Change Management: Importance, Strategies, and Role of a Change Agent

This article discusses the importance of change management in organizations, including improving overall performance, increasing employee engagement, enhancing innovation strategies, and creating an adaptable and innovative workplace. It also explores the problematic scenario faced by Australian Post and how they managed the change using the Kurt Lewin model and a change agent. The article provides insights into the strategies and initiatives implemented by Australian Post to overcome resistance to change and achieve successful transformation.

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Change management is the process of preparing the people, the management and others in an
organization towards the organizational change (Hayes, 2018). Organizational change is the
process of bringing changes in the operation of the organization such that they can they can
become competitive and can survive in the changing environment. There are various reasons for
carrying out change management in an organization such as to overcome resistance to change, in
order to meet the changing requirements of the customers, to carry out any technological changes
in the organizational process (Doppelt, 2017). The methods that are adopted to carry out the
change management are- by changing the use of resources in an organization or by proper
allocation of the budget. A change agent is needed by the organization to carry out the activity of
change management effectively. These change agents can be consultants from outside or even
internal consultants. These people make use of various change models such as the Kurt Lewin
model. The company Australian post has recently undergone change management effectively.
This has been carried out by them for overcoming all the problems they are facing related to their
services (Cameron & Green, 2015). It is a company that is engaged in the activity of delivery of
postal services throughout Australia. It is a government owned company and before carrying out
the change management it had faced a lot of criticism from many people. It is only then when the
company decided to carry out change management activities. The main aim of the study is to
focus on the importance of carrying out change in an organization and how to manage the change
activities effectively in an organization. For this purpose this study will focus on the change
management activities of Australian post.

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Discussion
Importance of change management
Change management has been defined differently by different scholars but the process of change
management is that of transforming all- the people, the organization, groups within organization
such that they can reach the desired future state from the present state of things (Pugh, 2016).
Change management is used to carry out the change process of the organization effectively-
whether it is for the purpose of expanding or for the purpose of downsizing and in other cases
also (Booth, 2015). It is the process of preparing the people in an organization and also the
organization for meeting the changes without much resistance from the people of the
organization (Lozano, Ceulemans & Seatter, 2015). This will include properly communicating
about the change to the people, explaining the importance of the change to them and that how
will these changes benefit them in the future, sharing vision with them such that the individual
goals and the organizational goals can be aligned (Levasseur, 2001).
Improve overall performance of the company
Change management process helps in improving the overall performance of the company
through changes in various processes and because the people of the organization all work for a
common goal. The performance of the AusPost Company changed. It was suffering loses in the
year 2015 of about $222 million and after the turnaround strategy carried out by the CEO it
earned profit (Hossan, 2015).

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Increase engagement of the people
When the people of the organization are explained about every activity of the company and they
are asked for their participation in the functioning of the company, the employees feel engaged.
In a change process, the company needs to engage the employees (Rahim, 2017).
Enhance the innovation strategies for the organization
Due to the change process and under the process of change management, innovation strategies
act as a catalyst in the process of change management such that by bringing new innovations
company can help to carry out change process more effectively. For instance: the AusPost
Company had innovated the process of two-speed post technique for delivering its services faster
as compared to the manual system and this helped in the turnaround strategy of the company.
Ensure a smooth process of change by reducing the tensions of people and Minimize
resistance to change
These days change and change management has become an important activity of the
organization that want to become successful through growth and development. The change for
these organization may be a change in the leadership, a change in the technology. Such as the
change that took place in the Auspost company was one that was of the leadership (Lewis, 2019).
The company decided to change the CEO and brought a new CEO to deal with the changes on
the organizations and for transforming the company so that it could survive in the, market with
other competitors such as DHL and others.
Helps in creating an workplace that is adaptable and innovative
A formal communication channel is used for the purpose of communicating with the employees
of the organization in case of change management. The change management process

