Change Management Approach at Gallifrey Inc.

This report evaluates the effectiveness of the change management approach taken by Gallifrey Inc. and its impact on employee satisfaction and productivity. Based on qualitative analysis, recommendations are provided to combat the issues faced by employees.

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Business Analytics
On Gallifrey Inc.

Executive Summery
This report is based on a 10 years old multi-award winning company of Australia, Gallifrey Inc.
The report illustrates how a change management approach taken by Gallifrey Inc. gone wrong,
creating dissatisfaction among major number of employees leading to some of them even
quitting the company. After couple of months of the implementation this report is processed to
determine the effectiveness of the new change in office. This report has been prepared in
accordance to the information provided by the employees and use of relevant theories in context
of the existing situation. From the findings, the condition is to be evaluated and
recommendations are to be provided on the basis of the depth of the problem.
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Contents
Executive Summery.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Overview of literature......................................................................................................................3
Methods and results.........................................................................................................................5
Recommendations and conclusions.................................................................................................7
List of references.............................................................................................................................9
Appendices....................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
An organisation is not only a place to work; it is a good source of networking and building new
contacts as well (Jacobs et al. 2018). The management of a company is always concerned about
meeting objectives. Especially for companies with lower amount of staffs, it is important to
ensure that all the employees must work together on order to deliver better and more structured
results (Naseem, 2018). The management then focuses on implementing more ways to make this
plan work and generate more interaction and collaboration among the workers (Hayes, 2018).
The CEO of Gallifrey Inc. also thought the same and implemented Open Plan Office to make
sure the interaction among the employees increase and results into more effectiveness in meeting
organisational objectives. But it seemed like it did not go down well with most of the employees.
In this report, the situation will be assessed further and treated with suitable recommendations to
solve the current issues.
Overview of literature
Gallifrey Inc. is renowned, multi-award winning, full service creative agency comprising of 19
staff members. The company is 10 years old and the studio headquarter is located in Brisbane.
They particularly serve clients from Melbourne and Sydney. The services they provide are brand
identity, digital services, graphic design, media services like brand strategy and digital identity
through to all printed and digital media requirements. The creative works produced by Gallifrey
Inc. is something which connects the clients to the key stakeholders. Gallifrey Inc. is able to
work with clients on one basic component for branding and or business requirements or to
develop an entire marketing plan and implement the strategy across all platforms. The company
is yielding good revenue and CEO is focused on increasing the productivity through effective
collaboration among different departments. Hence, Open Plan Office concept is adopted by the
CEO as a part of change management and the layout of the offices is changed entirely. Here,
separate offices are all merged into a single large one with all the departments working together.
While some employees are enjoying the new environment, the new change did not go down well
with most of the employees as they are citing issues like privacy, noise and distraction.
To evaluate the business problems further Job Demand-Control Theory (JDC) by Karasek can
be considered. This theory deals with the dissatisfaction in workplace generating from job stress
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(Yang et al. 2018). Job stress can result in occupational health deterioration. Work environment
factors like time pressures, reaction time required, interruption rate, conflicting demands,
proportion of work performed under pressure, pace of work, degree of concentration required,
amount of work, and the slow-down of work caused by the need to wait for others (Madsen et al.
2018). This model represents a function of the demand level of a person’s job and the amount of
control that individual is having over own responsibilities (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). The
important aspects of this model are mentioned hereby-
 Decision latitude refers to the control of employees over their jobs and the execution
process of the same.
 Decision authority refers to decision-making ability of the employees regarding their
own job and their ability to influence the work team and other general company policies.
 Skill discretion refers to the degree to which different tasks, low levels of repetitiveness,
occasions for creativity and opportunities to develop special abilities through learning
new things are involved to the job (Abbas and Raja, 2018).
In accordance to this theory, four kinds of jobs can be created: passive, active, low strain and
high strain (Hashim et al. 2017).
P - High strain (Low Latitude, High Strain)
A - Passive (Low Latitude, Low Strain)
E - Active (High Latitude, High Strain)
I - Low strain (High Latitude, Low Strain)
Every company has two most important attributes which are demand and control. Both should be
in right proportion according to the capabilities and skills of the employees (Cooper, 2018). The
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Job Demand-Control Theory suggests that the employees who experience low demand and high
amount of control are the ones having least job stress. Whereas, the employees who experience
high demand and low amount of control are the ones having the most job stress (Wood et al.
