because it needs to assess whether or not it would need to modify its approach to recruiting and training the right kind of personnel in order to deal with any new roles. A brief but important example one can present here is when an organization needs to develop itself as a high performance unit. Human resource has to make sure it recruits “energy-packed employees”1. Human Resource Roles: It is said that great efforts have been put towards human resource planning in various industries, and it is interesting to learn how effective this planning is, particularly when there is organizational change to deal with. Through human resource planning theory and the experience gained, one may evaluate how employee performance has been enhanced. This point is primarily mentioned at this point because of the fact that human resource to a great extent focuses on employee working conditions and how satisfied an employee should be in an organization. However, this is not the entire focus of human resources. Their role entails doing what is right for the organization as well, particularly when there are apparently newer challenges ahead. This is why “A change initiative must start with a proactive and positive approach towards the future” (Karp, 2004, 350). Human resource needs to look into its current work force, and assess what strengths it has through individual analysis. This analysis will particularly be matched against the newer challenges facing the human resource. There might be need to look out for present or new employees who have particular skills for newer tasks. Human resource might consider training some of their important and skilled employees to handle these new tasks or they might need to hire individuals who already have the required skills. Whether human resource needs to train their skilled staff or hire new individuals with required skills, the time factor is crucial (Stanley, 2002, 1). Often, a major error that is known to cause transformational failure is hastiness in making required changes in an organization. This is because change processes are known to take significant amounts of time. In view of the fact that there is considerable time required for a change in an organization to take place, one of the few things that comes to mind is the environment within which an employee works or is hired to work in. It is known that a human being can only perform well if an environment suits him or her well. From the very basics in human resource management, it is known that employees need to be satisfied in their working environments. However, it is known that success can follow bad news when there is an organizational change at hand. Human resource may be looking to “monitor individual performance” as well as change the way in which employees deal with day-to-day tasks, and this might disturb them (Stanley, 2002, 1). Once they pass this step and conform to new requirements that reflect market conditions, they will settle themselves into a new rhythm. However, “The difficulty in most knowledge management effort lies in changing organizational culture and peoples work habits” (McDermott, 1999, 104. qtd. In Albert, 2006, 19). A steady and controlled cultural transformation is usually seen as the most appropriate way to ensure an organization success and maximum gain in times of organizational change. In this way, employees learn to perform better without feeling compelled (Stanley, 2002, 1). Of course, there are rules to follow, but with a satisfactory working environment, employees learn to be committed when they see that the leaders in the organization are not pressurizing them. This is in fact a learning process that takes time, as emphasized earlier. Basically, since human beings are born learners, and the environment that each human being is brought up in defines the formation of a personality. This personality so developed in the professional environment or workplace is one that is a result of proper human resource planning. The process of socialization is the key to changing the natural generative learning abilities into adaptive learning skills. Individuals and “Teams outperform individuals acting alone or in larger organizational groupings, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments and experiences” (Stanley, 2002, 1). While human resource has to work steadily and go through painstaking processes in order to cope with organizational change, a company cannot declare victory too soon. This would be a cardinal error. Organizational leaders may be tempted to declare victory too early when they get their first progress report since an organizational change has been implemented. However, if it has only been a short while, declaring victory can be detrimental, as it takes time for organizational change to grow its roots into an organization’s culture (Kotter, 1995, 102). The emphasis on culture cannot be emphasized more. It may be likened to the culture in any geographic region. This is because the culture in any region always develops through a great deal of time when traditions are passed down from one generation to another Indeed, it may be asserted here that it could take a working generation to secure an organizational change in culture (Kotter, 1995, 102). Human Resource Processes: It is important for human resource to focus on how it will achieve what it needs to. Given that it already knows its goals, it needs to go along with a smooth process that can help them achieve what it needs to. The processes that human resource needs to go through have to be slow and steady as opposed to speedy and erratic. However, a speedy process is always welcomed, provided that it remains steady (Kotter, 1995, 102). Human resource needs to develop short-term goals first for its employees involved in the organizational change process. These should be realistic enough and achievable. It also refers to planning well. There needs to be a long