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communication will include informing the employees of the organization about the change that is
going to take place, clearly informing them why this change is necessary for improving the
present scenario of the organization and finally how this change will be beneficial to the
employees and others in the organization. This will help in overcoming their fear and other
problems. This type of communication channel in the organization will help to create a
workplace that is adaptable and innovative due to proper communication of information. The
same process was used by the company AusPost in order to carry out the change process and this
led to creation of a people focused workforce for the company.
Problematic scenario faced by Auspost
Auspost that was once a reputed company and was known for providing best postal services
across Australia has recently faced a lot of issues due to which they are not able to meet their
objectives and this scenario had necessitated change and change management activities in the
organization. The objectives of the company are to have good relationship with the customers by
delivering quality services and products to them. Innovation is one of the main objectives of the
company to meet the needs of the customers. The company aims at keeping its employees
satisfied by properly remunerating and rewarding them and the company also aims at motivating
its employees so that these employees can effectively perform their operations. One of the main
reasons why these objectives could not be achieved was due to strategy failures. Various
strategies have been implemented by the company in order to achieve the goals but they have
failed. Some of the strategies that were adopted by them was- there was an enterprise agreement
policy that was adopted by the company in the year 2013 for the purpose of remunerating its
employees and rewarding them properly but this strategy failed due to failure of proper
implementation by the management of the company. Another policy of the company was made

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to satisfy the customers by dealing with their complaints as fast as possible but the company
failed to achieve the same because it could not be implemented properly due to lack of proper
technological mechanism and as a result of this, confusion amongst the customer’s increased.
Another major strategy adopted by the company to ensure ethical business practices could not be
achieved because of lack of proper communication of the same by the top management to the
employees. The company also faced problem due to digitalization through which there has been
disruptive technological innovations and the company could not cope up with these changes and
in fact it took time to actually carry out operation’s to meet these issues. Therefore there was a
need to change the present scenario of the business through adapting change process in the
organization and managing people and others to effectively carry out the change. There was gap
that was created by this once best service provider company, in meeting the needs of the
customers through technological innovations and as a result both the customers and the
employees if the organization remained unsatisfied. There were many issues related to the
employees that resulted in such a scenario such as there was lack of proper leadership due to
which the absenteeism rate was higher, there was lack of sincerity in the employees of the
organization. This is mainly because the management failed to motivate them by proper actions.
This necessitated the appointment of a change agent who could not only change the entire
scenario of the organization but manage the change among the employees and other interest
groups.
How did they manage the change and the change model for the company
In case of managing any change the main resistance arises from the employees of the company
and also other members who have a fear of losing their position in the company in case of any
change (Bridgman, 2016) . In order to overcome these resistance, the company had employed an

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effective communication strategy such that all the employees can be informed about the changes
that are going to take place and preparing them for the same (Hammer, 2015) . The company had
been losing huge amount of money in the past two years due to competition from others. The
CEO actually changed the scenario by taking many decisions that was initially criticized but
these decisions helped the company to reposition itself in the market. The CEO decided to take
help of e-commerce activities to increase their earning as against focusing only on the letters
services of the company and this change has increased the revenues for the company as
compared got the past years losses suffered by the company. The CEO had turned the traditional
ways of doing operation’s to modern ways by making use of e-commerce.
The model used to define the company’s situation is the Kurt lewin Model of change. The main
purpose of this model is to carry out change in an organization and amongst its people such they
do not resist the same. The model has three main stages- the unfreeze stage, the change stage and
the stage of refreezing. The first stage involves changing the status quo of the company and the
individuals by changing their behavior towards everything and by necessitating in the need to
change. People have the tendency to change when they feel the guilt in them. Here are various
reasons for why a person opts for change. The company Auspost faced this need to change due to
both internal factors and external factors. The external factors were the huge amount of risk
being faced by other giant competitors such as DHL and others. Some of the internal factors that
necessitated the need to change was the way the people were working they were not taking any
responsibility for their acts and were not performing well which resulted in a huge situation of
crisis and loss. The second change involves carrying out various change initiatives such that the
company can change its present situation and the role of a change agent steps in. The Auspost
company decided to appoint the new CEO for the purpose of managing the change and acting as

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a change agent. The third step of the Kurt lewin model includes carrying out various activities to
freeze the change that has taken place this possible through continuous review and motivation of
the employees to help the organization maintain the stage of refreeze (Cummings, Bridgman &
Brown, 2016).
The role of a change agent
A change agent is a consultant who can either be internal to the company or external. These
people are appointed by the company because they act as a catalyst and help in carrying out the
change effectively (Anderson, 2016). . Most of the transformational leaders act as a change agent
because they know how to align the organizational goals with individual goals and they help in
sharing visions with the employees. The CEO of AusPost, Ahmed Fahour’s, transformed the
company. The CEO was selected for the purpose of saving a 200 year old business that was
going to become extinct because of following its traditional ways of doing business and they
required new innovations to change their business and the CEO was considered as a correct
person for the job of the change agent because of his risk-taking attitude (Namada, 2018). In fact
the crisis faced by the company was such that it had lost huge amounts worth $222 in the year
2015. It was the first biggest lost that the company had faced in its last 30 years. The turnaround
strategy used by him was criticized by the general public for various reasons but ultimately these
strategies helped to reposition the company in the market and regain the lost position. He brought
various changes and used his good relationship with the government to carry out the changes and
got their approval for the same (Driskill, 2018). A change agent is one who uses his position in a
proper way to bring changes to the operations of the company. Any act that is done by the
change agent is focused towards the future and therefore many people fail to understand their
actions but the end results of their action is that the organization and its people are transformed

