Critical Analysis of the Role of a Leader in Workplace Change Processes - Essay Example

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF A LEADER IN A WORKPLACE CHANGE PROCESSES Name Institution Date CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF A LEADER IN A WORKPLACE CHANGE PROCESSES Introduction Effective change process is explicitly and precisely dependent on the ability of the leader to manage change components. With the heightening technology and the engulfing business processes, change becomes inevitable for each and every organisation more so the healthcare organisations. With the increasing modernity, patients amongst other healthcare clients are out for quality healthcare services that does not only provide answers to their healthcare issues but do it efficiently at a relatively affordable cost, within the shortest time possible and using the right measures. Additionally, the modern organisational stakeholders are looking forward to a more cooperative, inclusive and human-resource oriented organisations which foster joint business processes, collective learning and development and effective motivation. In the current business setup, businesses and other forms organisations require keeping abreast with these modern aspects to remain relevant and achieve set goals. Effective strategic change planning becomes of vital necessity so as to devise change and implement it in the correct manner and to achieve acceptance of the change by the stakeholder fraternity. Leaders therefore have a critical role to play in guaranteeing an effective change processes. Effective change implementation and management processes are exclusively dependent on the ability of the leader to manage the change components and change processes. The analysis presented in the examination herein attempts to establish the role of leaders in change management. To achieve the intended mission, the examination shall take intent analysis on the role of the leader in change processes, analyse the implications of business culture in workplace change processes, analyses effect of mission vision and goals on a change process, discuss an organisational change theory, and establishes barriers or facilitators to organisational change process. Role of Leaders in Change Management In managing change, it is the role of the leader to create a climate for change which essentially includes creating a sense of urgency on the need of the change by making the team believes that the change is needed at the moment and not in future, building a guiding team and setting the right vision to assist in the achievement of the change process (Cummings & Worley, 2014). To achieve this, the leader is expected to identify and notify the team on the threats of the current business processes and their implications or consequences in the near future. The leader is then expected to evaluate opportunities that if exploited shall condense the impact of the consequences of the threats after which the leader shall be expected to indulge into dynamic and convincing discussions that shall assist the team members perceive the need to adopt change (Sarros et al., 2008). Adopting change should not be an issue of the management alone but also the stakeholders’ fraternity. The leader is therefore empowered to form an influential change coalition whose job willl be to induce people on the need of the change. The concern might be what kind of people should join the team?. According to Braithwaite et al (2006), change leaders should be transformative leaders who are emotionally committed to the change processes. He identifies that an effective change team is compose of people of interdisciplinary divisions or from various organisational departments. The leader is then expected to create a vision that directly mirrors the implication of the change in the organisation as well as the future of the organisation having adopted the change. To exemplify further on this role, consider the traditional and modern healthcare structures especially in Australia. Most hospital leaders have determined the need to adopt clinical institutes (CI) and shun away from the traditional professional (TP) where healthcare practices and processes were aligned to solitarily the healthcare professionals. Healthcare organisations are moving to clinical institutes (CI) where the healthcare organisations provides patient-centred care, work in interdisciplinary teams as a way of increasing efficiency, put to use evidence based approaches and utilize informatics enhance communication and knowledge and mitigate cases of error in the hospital processes(Duffield et al., 2007). To achieve this strategy, the leader must be in a position to assist his followers see the need to transform from traditional processes and adopt clinical institutes through transformational change teams and an efficient guiding vision. Kotter in his 8-step change model however maintains that convincing everyone in an organisation to adopt change is met with complexity since there are some people who are just bit risk averse. Therefore, he suggests that once the leader gets at least 75% of the company’s management team “buying into” the change then he should move on with it (Hawkes et al., 2016). He warns on the dangers of moving on with a change process without a minimum of 75% backup from the management team and explains that this may subject the change process to denial by the stakeholders and in the long run might result into ineptitude instead of augmented efficiency. It is therefore overtly necessary for the leader to create urgency for change before taking any further step to implement the change (Aarons et al., 2015). The leader is sanctioned to implement and sustain the change process by ensuring persistence in the change process through consolidating improvements and anchoring the implement change aspect. According to Aarons et al. (2015), most of the implemented change aspects fail because the management declares success of the implementation process too early. According to him, change is a continuous long-term process which requires slow but efficient adoption and must be incorporated to organisational culture. Duffield et al. (2007) adds that the quick wins should never be taken as a success of the change process but is just an implication of a long-term change that must be persistently cultivated hence there is need to set new goals on how to continue accelerating the developed change momentum. What therefore constitutes a continuous improvement? Burnes (2017), denotes that continuous change is explicitly necessary in healthcare organisations so as to augment productivity, effectiveness, safety, and waste reduction. He explains further that a change implementation process can only be deemed successful if hospital inventory are used more efficiently in a manner that boosts employee’s skills. He adds that a change process shall be thought of as