Business Psychology Report: RBC Change Implementation Analysis

This report delves into the realm of business psychology, specifically examining the impact of organizational change on employee behavior and performance. It uses the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Trinidad Branch as a case study, analyzing employee reactions to significant changes, including workforce displacement and new role implementations. The report explores the Kubler-Ross Five Stage Model to understand employee responses to change, from denial and anger to acceptance. It provides recommendations for effective change management, discussing both planned and emergent approaches, with a focus on technology adoption, customer needs, and economic considerations. Furthermore, the report evaluates the influence of organizational culture on performance and suggests strategies for improving work group dynamics and overall performance within the context of the changes at RBC Bank. The report highlights the importance of aligning change initiatives with employee needs and organizational goals for sustainable growth and success.

Business Psychology

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
3.1 Theories in relation with human reactions to change.......................................................1
3.2 Recommendations to implement change in organisation.................................................4
3.3 Recommendations to attain attitude change in behaviour of stakeholders.......................6
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................7
4.1 Influence of culture on performance in organisation.......................................................7
4.2 Climatic evaluation for work group.................................................................................8
4.3 Recommendations for improving performance of work group........................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Business psychology is a study of individual’s attitude, behaviour and actions while
delivering their duties at workplace. The individual may react positively or negatively towards
the new change implementation in company operations and working environment. (Harvey and
Allard, 2015). Trinidad Branch of Royal Bank of Canada is aiming to implement huge changes
in its operations by implementing strategies of displacement of human resources by new roles
and through cutting down cost of employment efficiently. In this report, the attitude and
behavioural reaction of employees towards implementing change are discussed.
TASK 1
3.1 Theories in relation with human reactions to change.
Business psychology is defined as analysing human behaviour and this involves the
changing nature and action of employees in world of work because of implementing new
alteration in workplace. This studies reaction of individual to change a performance of
employees and reaction to acceptance of change implementation. There are various theories
develops which analysing behavioural change of individual in workplace. Kubler-Ross Five
Stage Model is given by Kubler-Ross which defines that individual react in five different stages
to which a person goes through while facing any change in working environment. This describes
about the different reaction and behavioural response of an individual in development stage of
change in actions and environment (Reiter-Palmon, Beghetto and Kaufman, 2014). RBC bank is
going from huge change ion job role and responsibilities. The bank is targeting to large
displacement of operation and human resource. This largely comes up with various reaction of
employees towards decisions of higher authority to implement change with new roles in working
environment. These reaction can be motivational for acceptance of modification in working
system or it may be negative reaction of workforce. Reaction to the change is described with
helps of Kubler-Ross model is defined below.
1

Denial: This non acceptance of change by an individual. Persons behaves like he is not
going to accept the change implementation whether by conscious or unconscious mind reactions.
This is a defence mechanism developed by an individual to stop change in working environment.
This is the actions or response of a person to deny the alteration in functioning. At the starting
stage of displacement decisions in RBC bank is denied by employees. They negatively response
to them dissatisfaction in operations and job roles. Denial is the stage of development or defence
to think about changes. This can be defied as the response time required to accept the
alternations are to be made in workplace. At this stage performance of employees are altered to a
large extent. This is the stage of numbness and shock reactions to the alteration decisions made
by RBC bank.
Anger: This respective stage is defined by the fact that individual accepts that changes
and alterations are real in nature. This will results in denial of change to anger towards the
changes this will largely affects individual performance and lives. This the reaction of an person
towards alteration in operations by frustrated behaviour (Mark Connelly. 2016. Kubler-Ross Five
Stage Model). Person showing high level of anger and at this stage individual blame for the
change to others. RBC bank announced high level of attrition and displacement which results in
increased anger in workforce and all the employees negatively response and frustrated to work in
such organisation. The employers shows emotional arousal because of change in roles and
responsibilities as they are having threat of adapting new alteration in functions and lack of
2
Illustration 1: Kubler-Ross Change Curve, 2016
Source 1: Mark Connelly, 2016. Kubler-Ross Five Stage Model