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(Hayes, 2018). The CEO had taken decision to increase the price of the stamps from 60cents to
1dollar. He even introduced the mail services of two-speed for improving the delivery and
therefore carried out the turnaround strategy for the company. In order to support the decisions of
change initiatives of the organization and the CPM process, the CEO decided to focus on the
program management through a proper framework for the same (Chmiel, Fraccaroli & Sverke,
2017). This partnership with the program management helped to develop community-wide,
flexible and robust framework for carrying out proper change initiatives. This framework was
supported by proper business practices, templates and tools with the help of the standard
operating procedures of the company the Auspost. With the help of these SOP instructions, the
mangers of the company could carry out their operations easily with the help of the instructions
as given in the SOP. The main role of the PM-partnership was to carry out the gap analysis to see
if the SOP used for the program management was similar to that of industry wide SOP measures
and also to see if these practices will be successful while implementing the process of program
management framework in the future (Badewi & Shehab, 2016). The engagement factors became
successful through broadening of the communication activities in the program. Program
management framework for the company brought with itself a robust Standard Operating
Procedures (SOP) that could be used for the Auspost so that it could manage its activities related
to managing the program properly. The SOP included activities such as- quality assurance
activities, resource and financial management, change management guidelines to help the
company in its operations of carrying out its turnaround strategy properly, controlling changes
related to the program and other activities.

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Annotated bibliography
Article 1: Buonocore, D. (2004). Leadership in action: Creating a Change in Practice.
AACN Clinical Issues, 15(2), 170-181. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/qdX97I
According to the article, change is inevitable in any field of practice whether it is health care or
others. Changes in the care methods of the health care field, new technologies and new therapies
are continuously being developed on a daily basis. The main responsibility to adapt to these
changes in the health care by developing the necessary skills to identify the changes and properly
evaluate the same, depends upon nursing leaders or the APNs. A good strategy in this field will
be overcoming resistance and strategies to adapt to the changes effectively. By properly
analyzing the systems of the organization in which the APN is working will help him in
implementing various change strategies effectively through selection of various plans. The
organization that wishes to carry out changes effectively requires proper coordination between
all the participants of a health care organization such as the nurses, APN’s and other authorities
by creating an environment in which all are ready to carry out the changes. The main objective of
this study is to focus on the role of the APN’s in carrying out changes effectively and the steps
that are taken by them in order to carry out the changes. The APN’s can actually act as a change
agent for adopting to the changes according to the changes in the environment of the health care
industry.
The author has proved his point in this study using various facts that substantiates his theory. The
main issues faced by this paper is that of giving too much information on the steps to be
implemented in order to carry out the change process and he has not focused on the APN’s role
for implementing the same.

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Sutherland, K. (2013). Applying Lewin’s Change Management Theory to the
Implementation of Bar-Coded Medication Administration. Retrieved from
https://goo.gl/rlpNSp
In this study, the author discusses about the changes that are being brought into the healthcare
segment and problems that the nurses are facing due to technological advancements and devices
that are computer assisted. Nurses face a problems with adapting these techniques because they
have been carrying out the their activities using the traditional methods and now they are facing
many problems regarding application of these modern technique’s. Therefore the main purpose
of this study is to make use of the Kurt Lewin model for carrying out the barcode medications
technique’s in the psychiatric facility without much resistance from the nurses. The study has
discussed about how the nurses can be engaged in this task of the BCMA by involving them in
the implementation and the planning process as these will help in creating a sense of autonomy
of the project and will help to achieve the goals. A brainstorming activity can be carried out in
the first round of solving the change management issues such that the main problem faced by the
nurses can be identified and the second step is to improve the efficiency in operations by
addressing these problems. The author has also focused on using the Kurt Lewin model to reduce
the resistance by various people through creation of a proper plan and engaging people into it
through active participation.
This study is therefore focused on showing people from various fields are making use of the Kurt
lewin model to address all change related issues. However, the paper lacks proper evidence in
form of using statistical data and too much of focus is given on the importance of bar code
medication and much of the data is theoretical and lacks practicability through its applications.

