Discussion based on the themes of leadership and motivation
The term organizational change refers to the successful idea or action which is implemented in an organization in order to bring a change in the business process (Cummings and Worley 2014). Thus it is often observed that most of the companies adopt change strategies to resolve the issues faced by the employees. Therefore it can be said that the issues faced by the employees influence on the success of the implemented change. Shedding light on that the report will elaborate how organizational change is implemented keeping the issues faced by the employees. The paper highlights the issue of organizational communication in United Builders, Australia. The discussion proceeds with the company’s measure of implementing Bridges transition model in through which the company divides the employees in teams consisting both old employees and new employees in order to address the change. The report concludes with further recommendation to improve the process of change. Throughout the discussion, the study throws light on the two key themes Leadership and Motivation as to show how the two aspects played a major role in successfully implementing the change.
Located in the city of Melbourne, United Builder is one of the largest construction companies in Australia. The company offers its service across the country over residential complexes and personal homes (Unitedbuildersaus.com.au 2018). The company exclusively values the requirement of the customers and designs their projects accordingly. This also resulted in an increasement in the annual sales of the company by 0.8% (Unitedbuildersaus.com.au 2018).
The major issue that the employees face in the organization is that there was poor communication between the employees. It has been observed that senior employees barely provided adequate support to the newcomers. Being new in the company, the new employees face immense difficulties. On the other hand, the existing employees instead of effectively cooperate with each other; would compete against each other (Coleman 2018). Such less cooperation between the employees resulted in serious challenges in dealing of the complex tasks. It has been observed that new employees often complained that they face extreme difficulties to work independently. Due to this issue, low motivation has been observed among employees for which the productivity of employees was adversely affected and often new employees would leave within 4/6 months. Since retention became a serious issue beside of the issue of decline in production further pushed the leadership to take measures in order to address the issue.
In order to resolve the issue, the leadership of United Builders adopted the approach of transition management to eliminate the issue successfully. As part of the transition management process, the leaders of the company implemented the change by planning it in a systematic manner (Loorbach and Wijsman 2013). Beside of systematic implementation of the change process, the leaders also assured that the change is organized in a way that it reaches desirable outcome. As a most important part of the transition management, a continuous monitoring on the implementation of the change received a serious attention by the leaders. However, they assured that the implementation of change do not affect the continuous process of business (Hayes 2018). The major aspect kept in mind while implementing the change was effective communication and motivating the employees to adapt with the change. However, motivation and leadership were two core aspects of the implementation of the change.
Overview of the company
William Bridge, the change consultant, in his book ‘Managing organizational transitions’, introduced the model of transition (Bridges 1986). The major advantage or key factor of the model is that it does not focus on change, rather it focuses on transition. Change refers to some idea that is implemented to people, whereas transition refers to the idea or action through which the people’s pint of view is changed. While change happens in a quick manner, transition takes time to be implemented (Gobble 2013). However, Bridge suggests that motivation and effective leadership are the two core aspects that should be on focus for ‘transition’. There are three stages of transition through which people go through when they face experience.
- Ending, loosing and letting go
- The neutral zone
- New beginning
According to Bridge, individuals go through each of the above mentioned stages at their own pace (Gobble 2013). For instance, who do not have issue with the change will easily go through the process, on the other who are not comfortable with the change will move ahead at a slow pace.
The model was followed by United Builder while implementing the change keeping motivating the employees by the leaders or mangers in mind. Thus the discussion below will elaborate how using the model the process of change occurred.
In this stage, the leadership of United Builders played an important role to introduce the change and implement it. Since there were major issue of poor cooperation between employees, especially between senior employees and the newcomers, the leaders decided to divide the employees in groups with equal numbers of senior and new employees while referring Google Inc’s team building strategy (Duhigg 2018). Adopting Google’s strategy of motivation, the senior employees were motivated to come out from the comfort zone and to adapt with the change. Initially, it was seen that some employees experienced frustration, some of them were angry, some were sad, some were feared and so on (Hayes 2018). Thus Bridge marked this stage as emotional upheaval where each of the employees acknowledged their emotions.
The leadership and special training team provided continuous motivation to the employees regarding the change. By understanding the employee’s emotion the management or the training team motivated the employees to accept the process of change and let go (Cummings and Worley 2014). Continuous interaction session was there for the employees to share their feedback about their feelings. The leaders were empathetic while listening to the employees and kept the communication open. Special emphasis was given on guidance for the employees to overcome their emotions and able to apply their skills, experience and knowledge after the change was implemented (Jones and Ricardo 2013). The leadership explained to the employees what infrastructure, resources and training will be provided to them to work effectively in the new environment. Anticipating the perception of the employees that they might not be valued or misunderstood, the managers educated and motivated them regarding the positive outcome of the new change and how their individual growth can be more enhanced (Lawrence, Ruppel and Tworoger 2014). In order to motivate them, the employees were communicated that their knowledge and skills are the key factor to successfully adapt with the change process.