capabilities to work with new job roles. This stage is defined by psychological responses of
employee like Why this happen to me only? No, I can't afford these changes!!!.
Bargaining: This is the third stage of reaction of an individual towards any change
implementation in environment. This is point where a person starts finding out another options to
deal with such changes in working surrounding. Individual tries to stop changes and alteration in
function through bargaining. Person tries to postpone alterations in operation of organisation.
The employee are looking for another options to deal with changes by consulting to higher
authority to take a decision of shared growth by mutual concern. The employees of the RBC
bank is accepting the displacement decisions and change in job role and finding out the option of
mutual understanding. They are trying to find out to new position which benefits both company
as well as individual himself (Argyle and Furnham, 2013). The Chief executive, Caribbean
Banking at RBC, Suresh Sookoo also said in his interview that the company is focusing on the
giving various new growth opportunities to their workforce for future career development and
also offering packages for leaving the job profile. Employee can bargain over this as per their
future need either they are wanting money, or new job role or something else.
Depression: At this stage the individual is accepted the change are inevitable in nature.
These changes cannot be bargained and have to be accepted. The person accepts that alteration
will affects them negatively and results in losses. This stage is identified with low mood,
depression, stage of tension and lower social interaction. This reaction to any changes also
largely affects performance level of an individual. RBC bank is going for huge number of
retention about half of the total employees are terminated from job which leads to increased level
of depression in individual and negatively affect performance level of person. Person become
less confident to handle job role and their responsibilities toward organisation growth efficiently.
Acceptance: This the final stage of behavioural reaction toward implementation of
change in function. At this stage the individual is ready to accept and adopt change in actions.
This can be identified by a positive psychological response towards the alteration and
modification in working environment (Bond, 2010). This respective stage of acceptance in
Kubler-Ross model can be identified with higher level of enthusiasm in person. The RBC bank
decision towards displacement and introduction to new roles in human resource finally accepted
by all workforce positively with satisfying their needs and desires and expectation with
company. All employees are satisfied with decisions of higher authority of implementing change
3

in role of task. The employees of RBC bank with mutual bargaining comes with acceptance of
ideas of retraining for new role to workforce and leads to career development while working
with same organisation.
3.2 Recommendations to implement change in organisation
While implementing change the organisation should take care of various approaches to
follow up the requirement of a firm of developing alteration in functions and operations
effectively. The various approaches to implementation of change and modification in business
entity can be Emergent approach and planned approach. Planned approach follows and
systematised approach before taking any actions. This is followed by designing and blueprint of
action plan by efficiently accessing the market scenario. While the Emergent approaches are
faster and responsive towards any uncertain and situations of emergency in working business
environment. These both approaches can be significant for sustainable development for firm as
per the requirements of reaction with changing commercial surroundings (Bargh, 2013).
Planned approach to change is stated with defined objectives and defined plan of action
which are to be followed by workplace and higher management of organisation. This approach
can be implemented in actions by following up Lewins model of change management. This
model defines three stage of implementing alteration in operations which are unfreezing, change
and refreezing with new changes. This Planned approach to change management is slow in
nature and also controllable at every point of its execution.
Emergent approaches does not follow up any kind of blue print and is directions while
implementing any change in action. This kind of approach to implementing alteration is an
experimental in nature. This approach is followed up in action of organisation in order to deal
with emergency situation. This particular approach is faster in action and active as compared to
planned approach (Garman, 2011).
In the case scenario of RBC bank this can be suggested that the chief executive Suresh
Sookoo is following both of these approaches. The chief executive is responsive towards the
changing needs of economic and business environment to large extent and make faster decision
to implement change. While company has planned all the training and re-tooling to bank
workforce for new roles. The company is both responsive towards sustainable growth and
employee development while implementing change inn actions. Company is ready to bear
reactions of workforce towards new changes in operations and development of new roles.
4

This particular approach of displacement and introducing new roles to job is relevant for
attaining the objectives of change management to large extent. This will bring higher efficiency
of the organisation by dealing customers with higher motivation and skilled workforce
(Fleischmann and et. al., 2014). This approach of RBC bank is relevant with the change
management as the firm is targeting to achieve higher customer satisfaction as well as increased
employee motivation to deliver good quality services to clients of bank. Implementing change in
operations provide an individual to growth opportunity by performing new roles by retraining
and retooling their competencies and skills.
Implementation of change in working environment is important for the firm. This is
having various benefits for sustainable shared growth of employees as well as organisation. RBC
bank is implementing change in job roles and responsibilities which is necessary for the
following aspects of growth of firm in dynamic working business environment which are
described below.
Technology: Change helps in working in company with the new technology in
workforce. This change management helps in implementing newer updated technology and
newer techniques in the working environment in order to bring higher efficiency in the function
as well as this also helps in increasing the performance level of employees in workplace. The
change manage is important for implementing change and acceptance by workforce by bring
newer competencies an capabilities in their actions to perform task efficiently and deal with new
roles in RBC bank responsibility.
Customer needs: By implementing change in process, services, products and working
efficiency of the workforce the company can attain needs of customers more efficiently. The
RBC bank is highly focused about the satisfaction of their clients. Bank is continuously engaged
in increasing efficiency of their operations and quality of services in order to deliver satisfactory
services to clients as per their desires and wants (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Respective RBC bank
is continuously engaged in implementing newer changes in functionality of firm in order to meet
all the expectation of customers with company. Company is developing displacement change in
workforce in order increase their performance level and achieve the needs of their customer’s
satisfaction.
The Economy: In order to deal with the current economic condition in business
environment the firm has to implement various changes in function and operations in order to cut
5