2018). The current changes made at the office premises of Gallifrey Inc. had a negative impact
on most of the employees as they are considering it as a factor which can make them less
productive at workplace. As no personal offices are there, employees are left with working in
cubes in a single large room. Here, the employees who are not happy with the change are the
most stressed ones as they cannot control this situation also they work in reputed posts like
project managers and barristers, thus they deal with immense work pressure. The demand being
high and control over actions being low, most of the people are not happy with the changed work
scenario. However, design team seems happy enough as their entire work revolves around
creativity and more interaction will result into more interesting events, giving them plenty of
ideas. Also, the admin staffs are happy, especially the newly recruited ones, as they will be
getting more opportunities to get to know other co-workers and also learn from old employees.
As for the unhappy employees, the work environment does not fit their requirements (as per as
person-environment fit model), resulting into work stress.
The research objective is finding the issues which are creating negativity in office environment
and to assess whether these issues are related to the newly implemented changes in the office
premises. The research involved a number of questions which are-
o How much satisfied the employees of Gallifrey Inc. are with their current job?
o If not, what are the potential causes?
o Are these reasons related to the new change implemented?
o Is the change management of Open Plan Office effective to increase productivity?
o If not, what are the potential reasons?
Methods and results
Qualitative Analysis can be described as securities analysis where subjective judgement is used
based on unquantifiable information like industry cycles, management expertise, labour
relations, strength of research and development. Qualitative Analysis deals with intangible,
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inexact concerns belonging to the experiential and social domain (Du et al. 2018). This approach
basically covers matters like management trustworthiness, customer satisfaction, positive brand
association, cultural shifts and competitive advantage which cannot be acquired through
numerical outputs generated by machines (Gaber and Gaber, 2018). Here, an interview
procedure is generated among five chosen employees of different ages, gender and departments
to obtain deeper understanding regarding the subject matter, in the given context of the
increasing imbalance in the Gallifrey Inc. office resulting from change management practice
adopted by the CEO of the company.
With the help of the interview session conducted on 5 employees of Gallifrey Inc. who are a 35
year old male designer, a 22 year old female admin assistant, a 34 year old female designer, a 52
year old male IP barrister and a 42 year old male project manager, some relevant and impactful
information has been extracted which is helpful in finding suitable solution to the rising
dissatisfaction among few workers. At first, a number of participants were selected for the
interview belonging to various departments and age groups. Then a date was fixed to conduct the
semi-structured interview based on the convenience of all the participants, in a way that their
work would not be hampered. The interview type was onsite which lasted for 20 minutes each
and was conducted in the same day, as a group discussion would not be able to extract the most
relevant and honest opinions of the employees. Accuracy and relevance of the information is
much required to evaluate the problem and construct suitable solution for the same (Schnall et al.
2018). The findings from this interview session is given below-
Employee Age
(years)
Sex Designation Service
type
Feedback
on change
Supportive reasons
P1 35 Male Designer Full-time Very happy Effectiveness in sharing
ideas among team
members, easy to ask
questions straight away,
broadcasting has become
faster of client information
and changes to projects.
P2 22 Femal
e
Admin
assistant
Full-time Happy Gets to sit near the boss,
good opportunity to interact
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with co-workers and build
contacts.
P3 34 Femal
e
Designer Full-time Fairly happy Noises are distracting and
infectious health conditions
can spread among other
employees. However, there
is more scope of interaction
among co-workers.
P4 52 Male IP Barrister Part-time Fairly happy Noises and interruption
from others make the pace
of work slow. Glad that he
works part-time and can
avail work from home
facility.
P5 42 Male Project
Manager
Full-time Unhappy Loud ambience affecting
the phone calls and also the
work.
As it can be said that the number of happy employees are less and the change management
practice of Open Plan Office is not effective to fulfil the purpose of increased productivity, at
least as of now. The employees have cited their reasons; the primary reason seems like the
distraction being caused by the noise. The source of the noise is generally loud conversations
among design team members, phone calls made by admin staffs, discussion over irrelevant topics
like TV serials and others like loud keyboard typing sound, laughing sounds vice versa.
Recommendations and conclusions
From the above research it can be assessed that the latest change in work environment at
Gallifrey Inc. did not go down well with most of the employees. Some employees are hiding
their dissatisfaction, some are vocal about it and some chose to quit the job and join another
company. The generation of more interaction among the employees and increasing productivity
was the key motive of the CEO, but seems like most of the employees were happy in their own
private spaces. Although the design team is happy as their work is creative and interaction makes
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it flourish. Thus, the situation should be handled tactfully before more employees leave the
organisation and workplace conflicts starts to take place (Mark and Smith, 2018). But it is
known, problems must have solutions as well (Holman et al. 2018). In the data extracted from
the interview, it is found that employees are having their own kind of solutions for these
problems. The suggested solutions are-
1. Holding up signs when the ambience become too much noisy and starts hampering one’s
concentration.
2. Implementing office etiquette through certain well-defined rules about being polite at
workplace.
3. Shifting admin staff to another section so that other employees are not affected by their
continuous phone calls.