Issue faced by employees of the organization
In this stage, employees were seen confused, impatient and uncertain after they were affected by the change process (Bridges 1986). After the employees were divided into groups, the leaders motivated them instead of giving instruction to work in collaborative manner. Each of the senior employees was given the responsibility to guide the new ones. While managing the transition with reference of Google’s strategy the senior employees were instructed to send a feedback as to how the new employees were improving (Duhigg 2018). On the other hand, the new employees had to share their feedback regarding how they were being assisted by the seniors (Benn, Edwards and Williams 2014). It was observed that the senior employees complained about the workload since they had to do their own job besides guiding the new employees and sharing feedback of them. In this stage employees were seen to be attached with the old system and still were making attempt to adapt the new system (Cameron and Green 2015). According to Bridges, (1986) the below mentioned finding were experienced by the employees:
- Discontentment towards the implemented change.
- Low productivity due to de-motivation.
- A feeling of anxiety regarding the new job role.
- Skepticism towards the change process.
In spite of the above mentioned issues, the managers were able to motivate all the employees and as a result, a considerable cooperative approach from them was seen.
Since a negative approach among the employees also observed in this stage, motivation was essentially emphasized during this neutral period. The stage was neutral because in this stage, productivity of the employees declined but they moved a little ahead towards the next level of the change process (Jones and Recardo 2013). Thus a continuous motivation by the managers helped the employees successfully to fulfill the needs of their new job role. In order to motivate the employees, the leaders shared positive feedbacks to the employees as to how they were positively improving, how they succeeded to cooperate with each other and so on (Cummings and Worley2014). Meanwhile, the training and management team motivated the employees to change their negative perception towards the change process.
The last stage according to Bridge was the new beginning. In this stage, the result of effective leadership was seen as the employees were motivated to accept the change process with a higher level of energy (Doppelt 2017). The senior employees observed a smooth process at work than before as they were assisted by the new ones. On the other new ones experienced an ease of understanding work. They employees were seen developing new skills and knowledge to successfully adapt with the change (Hayes, 2018). As per observation the employees experienced:
- Higher level of energy.
- Positive approach towards learning.
- Commitment towards the duties and responsibilities of the changed job role.
Leadership played a crucial role in this stage to motivate the employees in order to sustain their willingness to adapt with the change. Thus several techniques were used (Loorbach and Wijsman 2013). The managers used the approach of ‘management by objective’ to link with the change process with employees’ personal goals. Renowned success stories were shared with the employees where employees learnt how change can bring remarkable success in an organization (Rice 2013). Meanwhile, ‘rewards and recognition’ were given to the employees who not only successfully adopted the change but sustained in that while setting an example. It was ensured that employees who could not completely get adapted with the change process do not feel demotivated. The managers kept on motivating them while appreciating their positive effort (Cameron and Green 2015).
It has been observed from the previous discussion that United Builders had effectively addressed the issue of poor communication within the organization; still some recommendations can be given in for the purpose of betterment of the change management:
- In order to assure successful implementation of above mentioned change model, the timeline should be more prolonged so that all the employees not a specific portion of the employees will be able to move ahead in the change process.
- A continuous follow up will be extremely beneficial in this regard in order to understand that whether the any improvement or further action is required to make the change process successful.
Conclusion
Thus to conclude it is apt to assert that motivation and leadership were the two major key factor for which the change process successfully implemented in United Builders. Thus the paper throwing light on the two major aspects elaborated how organizational change was executed keeping the issues by the employees in consideration. The paper began by giving a review of the organization and the issue faced by the workforce that urged the organization to actualize a change in its business procedure. A few aspects like progress administration and different points were highlighted in regard to the change procedure so that it could be specified in the entire course of the discussion. From the above analysis, it can be said that the issues faced by the employees influence on the success of the implemented change.
References
Benn, S., Edwards, M. and Williams, T., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.
Bridges, W., 1986. Managing organizational transitions. Organizational dynamics.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Coleman, A. (2018). How United Builder overcome the issue of organizational communication?. [online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/how-united-overcome-the-issue-of-organizational-communication- [Accessed 16 Aug. 2018].
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.
Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Duhigg, C. 2018. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html [Accessed 16 Aug. 2018].
Gobble, M.M., 2013. Creating change. Research-technology management, 56(5), pp.62-66.
Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. Cengage learning.
Jones, D.J. and Recardo, R.J., 2013. Leading and implementing business change management: Making change stick in the contemporary organization. Routledge.
Lawrence, E., Ruppel, C.P. and Tworoger, L.C., 2014. The emotions and cognitions during organizational change: The importance of the emotional work for leaders. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, 18(1), p.257.
Loorbach, D. and Wijsman, K., 2013. Business transition management: exploring a new role for business in sustainability transitions. Journal of Business Management 45, pp.20-28.
Rice, A.K., 2013. Productivity and social organization: The Ahmedabad experiment: Technical innovation, work organization and management. Routledge.
Unitedbuildersaus.com.au. (2018). About Us. [online] Available at: https://www.unitedbuildersaus.com.au/aboutus.html [Accessed 12 Aug. 2018].
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