down extra cost in various operations (DR. JON WARNER in CHANGE MANAGEMENT,
2012. Coping with Change). RBC bank is following change management to reduce the
employment cost of organisation. The human resource cost is the most valuable cost to the
company. Efficiently investment of this cost leads to increase growth of firm otherwise this may
also leads to increased wastage of monetary of funds and loses to organisation. RBC bank is
reducing employment cost by reducing workforce to half.
Growth opportunities: By implementing change in actions of organisation firm can
achieve higher growth opportunities in business organisation. As change bring competitiveness
increased competencies of firm and helps in building competitive advantage in current market
scenario which helps in gaining future growth possibilities. RBC bank is engaged in providing
training to the employees so that they can react effectively to the various growth chance
available in current working surroundings (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Bank is also
providing various new tools in order to work efficiently in new roles and responsibilities to
achieving various development opportunities available in future.
Changing status quotient: Company can also implement various new changes in
functions in order to bring higher standardisation in operations. The firm is working to change
their status quotient in market and improve this quotient by enhancing the standards of
performance and service quality by providing efficient training to new roles in RBC bank.
3.3 Recommendations to attain attitude change in behaviour of stakeholders
The employees of RBC bank is facing higher level of frustration because of the decision
made by higher management of bank. Suresh Sookoo chief executives of RBC bank announced
that this respective financial institution is going for huge numbers of displacement in human
resources of organisation. This leads to the reaction of workforce towards the change
implementation workplace (CHUANG and Liao, 2010). The employees are full of anger and
frustrated with this respective actions of the Bank. Workforce have to accept and adapt changes
in working environment in order to maintain healthy working according in organisation. This
will increase the motivation level of workforce and leads to efficiently achieving the goals of
change mange and higher profitability to firm by effectively delivering services to clients of
RBC bank. There some of the recommendations to achieve attitudinal change in workforce
related with the maintaining motivation and changes in workforce of RBC bank which are
defined below.
6

Stakeholders should be passionate about business growth: This stakeholders of the
RBC bank should be responsible towards the growth of company. They should focus on the
development strategies for the firm.
Employees maintain environment of trustworthiness: The employees and the employer
should maintain relation of trust. Both employee and employer should have trust on each other
that they are working for mutual profitability and responsible towards implementing newer
changes in workforce to bring increased efficiency in functions of firm.
TASK 2
4.1 Influence of culture on performance in organisation.
Every company existing in the business market has some sort of rules and regulations
which they follow. They have codes and ethics which are considered as their culture. It is
mandatory for the employees to follow these culture because by this way they develop an
identity of the organisation in which they are working (Robertson and Cooper, 2010). If all the
staff of the company is following the organisational culture it will be helpful for the firm to
achieve the targets which they have desired to achieve. Almost all the firms have a unique
identify which separates themselves from the other. This unique identity is referred as its culture.
It is basically the system of the shared assumptions, values and beliefs which governs individuals
to behave in the company. This strongly impact the people working in the company and briefs
them that how they have to present themselves and perform certain role in the organisation
(Fassin, Van Rossem and Buelens, 2011). It sets the boundaries for them and ask them not to
cross those and if they do so their job may come in danger. Innovation, attention to detail, focus
on the result, people, teamwork, aggressiveness and stability are the seven characteristics of
organisational culture.
There was time when the organisational culture of Royal Bank of Canada was recognized
as one of the most admired corporate cultures in Canada. They have always focused on the
factors like teamwork, stress service, responsibilities, diversity and integrity. But the things have
changed to a great extent and the reason behind this is the new policies or update done by the
bank. They have redefined the job description and brought new roles in the bank and the reason
they gave for this is to bring new hierarchy in the system (Shuck and Wollard, 2010). Although
things has to be changed with change in the business environment but those changes should be
7

