People Management Episode Analysis Report: MBA 7703EHR Course

This report analyzes a challenging people management episode experienced by the author, an operational manager in a company developing clinical trial management solutions. The situation involved employee resistance to the implementation of new technology and processes, leading to conflict and decreased productivity. The report describes the situation, analyzes it using frameworks such as the Thomas-Kilmann Model, ADKAR, McKinsey 7-S model, Kubler-Ross Model, 3C of communication and Lewin's Change management model, and reflects on the author's management approach. The analysis highlights communication failures and a lack of support for employees during the transition. Based on this analysis, the report provides recommendations and strategies for future situations, emphasizing the importance of clear communication, employee training, and a proactive approach to conflict resolution. These recommendations include communicating the benefits of change, providing training, and considering employee concerns. The report aims to offer insights into managing difficult behaviors and implementing change effectively within an organization.

Running Head: PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
People Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The management of people is an extremely important aspect of the human resource
management encompassing the tasks of management, recruitment and giving an ongoing support
with direction to the employees of an organization. These are something including the
compensation, performance management, hiring, organizational development, wellness, the
employee safety, motivation, administration, communication, training and many others. During
managing people in a workplace, various difficult behaviour and conflicting attitudes are to come
across the way (Mello and Delise 2015).. The management of difficult behaviour can be
extremely challenging for the recipient and the person who is displaying the behaviour. There
can be many challenging behaviour coming from managers, colleagues, suppliers or the
customers. The management of the situation can vary as per the context. While dealing with the
difficult behaviour of a person, some specific ways can be followed. In this paper, such a people
management situation I have encountered will be identified and analysed. I will critically reflect
on how I faced the situation and managed it. In the description and analysis part, I will reflect in
relevant frameworks, concepts, theories, models researched from different sources. Again, on the
recommendation and strategies part, I will use evidence from literature and provide
recommendations and strategies to improve and strengthen the way I managed the situation.
PART A- Description and Analysis of the situation
Situation
In order to stay competitive in the global economy, every business tries to adapt to the
changing environment and demand and meet the needs of the customers. The organizations need
to make some changes both in terms of technology and process to achieve competitive advantage

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as much as possible. I have worked as the operational manger in a company that develops
clinical trial management solutions especially for the pharmaceutical industry. The company
provides special software solutions for web and voice web response systems that help in running
the clinical drug trials having allowed for the patient randomization during assigning inventory
and drug management. I have faced certain problems with employees conflicting with the
management since the organization attempted to bring in new technology without giving proper
training and management to the employees.
The huge volume of work required more efficiency in terms of establishing and
managing new systems. Hence, it was decided to replace the insufficient manual testing style
with an improved system. They started using the word document in order to create the test steps
previously ran manually. In order to enhance the efficiency and capacity, they brought about an
innovative testing tool named as HP Quality Center. This is something considered as the
standard tool for software testing. The organization needed this up gradation for maintaining the
competitive edge over the market rivals. The purpose of this new tool was to assist in
maintaining the market share and grab new opportunities that were not possible before. I have
faced certain problems with employees conflicting with the management since the organization
attempted to bring in new technology without giving proper training and management to the
employees. The incorporation of new technology left huge impact on the employees and they
started opposing the decision of the management and involved in bad behaviour against the
organization. The incorporation of new technology left huge impact on the employees and they
started opposing the decision of the management and involved in bad behaviour against the
organization.
Resistance to change and conflict

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Regarding change, it can be said that change cannot be forced on an employee all of a
sudden and it is a long-term objective. Receiving acceptance from the staff level is a challenging
task as the new technology be difficult to manage for the employees (Kharadze. and Gulua
2018). The introduction of such change in the workplace can initiate disruptions in terms of
behaviour causing continuity loss and many others. The new technology can leave greater impact
on the culture and nature of the workplace (Loes and Tobin 2018). It can impact on the job
responsibilities growing a feeling of uncertainty. In the case organization, the staffs did not
accept the change and wanted to work in the previous system as before. They also did not want
to utilize the technology which were being brought in. They stated “ why do we need to change
we were comfortable with the previous process”. They were quite fearful of learning a new tool
and finishing their daily target simultaneously. They were pretty vocal regarding their concerns
and almost stopped meeting their daily targets.
Management of the situation
The change management framework is required practically for the organizations which
are undergoing change (Van der Voet and Vermeeren 2017). The frameworks provide the right
approach to manage the change. There are various models and frameworks for the management
of change.
The Thomas-Kilmann Model
In order to resolve the conflict and manage the change, we followed the Thomas-
Kilmann Model. This model illustrates the options for handling conflict. The two dimensions of
this model are concerned with the conflicting responses from the employees and the responses
founded on helping others in getting what they want (Mello and Delise 2015). Following the