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Burnes, B. (2004). Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal.
Retrieved from https://goo.gl/LEqULt
Kurt lewin’s theory has been followed in many organization over the last forty years for
addressing issues related to change and management of change. However in the last 20 years his
theory and models have been criticized for various reasons like some critiques said that his
models are mechanistic and simple as compared to the world that is dynamics. Among the
criticism the major critic had been got the three step model of Kurt lewin. Some of the major
criticisms related to his work is that he assumes the existence of organizations in a stable state.
His methods were management driven and followed the top-down style of management decisions
and his theories and models neglected the power and politics of the organization. Through this
study, the author tries to re-examine the work of Kurt lewin and challenges the current views of
criticisms against the company. The article is divided into three main parts – a background about
the Kurt Lewin theory, the second part is related to deep analysis of his actions research, group’s
dynamics, three step model and the action research model. The third part involves the conclusion
that argues that though his theory and models have been criticized still they have applicability in
the present generation. The main purpose of the article is to re-examined the work of Kurt lewin
irrespective of the criticism and to challenge the views and arguments against Kurt lewin’s
theory and models. In re-examining his work, the paper tries to identify: his contributions nature,
the author tries to identify the validity of the comments against Kurt lewin’s work and to see the
applicability of the model and theory in the contemporary world and organizations (Epstein,
Buhovac & Yuthas, 2010).

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Recommendations
According to Buonocore, (2004), the author has suggested that change is an inevitable part of life
and change is needed in all different fields- in business or in nursing healthcare segment. There
have been numerous changes in this field and it is important to adapt to these changes if an
organization wants to become successful. Presently the role of APN’s have increased in
managing the change properly. According to the author the Kurt Lewin model needs to be
adopted such that APN’s can carry out change in their fields. According to Sutherland, (2013),
he also is of the view that Kurt Lewin’s model is the best to carry out any form of changes and
for managing the change within the people by avoiding any resistance (Baumgartner & Rauter,
2017). This author had taken the example of healthcare field to explain the concept of change
and change management. He has focused his study on the fact that nurses find it difficult to adopt
to modern business technique’s and are comfortable using the traditional technique’s. To
overcome this resistance the Kurt Lewin model can be used. However, according to Burnes,
(2004), he has focused his studies on the criticisms of various scholars towards the model
because it has some vague assumptions such as the organization operates in a stable state and
that the model assumes a simple model irrespective of the dynamism of life and others. On the
basis of the theories of these authors some recommendations that can be made for the Auspost
Company.
Be future ready through proper skills and knowledge
Any organization can be ready for meeting changes and so will its people be in case they feel
safe about the changes (Langwell, 2013). For this, the organization needs to provide proper
knowledge and skills to the employees such that they can be ready for any changes in future one

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of the main reasons why employees resist change is the fear of becoming obsolete due to the new
technologies and others. Therefore, if the employees have the necessary skill and training then
they will not resist change.
Creating an innovative environment
An environment needs to be created where all the employees can freely communicate about their
ideas with the top management (Closs, Speier & Meacham, 2011). This will enable the
employees to feel engaged in the organization by proper communication between the
management and the employees. Innovation leads to change in the organization. When the
employees are innovative then they can have they are ready to adapt themselves to changes
because innovative environment helps all the organization and the employees in developing a
positive attitude towards change. Innovative organizations find it easy to become more
successful by adapting changes as compared to other organization.
Conclusion
From the above discussion and case study of the Australian post organization, it can be said that
the situation through which the company was going before the change management process had
taken place was transformed and changed because of the change management process. The
company was being criticized for its services and its relationships with other authorities. The
paper has focused on the importance of carrying out change and the need for managing change in
an effective way to reduce the resistance from the employees or others in the organization. Many
organizations fail to understand the importance of change and as a result they have to face
difficulties in overcoming problems of resistance. Many companies decide about bringing some
changes in the operations of the company but they fail in their efforts due to strong resistance to

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change form the employees. Australian post is committed to carrying out the process of change
management in the most effective way. The company’s strategies was not being able to carry out
its strategies properly such as the strategy for exchange products and others and it had
necessitated the change activities on part of the company. However it was not an easy task due to
various resistances.

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