term as well as a short-term plan that can be initiated smoothly and carried out till completion. For such a process to go through smoothly, the brain of one person alone will not do. This is why, in most cases, there will be a team onto such a task, if not the whole human resource department. Indeed, the number of human resource personnel working on such a task would be defined by the magnitude of the change, as well as the number of other departments involved. This is because all personnel working in an organization would fall under the human resource department (Kotter, 1995, 102). In the process of setting new goals, short-term targets, etc. there may be previous targets set that could interfere with the new tasks. Human resource needs to assess how significant this type of situation is. If these are viewed as obstacles, then they need to be removed (Kotter, 1995, 101). However, careful consideration is always advised in such a process. This is because some obstacles, if removed from the human resource new task achievement path, may result in a breakdown of other important processes. In order to make decisions like these can be crucial, and human resource may require input from departments that operate under them. This input would help them to ascertain whether or not they can actually do away with perceived obstacles. This might entail a whole team consisting of human resource personnel as well as other key individuals from other departments. Together, with crucial information shared, a massive plan for organizational change conducted through step-by-step and short-term, achievable goals can succeed. A major part of the process basically entails embracing input or knowledge, and a company must develop a “culture that values the building and transfer of knowledge and, most important, act on that knowledge” (Pfeffer and Sutton, 1990, 104 qtd. In . Albert, 2006, 19). Human Resource Challenges: While human resource may develop a plan with specific goals and organize an entire process to work through to achieve these goals, there are challenges to be faced. First of all, there are challenges from the very beginning of an organizational change, which primarily include bringing about an organizational change. However, this is different to challenges that entail making sure that everything else runs smoothly while the organization goes through change. Here again, it needs to be emphasized, as it has been earlier that obstacles perceived need to be dealt with accordingly, and with considering important staff members. If this is not done, removing perceived obstacles could be quite damaging for other important operations in the organization (Karp, 2004, 350). When faced with a challenge of developing employees to take on new roles, human resource needs to make sure they develop a “change initiative” to bring about a change in organizational culture (Karp, 2004, 350). Such an introduction should not be observed or depicted as something out of the ordinary for employees. If employees perceive that changes introduced are things that are out of the ordinary, they will not accept their roles easily. This is why it is emphasized that for employee performance to improve with new tasks, steady and controlled cultural transformation needs to be carried out within the organization (Karp, 2004, 350). Conclusion: Regardless of the organizational change that human resource wishes to implement, there are particular things that human resource should and should not do. Through experience, organizations have learned what works and what does not work. To begin with, human resource must “use a process of planned change” to develop a “knowledge-based learning organization.” In addition to this, all that is done must be carried out through setting short-term goals that are practical (Albert, 2006, 21). Whatever human resource needs to do to bring about organizational change must be carried out with patience and changes must be brought about in the culture of the organization. Forming a coalition for bringing about such a change is most important, as it helps to develop a knowledge base that human resource can use for understanding crucial areas. This is most important because through a coalition and planned action other important organizational functions will not be disrupted. Obstacles that are significant should be removed provided that removing them does not impact important functions in an organization. Finally, with time, employees grow accustomed to organizational change that is introduced smoothly and integrated as part of organizational culture (Kotter, 1995, 103). Employees will also feel comfortable with the changes introduced especially when they know that these changes are one-way trips to organizational progress. Organizational leaders, thus, have an immense role to play in bringing about necessary changes. Also, human resource, as described, has a greater role to play in organizational change, and is certainly impacted in such a process. The roles, processes and challenges undertaken by human resource certainly indicate that this department is impacted by organizational change, as it has a central presence in any organization. References: Albert, M. (2006). Managing Cgange at HP Lab: Perspectives for Innovation, Knowledge Management and Becoming a Learning Organization. Te Business Review, Cambridge; Summer 2006; 5, 2; ABI/INFORM Global. Pp 19 & 21. Karp, T. (2004). Learning the Steps of the Dance of Change: Improving Change Capabilities by Integrating Futures Studies and Positive Organizational Scholarship. Foresight: the Journal if Futures Studies, Strategic Training and Policy; 2004; 6, 6; Academic Research Library. pp 39 Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. BEST OF HBR. 97, 101, 102 & 103. Stanley, T. L. (2002). The challenge of managing a high-performance team SuperVision. Burlington: Jul 2002. Vol. 63, Iss. 7; pp. 1. Read More