Question

Navigating Organizational Change

The health care industry, like other industries, is a very competitive environment. As organizational behavior within health care companies evolves, it will be even more important to consider the future use of learning about/applying concepts of organizational behavior and the need for continuing education.

After a productive year with the medical waste management company, Justin has now been tasked with implementing a company-wide policy change to require continuing education. Each employee will now be required to complete 2 hours of continuing education each year.

Justin’s supervisor has asked for an analysis and plan for the implementation of this company-wide change. This analysis will be presented to company leadership as a tool for understanding and implementing this change.

Answer the following prompts as your analysis of the change process identified above.

1. Explain the importance of continuing education regarding organizational change (100 to 175 words).
2. Explain the impact this policy change may have on the organizational behavior and organizational culture of the company (100 to 175 words).
3. Explain barriers to change and how to address the barriers (100 to 175 words).
4. Explain how this change may affect individual job performance and job satisfaction (100 to 175 words).
5. Explain a motivational strategy that might be used for implementation (100 to 175 words).
6. Explain how teams or groups could be used to implement this policy change. Include a review of two approaches managers can use to build team performance and two organizational barriers to team effectiveness (100 to 175 words).
7. Identify communication methods to be used to support this policy change implementation (45 to 90 words).

Answer 1

Answer the following prompts as your analysis of the change process identified above.

1. Explain the importance of continuing education regarding organizational change.

It is always good to have a policy in place to handle the continuous education of employees in an organization. It is always needed that all the employees in an organization has basic education in the respective field which they are supposed to work. But due to many external factors industry or trends in handling the processes are changing continuously nowadays. So the organization has to make sure that their employees are properly trained and ready to adapt with recent changes.

There is a chance that fatigue will be coming into picture if the employees are doing same kind of work without any changes. So this process of continuing education along with daily work will always enable them to explore the new horizons and getting promoted to new levels in organization.

Continuing education will always help the organization to retain employees as well as motivate them to take up new tasks rather than daily job. The training which will be given to the employees can be very useful in equipping the employees to handle new or difficult situation and as part of this during crisis situation, the company cost to hire new employees can be reduced if the employees has been provided with cross functional training as well.

In short continuous education will always help the employees towards building a passion and aim for the work. And it is always a good option in aspect of organizational change.

2. Explain the impact this policy change may have on the organizational behavior and organizational culture of the company.

This policy change will have definitely impact on the organizational behavior and organizational culture in a positive way;

• Cross functional training or education will help them to understand what is happening in other departments of the organization. They can take up the tasks of other departments during crisis situation and definitely it will create a transparent working atmosphere.
• It will enable the employees to move to next level if they are equipped with latest trends, technology and updates
• It will motivate the employees intrinsically so that they will feel that they are valuable to the organization in one or another way.
• Employees will be willing to take up new tasks or roles assigned to them, because they know how to handle that.
• This new policy will always help the employees to understand and align with organizational strategies and they will be engaged in the process.
• This can develop the employees in and out and their confidence level will increase.
• In short with a lower cost organization can try to build a team culture and positive attitude towards the profession among employees.

3. Explain barriers to change and how to address the barriers.

This new policy will definitely have barriers and hindrances. In any organization it is not an easy task to implement the changes.

Few barrier are listed below;

• Currently employees might be comfortable with what they are doing and they may not understand the importance of continuous education in a professional environment.
• They might not have time for education and learning as most of them will be busy with the current work allotted to them.
• Many of the employees will face a huge learning curve and they may not be ready to face that mentally at this age.
• At some point they may even think that this new policy will be a waste of time also.

So in order to address the barriers organization should have a well-defined change management process in place. This will handle the resistance which is against the change within employees. Few measures which organization can do are listed below;

• Make them understand the benefits which they will be reaping from this continuous education policy
• Make them understand about the changing trends and technology and they should be aware about the ‘situation of being obsolete’ in industry if they are not developing themselves or ready to adopt them.
• There should be a proper strategy in place so that this new policy will never slow down their current pace of work and it should not create an issue internally. Because organization wants the employees to perform their existing tasks also.
• Get feedback from employees who are undergoing this process and try to improve the process if needed.

4. Explain how this change may affect individual job performance and job satisfaction.

This policy will have a positive improvement in Job performance and job satisfaction among employees if implemented in a way which can handle the initial resistance using proper change management policies.

• Job performance will be definitely increase. As the technology, processes and external factors are continuously changing, the continuous education will give an idea to the employees where they stand and what they should improve in order to keep relevant in industry.
• Competitive advantage: It will provide a competitive advantage for the employees compared to the people who doesn’t undergo training or educational process.
• Job satisfaction level among employees will improve as they will be well equipped with all the current trends and updates. This policy change will create a feeling that they are valued in the organization and they can help other departments also if they were being given cross functional training too
• Learning and value addition: This policy with combination of proper change management policies will always will provide a good learning curve for the employees and explore to latest industry standards and trends.
• It is always proved that continuous training and education will improve individual job performance. In an industry like health care, new machineries will come into picture, new processes will come into picture. If timely training and education is given they will be able to handle the system and comfortable with it.

5. Explain a motivational strategy that might be used for implementation.

Many motivational strategies can be implemented in this scenario. One simple scenario is mentioned below in steps;

1- Understand the audience: Organization should categorize the audience and plan to provide relevant details about new policy.

2- Communicate the policy details: Inform them about the policy which organization is going to implement and reasons for doing this change.

3- Give a high level overview about the policy and the benefits of continuous education to each employee with respect to their job role and current market trends

4- Motivate them with success stories: Share the success stories which are already there in the industry and provide reference so that they can verify and make sure that organization is transparent in the policy implementation

5- Provide details about the training team and their success stories so that employees will be mentally ready to accept them and the new process.

6- Rather than trying to focus on extrinsic motivation, organization should be able to provide them the benefits and details so that the employees will be intrinsically motivated for this change.

7- Get feedback: Feedback mechanism should be in place to review the timely feedback from employees.

6. Explain how teams or groups could be used to implement this policy change. Include a review of two approaches managers can use to build team performance and two organizational barriers to team effectiveness

Identifying correct audience for the process and make sure that they benefit from this policy change is one main aspect which managers has to consider.

There may be various departments in an organization. So the managers has to make sure they are grouping correct set of people for similar training and there should not be any mismatch in the job role they do and the training which is going to provide to them.

Two approaches managers can use to build team performance are;

• Create team building activities such that the employees in same team will understand the benefits of team work.
• Knowledge transfer sessions: Inside a team, they should encourage the team members to support and help the people who didn’t understand the topics which they were trained.

Two organizational barriers to team effectiveness are;

• There may be scenarios in which an organization doesn’t have enough infrastructure to provide for this policy change. They have to consider this barrier before the policy change.
• Cross functional teams or cross cultural teams: There is a chance that an organization has various cross cultural team or cross functional teams attending the training or educational program. Organization has to make sure that the process is aligned to all the stakeholders and it should be accessible to all teams.
• Internal conflicts: There is a chance that there may be many internal conflicts due to time constraint or work pressure. Organization has to consider plans to tackle this situation.

7. Identify communication methods to be used to support this policy change implementation.

An organization can use various communication methods to support this policy change implementation. Few are listed below;

• A common mailer to all employees mentioning about the policy change and details and benefits from such a policy change.
• Internal discussion within teams by the manager
• Announcements in organization
• Feedback mechanisms in place.
• Review meeting etc.