The importance of Change Management
Discuss about the Change Management for Cayman Islands Civil Service.
The Cayman Islands civil service is comprised of 5 independent offices, 7 ministries and portfolio which offer a diverse and wide range of programs and services to facilitate the government’s plan for sustainable social and economic development. In January 2018, following a wide extensive external and internal consultation, the Cayman Island government embraced a five years plan so as to become a world-class civil service. The strategic plan is steered towards civil services capabilities to offer government priorities and to make a variance in the lives of those Institute serves. In the process of the execution of the plan, the whole organisation has to undergo the change process so as to back the action. Therefore, preparing for change, execution and the measuring and monitoring of the process is of the essence. This paper will focus on the Cayman Island preparation for the change, the risk it has faced so far, it impacts and the probable mitigation. Finally, the paper will analyse process of measuring and monitoring of the changing yield.
Organizational change is important for the firm that wants to evolve and remain competitive; however, organisation change can be incredibly disruptive without the approach to direct the transformative initiatives (Benn, Edwards and Williams 2014, pp. 101). The most effective change management approaches are those that concentrate on the human behaviour elements. This is because workers are frequently the one mostly affected by an organizational change because their choice to become adopters, hold-outs or disrupt of change has a huge impact on the short and long term triumph of the business improvement projects.
Propose incentive; assuming the workers will follow their own self-interest, the initial change management approaches is to provide incentives that will motivate individuals to accept and ultimately engage in the novel direction of the firm. Employee recognition programs and remuneration reinforce the actions and behaviours the top management is looking for in the time of upheaval (Bratton and Gold 2017, pp. 69). The positive model of change management illustrates that the leadership appreciates their workers during a hard time of transition.
Redefine cultural values: another method to make workers buy into the notion of the management of change is to redefine the cultural change values (Miner 2015, pp. 49). This change management is grounded on the underlying postulation that individuals, as social human beings want to apt in and go along with the cultural values and norms (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014, pp. 57). Establishing cultural of continuous advancement is one method to change the minds and the hearts of workers. In this way, the employee of the civil service may be more receptive to the new techniques of workings if they have accepted the notion of the continuous improvements.
Proposed Incentives for Change Management
Relying on how the serious the need for change is, a firm may elect to exercise its authority to reduce workers opposition and get an employee to conform to new guideline procedures and cultural philosophies as fast possible. Since the immense change is not necessary for the civil services, therefore coercive strategy cannot be implemented (Kazmi and Naarananoja 2017, pp. 5).
Shift the burden of the change: even though people are frequently quick to oppose the change they view as disruptive or undesirable, they are commonly even quicker to embrace to a novel setting. Firms can take advantage of this adaptability by building a novel structure; fulfil the new procedures, workforces and ethics and gradually transfer personnel from the ancient one.
The above strategy is effective for the Cayman Island civil service because the organisation need a radical, transformative organisation change so as to achieve the excellence level. Rather than coercing the workers or shifting the burden to the upper management, the burden can be moved to the employee who might find themselves in the confines of a new organisation (Qadri, Hussain and Bin Ahmad Dahlan 2015, pp. 278).
Recruit the champions of change: transformative change is brought or met by the high degree of opposition (Pillai, Murthy, Sagar, Ramanujam and Mukhopadhyaya 2017, pp. 23). But, the odds of victory can be advanced if the voices of the champion change belong to an employee and not distinctively to the senior management. Hiring the frontline employee to share the change needs with their counterparts can fasten work buy-in and low degree of resistance which can serve as means of mechanism of collecting responses and disseminating information concerning the planned transformation initiatives.
Communication: communications is vital techniques in realigning culture and creating commitment and enthusiasm for change (Hayes 2014, pp. 23). Carefully designed and deliberately communicated message will be essential to the victory of the change programs. The best change programs reinforce fundamental messages through regular, timely advice that is both actionable and inspirational. Communication should be a target so as to check in on their emotional reactions to what they have heard.