restricted for some areas only. Redefining the job description and giving new roles to the
employees may bring trouble for the staff working. It could hamper the organisational culture of
the bank because employees will find it difficult to cope up with the new situation and the new
role given to them. The reason behind this is that they are used to a certain working environment
but now they have to come out of their comfort zone and for that they need time. They can set
the organisational culture with proper planning and training the employees. Royal Bank of
Canada needs to give time to their staff to settle into the new system.
4.2 Climatic evaluation for work group
The climatic conditions of the bank after announcement to the change to human resource
by displacement with implementing new roles in jobs goes highly negative, this creates a
negative working environment in firm and highly demotivated workforce. The Suresh Sookoo to
development and healthy working culture in Trinidad Branch of Royal Bank of Canada is
engaged in providing various growth opportunity to workforce (Schmitt, Zacher and Frese,
2012). He is also providing the same level of compensations and incentives to people even at
lower level of job profiles also at-least for 1 year. This results in attitudinal change to workforce
and the employees started accepting changes at workplace and come with mutual understating
with bargaining new operations for shred growth and higher satisfaction level.
4.3 Recommendations for improving performance of work group
The Trinidad Branch of Royal Bank of Canada is financing many issues and problems
with respect to the implementation of change in the working environment which are described as
follows. The employees are restricting to the implementation of change because they do not
efficient competencies while dealing with new responsibilities to the job (Cools, Armstrong and
Verbrigghe, 2014). Second issue to the employees is that the new roles are come up with lower
level of task which restricts an individual to work with lower profile. Another issue to the
managing change in workplace of RBC bank is the employment cost to the company is going
high which have to be reduced by firm (Spector and et. al., 2014).
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment, this can be concluded that change in necessary for achieving
targets of sustainable growth in organisation. Business psychology largely helps in determining
various behavioural change of workforce with respect to implement change in cultures of firm.
8

The RBC bank is influencing change which restricts displacement in human resources of bank in
order to develop higher competencies in the actions of person to work efficiently with new job
roles. The bank is continuously working to deliver efficient services to customers by coming up
new job roles with higher responsibilities.
9

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Argyle, M and Furnham, A., 2013. The psychology of money. Routledge.
Bargh, J. A., 2013. Social psychology and the unconscious: The automaticity of higher mental
processes. Psychology Press.
Bond, M. H. ed., 2010. The Oxford handbook of Chinese psychology. Oxford Library of
Psychology.
CHUANG, C. H and Liao, H. U. I., 2010. Strategic human resource management in service
context: Taking care of business by taking care of employees and customers. Personnel
psychology. 63(1). pp.153-196.
Cools, E., Armstrong, S. J and Verbrigghe, J., 2014. Methodological practices in cognitive style
research: Insights and recommendations from the field of business and psychology.
European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 23(4). pp.627-641.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2014. Toward a psychology of optimal experience. In Flow and the
foundations of positive psychology (pp. 209-226). Springer Netherlands.
Fassin, Y., Van Rossem, A and Buelens, M., 2011. Small-business owner-managers’ perceptions
of business ethics and CSR-related concepts. Journal of Business ethics. 98(3). pp.425-
453.
Fleischmann and et. al., 2014. Subject-oriented business process management. Springer
Publishing Company, Incorporated.
Garman, A. N., 2011. Shooting for the moon: How academicians could make management
research even less irrelevant. Journal of Business and Psychology. 26(2). pp.129-133.
Harvey, C. P and Allard, M., 2015. Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases, and
exercises. Pearson.
Reiter-Palmon, R., Beghetto, R. A and Kaufman, J. C., 2014. 1 Looking at creativity through a
business–psychology–education (BPE) lens. Creativity research: An inter-disciplinary
and multi-disciplinary research handbook. 34. p.9.
Robertson, I. T and Cooper, C. L., 2010. Full engagement: the integration of employee
engagement and psychological well-being. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal. 31(4). pp.324-336.
Schmitt, A., Zacher, H and Frese, M., 2012. The buffering effect of selection, optimization, and
compensation strategy use on the relationship between problem solving demands and
occupational well-being: a daily diary study. Journal of occupational health psychology.
17(2). p.139.
10

Seligman, M. E and Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2014. Positive psychology: An introduction. In Flow
and the foundations of positive psychology (pp. 279-298). Springer Netherlands.
Shuck, B and Wollard, K., 2010. Employee engagement and HRD: A seminal review of the
foundations. Human Resource Development Review. 9(1). pp.89-110.
Snyder, M and Deaux, K., 2012. Personality and social psychology. In The Oxford handbook of
personality and social psychology.
Spector and et. al., 2014. Moving the pendulum back to the middle: Reflections on and
introduction to the inductive research special issue of Journal of Business and
Psychology. Journal of Business and Psychology. 29(4). pp.499-502.
Online
DR. JON WARNER in CHANGE MANAGEMENT, 2012. Coping with Change. [Online].
Available through: <http://blog.readytomanage.com/coping-with-change/>. [Accessed on
8th September 2017].
Mark Connelly, 2016. Kubler-Ross Five Stage Model. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.change-management-coach.com/kubler-ross.html>. [Accessed on 8th
September 2017].
11