The old adage, "the only thing constant in the world is change," has never been more prevalent than in today's industry. Key internal and external factors like economic recession, downsizing, restructuring are driving radical changes in the way organisations work and shape the strategic context for managing people at present and in future. The main reason of an organisation going through a paradigm shift is to achieve transition from current to a desired state. Despite individual successes, change is difficult to pull off and a lot of change initiatives fail.
To counter such a predicament, the HR personnel of any organisation ought to act upon the following areas:
1. Try to Retain Culture: Change brings in uncertainty and anxiety that results in a lot of negative energy. To sustain a great culture, organisations must know how employees feel about their jobs, management structure and the internal communication process. During the period of change, online and offline AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions can be a fantastic platform to engage with employees about this.
For example, Google's Thank God its Friday (TGIF) is one of their many initiatives to bridge the gap between employee and management. The TGIF exercise helps the management to directly get in touch with the employees through a Q&A session. While TGIF wasn't designed from an organisational change perspective, it is a fantastic engagement activity that can easily be adapted to be used as an AMA during organisational change.
2. Have Clear Communication: Poor communication is one of the most common pitfalls during an organisational change. Ensuring proper communication during organisational change isn't just the responsibility of the corporate communication department of an organisation, but also that of the HR department. This needs to be realised not only by the HR themselves, but also by the senior management that must get the senior HR team involved before the change is announced. The (internal) communication agenda and discourse during organisational change should fall under two broad areas –
Ø Communicating the reason and vision of the change - Till the organisational change process gets completed; HR must get the top management to regularly address questions and concerns of employees to reinforce the vision and benefits of change. Many senior management and HR people wrongly presume that addressing questions and concerns a couple of times during the change process are good enough. In reality, that is rarely the case.
Ø Clearly defining roles of employees - One of the biggest casualties of an organisational change process is the lack of role clarity for employees that arise during the change process. This eventually becomes a significant hindrance to the success of the change as good people either start departing due to ambiguity in their roles and expectations, or they stop being invested in the mission of the organisation.
Proper communication is the key to avoid insecurity among employees.
3. Retain Quality Employees: During an organisational change, the company's ability to retain the best employees is of tremendous importance. The change brings in more behavioural issues over technical ones. From the perspective of say, downsizing, it is of paramount importance that HR pay attention to the psychological needs of employees and create an environment of fairness.
Most people feel bogged down by the constant stress of being laid off as organisational change normally involves some threat – real or perceived – of personal loss for those involved. This threat may vary from job security to simply the disruption of an established routine. Therefore, during the change period, HR must go out of its way to retain good talent by being perceived as fair and communicative.
Most organisations significantly underestimate the skill and experience required to handle organisational change. By planning well in advance organisations can add the right skill set in the HR function. While that still may not guarantee success in the transformation process, however, it can significantly improve the odds of success.
No comments:
Post a Comment