Managing Change .

This article discusses strategies and motivators that can be employed to decrease resistance to change and the role of a change agent in change management. It also explores how senior management can assess the success of their change management strategies.

Running head: Managing Change1
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Institution
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HRM302
Managing Change
Question 1: What strategies and motivators can be employed to decrease resistance and
make change more acceptable to workers?
Change is constant at every organization, but workers have emerged as the main opponents of
change. Employees resist change for various reasons but the main one is fear that it might not
favor them or there might be bad management of change in their workplace (Green, 2016).
However, various strategies and motivators can be implemented to lessen employees’ resistance
to any impending change in an organization. These include:
Addressing personal concerns first and linking the change to other issues workers care
about: When faced with a change, employees react with their individual concerns: “Will the
change alter my schedule?” “Will this affect my revenue?” So, as a change agent deal, with their
personal issues first and concentrate later on the organizational benefits of the change about to
take place. Besides, link the change to other concerns that workers seem to care about (Hodges,
and Gill, 2014). Explain to them how the change will connect to issues of job security, health,
salaries, and other pertinent issues which are in front of their minds. In so doing, the firm will
make change stickier and hence will receive insignificant resistance from the workers.
Communicating change effectively: The best way management in an organization can
communicate change is to specifically tell workers what is happening and how they are affected
by the change (Quirke, 2017). Using a mixture of informal and formal communication channels
allows employees to receive news about change in the best way possible. Employment of all

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communication outlets like face-to-face meetings, emails, town halls, and company intranets will
take the change message across the organization. Employing different communication
mechanisms help change agent to explain goals, mission, vision, and anticipations for what needs
to take place and why. Communicating change effectively also gives the company an opportunity
to explain to the workers its pros and cons as well as how it will alter their routine operations.
Effectively engage employees: Ensuring that workers are participating fully in the change
process will certainly reduce their opposition to it. Pay attention, receive and respond to their
feedback regarding the change about to take place (Stephan, Patterson, Kelly, & Mair,
2016).They are the ones ensuring that all customers are satisfied and that all work gets done and
so it is crucial to keep them at the loop. Ask workers probing questions like: Is the change
favorable? How can we improve it? What is your general comment about the change? There are
the great questions to solicit ample feedback from them. Their answers can be utilized to alter the
change accordingly, and prove to the workers that their ideas and concerns are being taken into
consideration.
Execute change in several steps: In order to further motivate employees to accept change
easily, it is advisable to implement it in a number of steps rather than at once. An organization
should first prepare for the change, communicate it to the workers, take action on change, make a
plan for managing it, and support the change and ensure that everything is going as planned (Al-
Haddad, & Kotnour, 2015).
Question 2: What role does the Leader or Change Agent play in the change management
effort?
All organizational changes, whether small or large, require one or even more change agents.

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Change agents are those people who have the skills and powers to fuel, smooth the progress of,
and harmonize the change efforts (Hesselbarth, and Schaltegger, 2014). Change agents might be
either internal or external. As leader, change agent plays a critical role in any change
management effort. Change agents are left with sole responsibility of consulting, training and
researching in the course of change implementation process. As consultants, change agents place
workers in touch with data from outside the company and also help members to generate data
from the internal sources of the enterprise. Their main focus here is to assist workers to find
solutions to problems by analyzing valid data. As leaders, change agents work to ensure other
stakeholders like employees see the importance of bringing about change.
Apart from functioning as consultants, change agents perform the role of a trainer. Here they
help organization’s stakeholders to learn how to utilize data to effect change (Lessard et al.
2015). In this, change agent serves a dual purpose. He assists members to obtain insinuations for
actions from the current data. He also provides them with fresh skills or the ability to retrieve,
transform, and utilize data to provide solutions to future problems. In addition, while training
them to do these things, change agent also trains organizations members how to cope up with
change and ensure that it does not affect their individual contributions to the success of the
entity. Lastly and narrowly connected to the preceding role, change agents might assume the role
of researcher. As researcher, he/she might train organization stakeholders in the skills considered
necessary for compelling assessment of the efficiency of action plans which have been put into
practice. In addition, as part of the general intervention approach, the change agent can design an
appraisal module which can be utilized in resolving not only the present problems but also future
ones.