successful lest the people within the organisations including the management, therapists, nurses, and social workers amongst others are satisfied with the change aspects and its implications on their daily duties (Burke, 2017). Therefore, the management must show persistence in guaranteeing effective transition process characterized by relatively low costs and increased work quality. Most healthcare organisations in Australia are susceptible to the change process. The clinical institute (CI) has called for healthcare organisations to shift their structures to a more robust structure that consists of effective management of a network of inpatients, outpatients, support services and the community. To ensure effective management of these components, healthcare organisations are expected to group the components into related specialties referred to as clinical divisions. Most healthcare organisations especially in South Wales are now focusing on clinical streaming which aims at providing services across the care continuum with senior clinicians being held responsible for service delivery. The clinical streaming is intended to ensure the complete involvement of all health practitioners in the healthcare service delivery process using the available qualitative resources in the organisation to meet client needs (Cummings & Worley, 2014). Despite these good intentions of the change towards clinical streaming, the clinicians and health practitioners have never been united and never work cooperatively as focus has been on the clinicians’ interests creating a more competitive environment for the available resources and rewards thereby restricting integration. From this exemplar it is clear that despite the good implications of a change aspect, leaders must recognize the consequences and devise a way on how to control and manage the negative impacts. A leader must ensure that the change augments the unity amongst employees and deter solitary. It is necessary therefore for the leader to not only implement the change but also sustain it through effective techniques. Workplace Culture and its Relevance in the Workplace Change In a scenario where the culture is an indirect proportion of the change aspect, it is the role of the leader to develop strategies for cultural change. In some settings, accepting the change aspect might be one of the intricate undertakings for the stakeholders’ fraternity as they wish to remain unbendable to the status quo. Cummings & Worley (2014), states that people are always willing to retain their status quo and an attempt to change the status quo is against their personal will hence it is the function of the leader to reinforce change willingly or unwillingly, conditionally or unconditionally. There exists numerous dimensions and theories through which organisational culture might be transformed to be accommodative to change. To begin with is the structural dimension which emphasizes on carrying out effective cultural diagnosis or audit before deploying effective change management (Sarros et al., 2008). The audit should scrutinize the values of the organisation, communication strategies applied, organisational infrastructure, and staff development strategies amongst other cultural components before implementing the change using various qualitative and quantitative measures to decipher the process. The results of the audit will reveal the readiness of the organisation to adopt change. The second dimension is the process dimension which is built on emergent model and accentuates on applying spontaneous change to change culture where it suggests that if the current cultural wave appears to be aimed towards the right direction, then it is possible to drive the wave by its own momentum to deliver the organisation to a desired destination (Burke, 2017). In case the cultural wave is aimed to undesired direction, three strategies can be applied, that is deflecting the wave which implies reframing strategies using the same momentum, creating new waves implying development of new strategies and going for opportunistic strategies. Thirdly, organisational culture might be transformed through a contextual dimension which implies that as the external environment changes, the organisation must also adjust proportionately so as to accommodate the change and to avoid obsolescence (Burnes, 2017). This technique uses the adaptive approach to make sure the healthcare organisations keep abreast to the ever transforming healthcare sector. For instance, when the National Hospital Security (NHS) called for hospitals to increase the quality of their services and reduce healthcare costs, most healthcare organisations had to reform in various ways. Some hospitals deemed it necessary to develop strong supportive nursing environments as a way of ensuring quality healthcare to the inpatients as well as the outpatients through increasing nurse-patient contact time which according to research is necessary in ensuring that patients’ needs are met satisfactorily and in reducing mortality rate (Braithwaite et al., 2006). To maintain sustainable healthcare practices healthcare organisations must foster a culture of overwhelming interpersonal relationships, develop skills and expertise in the existing staff, and enhance capacity of bureaucratic rationality. To achieve these therefore, the leader must be in a position to plan effectively the strategies of cultural change. The inclusiveness of the organizational culture will also determine degree to which people would be willing to take risk as a result of uncertainty of the change aspect outcomes. Further it will enhance members’ assertiveness and orientation to achieve through collectivism. The need to enhance inclusiveness is also necessitated by the need of egalitarianism in the healthcare organizations where people have equal access to opportunities. Therefore, cultural competence and resources are indeed peculiar facets in determining whether the healthcare organizations’ stakeholders are willing to retain status quo or engender change and the leader has a role in shaping perceptions. Importance of mission, vision and core values The healthcare organization leader has the role of engaging actively the organization’s stakeholders and enabling the stakeholders enhance communication for a buy-in, empower change actions, and create short term wins through aligning them to the mission, vision, and goals of the organisation and of the change aspect. One essential factor that fosters effective workplace change is the organization strategy that comprises of the organization vision, mission and goals. Organization vision statement are important in defining future objectives of the organization and it also resonates with the employees giving them pride for being associated with the organization (Beaver, 2013). Further the mission is instrumental in organisational change having that it forms the purpose behind the