4. Enabling work from home facility for those who wants it.
5. Last but not the least, bringing back the old office environment and give back the
previously allotted offices for particular departments or persons.
After thorough assessment and evaluation of the given situation in Gallifrey Inc. it can be said
that going back to the old office infrastructure is the best way to combat this problem. As the
company was making incredible progress under the previous infrastructure, with high level of
employee satisfaction, the CEO should re-think about the new change in office. As couple of
months are already passed, it cannot be said that everyone will be accustomed to the new change
in some time. Time could not abolish the issues the employees are facing after the
implementation of Open Office Plan. Thus, this new change management approach should be
removed from Gallifrey Inc. to bring back the old happy days of the employees. Employees are
pillars of an organisation and the organisation should ensure proper working environment for
them (Bharathi and Rajan, 2018). Troublesome changes should be immediately revised to make
sure employee satisfaction is at peak. Employee satisfaction is directly related to customer
satisfaction, hence, the employees should get back the office ambience which they loved
working in. For interactions, company can arrange weekend get-together for the employees to
relax and get to know their co-workers well.
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List of references
Bakker, A.B. and Demerouti, E., 2017. Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking
forward. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), p.273.
Abbas, M. and Raja, U., 2018. Challenge-Hindrance Stressors and Job Outcomes: the
Moderating Role of Conscientiousness. Journal of Business and Psychology, pp.1-13.
Hashim, A.E., Isnin, Z., Ismail, F., Norrihan, N.A. and Razali, R., 2017. Occupational stress and
behavioural studies of facilities management employees in commercial complex. Journal of
ASIAN Behavioural Studies, 2(5), pp.57-64.
Wood, S., Daniels, K. and Ogbonnaya, C., 2018. Use of work–nonwork supports and employee
well-being: the mediating roles of job demands, job control, supportive management and work–
nonwork conflict. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-32.
Madsen, I.E.H., Rugulies, R. and Kivimäki, M., 2018. Job strain and clinical depression–authors’
reply. Psychological Medicine, 48(2), pp.349-350.
Yang, N., Lu, J. and Ye, J., 2018. A NOVEL FRAMEWORK BASED ON THE IMPROVED
JOB DEMANDS-RESOURCES (JD-R) MODEL TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF JOB
CHARACTERISTICS ON JOB BURNOUT FROM THE VIEW OF EMOTION
REGULATION THEORY. Psychiatria Danubina, 30(1), pp.26-34.
Du, Y., Zhang, L. and Tekleab, A.G., 2018. Job strains, job control, and POS on employee
performance: An interactionist perspective. Journal of Business Research, 82, pp.213-219.
Holman, D., Johnson, S. and O'Connor, E., 2018. Stress management interventions: Improving
subjective psychological well-being in the workplace. Handbook of well-being. Salt Lake City,
UT: DEF Publishers. DOI: nobascholar. com.
Jacobs, S., Johnson, S. and Hassell, K., 2018. Managing workplace stress in community
pharmacy organisations: lessons from a review of the wider stress management and prevention
literature. International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 26(1), pp.28-38.
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Naseem, K., 2018. Job Stress, Happiness and Life Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of
Emotional Intelligence Empirical Study in Telecommunication Sector Pakistan. Journal of
Social Sciences, 4(1), pp.7-14.
Cooper, C.L. ed., 2018. Managerial, occupational and organizational stress research.
Routledge.
Schnall, P.L., Dobson, M., Rosskam, E. and Elling, R.H., 2018. Unhealthy work: Causes,
consequences, cures. Routledge.
Mark, G. and Smith, A., 2018. A Qualitative Study of Stress in University Staff. Advances in
Social Sciences Research Journal, 5(2).
Bharathi, S. and Rajan, V.T., 2018. A Study of Stress Management in it Companies. Medico-
Legal Update, 18(1), pp.399-401.
Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management.
Gaber, J. and Gaber, S., 2018. Qualitative analysis for planning & policy: Beyond the numbers.
Routledge.
Appendices
The semi-structured onsite interview was performed on the five participants i.e. five employees
of Gallifrey Inc. belonging to different departments of the organisation. The interview time was
20 minutes for each of the person. There were a number of questions asked, at first the
establishing questions to build rapport with the participants and make them comfortable enough
to face the serious questions which followed. The three crucial questions from the sessions are
mentioned below-
1. Are you happy in your job?
2. How have the changes at work affected you and/or the office in general?
3. Is there anything else that you would like us to know?
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The interview session is proved as effective one as it helped to assess the situation accurately and
deliver recommendations based on the problems found. Different codes that are extracted from
the session are also mentioned under:
 Change management
 Leadership
 Work stress
 Employee satisfaction
 Qualitative analysis
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