The POCS recognises changing external and internal aspects that affect performance across the portfolio of the civil service. The company takes to ensure that management practices and policies address and adapt in tandem with the changes. During the financial year of 2015/2016, the portfolio pinpointed numerous operational and strategic risks to other provision of the yields. Analysis of the key risks included the following.
Redefine Cultural Values
The first is operational; it included the loss of the key personnel, inadequate staffing, loss of the personal information and other sensitive data, lack of skills to actively deliver programs and service, and security of confidential high-risk electronic documents on serves. The potential impact of the risk is operation delay in workflow and inability to deliver services, loss of staff morale, and enjoyment due to burnout and extension. Then, the risk of the programmer’s delivery, slower work production rate and unintended exposure of sensitive and personal data.
The following are the possible action to mitigate risks such as provision of training through numerous means including the supervisor and on the job training, on-going cross-training of personnel apart and staff advancement through the secondment and acting appointment. Then, hiring temporary services to preserve servers and finally, restricted access to personal information and data, and working closely with the committee managing the cyber security (Samuels and Sommers 2017, pp. 14)
The second risk is the strategy which includes the lack of public awareness of the obligation of numerous commissions, lack of senior management to back the project future requirement and finally, audit units lacking impact on the broader CIG objectives. The potential impact of the above risk is the low execution rate of the audit recommendation and reduced collaborative chances with the community and minimised the effectiveness of commission to fulfil their mandates. Also, the operational delays in project provision and interruptions in accomplishing intended benefits.
The probable mitigations are conducted through the follow-up audits and report to the deputy governor. Also, increased alignment of audit work programs with the strategic focus and developing websites and other PR techniques alleviate the risk. Finally, improved engagement with the chief officers and DG; that is developed guidance materials and templates for conducting training.
Monitoring can be defined as the ongoing process by which the stakeholder obtains regular responses on the progress made towards achieving their goals and objectives. While evaluation is the independent and rigorous evaluation of completed or ongoing operations to determine the degree to which they realise stated goals and contributes to the decision making. Monitoring and evaluating allow those involved in advancement operations to learn from the experience so as to accomplish better results and to be more responsible. M&E entails nine diverse M&E tools and approaches, comprising data collection techniques, analytical frameworks and types of the evaluation and review (Vohs and Baumeister 2016, pp. 503). The choice of which the Cayman Island civil service uses in a given context will rely on the contemplation such as the purpose for which M&E is intended, the major stakeholders, how faster the data is required and the rate. Performance indicator measures process, outcomes, inputs and outputs and impacts of the development inventions. They are utilised for setting targets and measuring progress towards them. Surveys are used to collect standardised data from a sample of individuals. They are used for comprehending actual setting and changes over time. The participatory method allows the stakeholders to be actively involved in decision-making that creates a sense of ownership of M&E results and recommendation, and build local capacity.
Shift the Burden of Change
Rapid appraisal methods are a cheaper and quicker way of offering decision-makers with feedbacks and from the stakeholders and beneficiaries. Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness tools assess the cost of the operations if it is justified by its impact or not. Cost-benefits measure the inputs and output in monetary terms where cost-effectiveness takes outputs in non-monetary terms.
Technically, in order to be able to monitor the performance of the organisation, the member team ought to know the objective and KPI for those goals (Alexander 2013, pp.79). At the final, the organisation needs to foresee the needed resources as well as the individuals that will be assigned to monitor the performance. KPI is a measurable, traceable and visible sign that something has been achieved or not. Some of the KPIs are revenue, market share, number of the new products, employee fluctuation and workers satisfaction index. Therefore, the whole process of the monitoring and measurement is comprised of the following elements; setting the KPI of the Cayman Islands, setting up monitoring and measurement system, collecting and recording data, data analysis and use of the information for reporting, improvement and adjustment (Dalkir 2013, pp. 47).
References
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