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What is more, change agents whether external or internal are supposed to be role models and be
willing to go first. They should demonstrate their attitudes and behaviors which are expected of
all other organization members (Van Poeck, Læssøe, & Block, 2017). Workers view them as
leaders and watch them for consistency between words and actions to determine whether they
should believe the change is going to take place. Apart from this role, change agents are expected
to engage and motivate employees in the changing implementation process. As leaders, they are
supposed to craft a sense of importance and urgency regarding the change, and demonstrate
dedication and infatuation about getting things done. They should also provide acknowledgment
to those who are taking part and doing well. Change agents are also obliged to communicate over
and over again to share information, keep other updated and provide support. They are supposed
to communicate every detail about change; it significance, why it is necessary, company
intentions, and how it will impact lives of other people in the organization.
Question 3: How might the senior management team assess whether their change
management strategies have been successful?
A change management strategy refers to a plan for how to make something different. In an
organizational setting, a change management strategy explains explicit approaches through
which a business shall address such things as changes in the inventory requirements, scheduling
or project scope, or supply chain (Altamony, Al-Salti, Gharaibeh, and Elyas, 2016). The
objective of setting up a proper strategy is to make sure that any unconstructive impacts of
change shall be effectively curtailed. In order to efficiently establish a change management
strategy, the involved parties are supposed to come up with a plan for how to recognize when a
change is required, how to endorse changes, how to put changes into practice as well as how to

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keep an eye on changes to make sure they have brought about the desired effect. It is splendid to
acknowledge that after change has been effected, it is not a guarantee that strategies put in place
to manage it will be successful. Various factors can lead to failure of these strategies or their
success.
Before management in any organization thinks of any change, it usually sets some goals or
objectives which it ought to accomplish within a stimulated timeframe. These goals should be
clear and concise without any ambiguity. Normally, most change happens to improve a product,
a process, or an outcome and thus it is crucial to focus and clarify objectives. If after the set
duration has passed without any noticeable improvement, senior management team can presume
that their change management strategies were futile and they did not bare fruits as anticipated.
On the other hand, if everything goes as expected, the executives can conclude that their change
management strategies are successful and perhaps no further adjustments are needed.
Furthermore, collecting feedback from other pertinent firm stakeholders like employees can help
senior management team in assessing the success rate of the change management strategies.
Information regarding their individual views, attitudes, and outlooks of the strategies can provide
management with a general stance of the current change management approaches in place.
Different data collection tools like questionnaires, face-to-face interrogations, and open
discussion forums can be used to gather worker’s views regarding change management plans
being employed. After this exercise, management can take the initiative and analyze information
collected to gauge its viability, reliability, and level of accuracy. Finding they will develop after
data analysis will prove to them whether change management strategies presently in place are
successful or not. This assessment process will serve two purposes. Apart from evaluating the

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effectiveness of change management schemes, it will act as a motivating factor since it will
prove to the workers that their views are useful in the progress of the company.

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References
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model
for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.
Altamony, H., Al-Salti, Z., Gharaibeh, A. and Elyas, T., 2016. The relationship between change
management strategy and successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations: A
theoretical perspective. International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research,
7(4), pp.690-703.
Green, D., 2016. How change happens (p. 288). Oxford University Press.
Hesselbarth, C. and Schaltegger, S., 2014. Educating change agents for sustainability–learnings
from the first sustainability management master of business administration. Journal of cleaner
production, 62, pp.24-36.
Hodges, J. and Gill, R., 2014. Sustaining change in organizations. Sage.
Lessard, S., Bareil, C., Lalonde, L., Duhamel, F., Hudon, E., Goudreau, J. and Lévesque, L.,
2015. External facilitators and interprofessional facilitation teams: a qualitative study of their
roles in supporting practice change. Implementation Science, 11(1), p.97.
Quirke, B. (2017). Making the connections: using internal communication to turn strategy into
action. Routledge.
Stephan, U., Patterson, M., Kelly, C., & Mair, J. (2016). Organizations driving positive social
change: A review and an integrative framework of change processes. Journal of Management,
42(5), 1250-1281.

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Van Poeck, K., Læssøe, J., & Block, T. (2017). An exploration of sustainability change agents as
facilitators of nonformal learning: mapping a moving and intertwined landscape. Ecology and
Society, 22(2).