The Management Efficiency Unit

I have been working in the Public Registry for the last 8 years.  The location of the offices is quite distant from my residence and sixteen other colleagues that work in the aforesaid department have the same problem.  Every morning we are required to travel a one hour ferry and nearly 2 hours drive to arrive at work.

The Management Efficiency Unit noted this issue and finally top management decide to take remedial action by requesting a transfer to another department, the Treasury Section, which mitigates such location problem.

Unfortunately the scheme designed by executive management was not properly planned.  They also did not discuss this issue with operational managers who possess far greater knowledge on the day to day running of the office.  As a result the decision lacked practical issues and led to other problems, as will be further illustrated below.
Everybody accepted the transfer and we were eventually informed that our training for the new job will take approximately two or three months and will take place in the head office of the Finance Department, which is also distant.  The new job was highly technical and involved a lot of accountancy issues, which the majority of us were not capable to comprehend that easily.
The three months passed and we were still unable to work unsupervised from our tutors.  The impracticality of the decision was highlighted from the fact that our principal in charge, who was also taking training was still incapable to work on his own after three months.
When these issues started to crop up, crises management arose.  A new assistant director was assigned to this division, who once realized of the vast serious problems arising from such decision, he immediately denied this new role.
Demotivation arose in our section and staff is constantly complaining about the problems we are facing.  In addition no communication exists between us and executive management and we are alone with this new work, which we are not trained to do.
The only reasonable solution that management was able to come up with is to extend the duration of the training to eight months.  However with this decision they have not yet solve the problem that the location of the office is far from home and are incurring additional costs to train us.
If they planned carefully before deciding and discussed it with operational managers they would have definitely solved the problem more efficiently.  It is imperative that when managing change proper communication and planning exist.
Reference:
Johnson G.; Scholes K.; Whittington R. (2005). Exploring Corporate Strategy. Seventh Edition. England: Pearson Education Limited.