creation of the organization and if any change is to occur it should realign with it. The core values on the other hand form a link between the organization vision and mission. The core values in this case are the beliefs and principles which underpin the healthcare organisation workforce. The importance of organization strategy that ranges from the mission, vision and core values in the health service is that it fosters and guarantees continuous improvement in safety and quality care. The organization’s mission, vision and core values is vital in improving various areas within the health service that might be faced with problems and barriers (Rapport et al., 2012). For instance, in case a healthcare organization is experiencing problems recruiting and retaining employees, it strategies through the alteration of organization vision, mission and core values to make this healthcare organisation the ‘employee of choice’. Additionally, this strategy can help implement change to improve on this problem by creating online job application portals that are relatively simplified, provision of training, education and mentoring programs for the health service workforce and providing incentives to these employees to enable them to stink into this healthcare service jobs. Thus, every change must align to an organization’s vision, mission and goal statement in order to be effective. An Organisational Change Theory Organisations pass through various stages or steps in their endeavour to implement change. According to Kurt Lewin’s modern Stage Theory, adoption of a change aspect such an innovation is based on several stages with each stage requiring specific strategies that are deemed fit to implement the stage contingent to the position of the organisation (Burnes, 2017). In the first stage, the leader must create awareness of an existing problem and seek a resolution on how to solve the problem. The organisational stakeholders must then be consulted as to whether the decision to adopt change should be taken up or rejected. If accepted, the organisation through a change management team must redefine the problem, reassess the resolution, and modify organisational structures so as to accommodate the change aspect. The last step is making the innovation part and parcel of the organisation’s daily activities (Burnes, 2017). Many healthcare organisations are currently using the Lewin’s stage theory to determine the drivers to change also known as the unfreezing stage, planning towards implementing the change also known as moving stage, and ensuring stability and evaluation also known as freezing or refreezing. The Lewin’s stage theory is therefore of great necessity in determining change aspects and ensuring effective and long lasting change results. Barriers or Facilitators to Change Success During the change implementation process, there underlie numerous bottlenecks that might deter the prosperity of the implementation of the change aspect and changes in healthcare organisations are not immune to such barriers. Cameron & Green (2015), articulates that it is the role of the leader to ensure that the healthcare organisation is culturally competent and fosters need for change. Thus, the common barrier to organization change in reference to the healthcare services is ineffective leadership. In this case, lack of effective leadership is likely to result to the health service employees not adopting the implemented changes. Effective leadership helps facilitate change in organisation by ensuring that the transition within the organization workforce in embracing the implemented changes and thus, a transformative leader who inspires others must be in the forefront to instigate the changes (Rapport et al., 2012. effective leadership in change management ensures that the roles of the employees are demonstrated and also informs these employees on the importance of these changes prior to their implementation. Undue complexity I organisations hinders the changes processes more so in public healthcare facilities that are bureaucratic in nature. Hence, healthcare experts stress that for change to be implemented in the health service these changes should be aligned with the organization mission, vision and core values in an effort to make these changes more understandable and relatable to the organization employees (Beaver, 2013). Therefore, ease of the organization change is a facilitator of these changes within the health service organization since the desired change becomes simpler and easy to understand for the organization employees hence, ensuring that they embrace these changes effectively and quickly. Cost is another factor that hinders change, in order for an organization to embrace and abide by the changes made vocational training is needed, this training in most cases is costly and organisations find it hard to implement change having that the overall workforce is not equipped to handle and implement the desired changes. Conclusion It is evident that change is indeed inevitable and every organisation more so healthcare organisations must be geared up to adjust their processes through effective change models. From the discussion, it is clear that healthcare leaders play a critical and central role in ensuring effective change implementation process. The leader is empowered to create a climate for change through creating a sense of urgency, developing change teams to assist foster the change processes and set vision to assist in the implementation process. Secondly, the leader has the role of actively engaging the stakeholders and enabling communication towards consenting to the need of change. Finally, the leader is capacitated to ensure persistency in implementing and sustaining change processes. In addition to these direct roles, the leader is expected to identify vital cultural aspects that might affect change process and making adjustments where necessary. The leader must ascertain the competency of the culture to adopt change and in a scenario of incompatibility it is the leader’s duty to develop strategies for cultural change. Healthcare organisations have been featured to be highly susceptible to change hence such organisations require leaders who are transformative in nature who can assist in development or enhancement of organisational structure or culture as a way of ensuring modernity and contemporariness of the organisation. It is certain therefore that effective change implementation and management processes are exclusively dependent on the ability of the leader to manage the change components and change processes. References Aarons, G. A., Ehrhart, M. G., Farahnak, L. R., & Hurlburt, M. S. (2015). Leadership and organisational change for implementation (LOCI): a randomized mixed method pilot study of a leadership and organisation development intervention for evidence-based practice implementation. 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