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option of collaboration, the managers and the employee representative came out with mutual
respect, the willingness to listen to each other with creativity in resolving the conflict.
However, there are other frameworks too which are as follows:
ADKAR- It is one of the most significant frameworks founded by Jeff Hiatt. It begins with the
employees of the organization and finishing the organizational change. The acronym stands for
Awareness regarding the need for change, Desire for supporting the change, Knowledge about
how to change, Ability of demonstrating the skills and behaviour and Reinforcement for making
the change stick (Lumineau, Eckerd and Handley 2015).
McKinsey 7-S model
The 7-S model of McKinsey is aimed at helping an organization realize the recent
business structure, the requirement and reason for change. It is one of the first models of the
organizational change (Fernandez and Rainey 2017).. There is the 7-S framework to elaborate on
the seven system perspectives where the interrelationships among the key components for
determining the entire system performances (Loes and Tobin 2018).The 7 factors are segregated
as the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ elements. The structure, strategy and systems are the hard elements
and skills, shared values, staffs and styles are the soft elements.
The Kubler-Ross Model
This change curve is founded on the human psychology. Specifically, it is based on the
five most important stages of human grief that are developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. This
model is applied recently on the change management. This model follows the human reaction to
change and loss considers how employees react on the change in businesses (Rahim et al. 2018).
The five-stages of this model are denial, anger, bargaining , depression and acceptance. This is

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not a framework for implementing change but it can help in understanding the employee
behaviour towards change.
3c of effective communication
Effective communication is necessary for successful management of change. Without
proper communication, there might arise many understanding issues and delay the success of the
business. The 3Cs of communication helps in making the business process, implementation and
management of change easy for the organization (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). . The 3Cs
comprise of communication, collaboration and consistency. Through regular communication via
various verbal and non-verbal methods, the employees can feel that they belong to the
organization and the organization prioritizes them. The commitment asks the organization stay
committee to whatever they had promised to the employees at the time of recruiting (Tidd and
Bessant 2018). The consistency asks to maintain the business procedures with proper decision
making involving the employees and their views.
Lewin’ Change management model
In the incorporation of new technology in the organizational system, we followed
Lewin’s model of change. According to Lewin, motivation for the change should be generated
before occurring the change. One should be re-examining various cherished assumptions
regarding oneself and one’s relations with others (Van der Voet and Vermeeren 2017). This
model consists of three stages such as unfreeze, change and refreeze. In the unfreezing stage,
one is supposed to prepare the organization to accept the need for change breaking down the
prevalent status quo prior to building new way of operating (Walker et al.2015). In the stage of
change an organization is supposed to implement the change which takes a considerable amount

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of time and patience. In the unfreeze stage, the organization is supposed to refreeze through
consistent job descriptions, stable organizational chart and others. This ensures that the changes
are incorporated in the everyday business.
Having evaluated what we did to manage the change and resolve the conflict, I can say
that, there were lacks from our side since we did not communicate the change prior to its
incorporation which infuriated the staffs leading to conflict and uncontrollable behaviour. We
also did not assure them the need for the change and how is it going to benefit the organization
as a whole. Moreover, we did not provide any support material for the employees to adopt the
change. Hence, these were our drawbacks which we must keep in focus in the coming days. I
believe Lewin’s model of change would have been the best way to manage the change.
PART B- Recommendations and strategies
After evaluating the situation and the way we managed it, there can be some
recommendations to improve the strategies if such situations come in future. The
recommendations are as follows:
 The implementation of a new type of tool should be communicated to the employees.
Along with this, items as benefits, status, training and expectations should must be
provided clearly. The nature of change must be properly defined to the employees long
with how it can benefit the organization as a whole (Folger, Poole and Stutman 2017). It
will be done with varuous communication methods if such situation come again. There
will be open communication between the employees and the managers to know how they
see the situation.

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 After making the decision for change, the employees will be communicated about the
training on new technology that is supposed to take place. The new technology training
will consider few items as the staff skill set and experience, the complexity of the change,
the time taken to understand the changes and the amount of time given to learn
everything (Fernandez and Rainey 2017).Then trainers will work closely with the
technology managers in order to define the organizational goals. The target setting will
help the employees to reach the goal rapidly and efficiently. During the employee
training programs, success will also be defined and all the evaluations will be done for
determining whether training can lead to success from the standpoint of the employees.
The evaluations will be in survey form, group discussions or questionnaires(Walker et al.
2015). These evaluations will be extremely crucial for redesigning and improving the
training being a part of training plan.
 The trainability of the employees will also be taken into consideration. This is
something often overlooked by the organizations. Since we could not make a training
assessment plan before, this time we will focus on this aspect too (Chaudhry and Asif
2015). The organization will take training sessions to evaluate the improvement and the
gaps.
 In terms of handling the conflict, a proposal will be created next time which will be
reviewed and approved before the work starts. The preparation will also include the
estimated and the contingency costs (Cameron and Green 2015). In order to resolve the
conflict, the new process or operation must need to satisfy the departmental needs and
priorities. Hence, the selection of the change will be done in a sincere way taking
consent of people.

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 Since, the conflict initiated due to the incorporation of new technology, and not
considering the generational concerns, this aspect will be given more focus. In a
workplace, there will; be diversification of staffs. There are some generational
differences too which will be taken into consideration and special trainings will be
provided to them (Becker et al. 2016).The millennial group is considered to be most up
graded technologically. This group will be given extra focus as they can learn a new
process faster than other groups (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). They are pretty
comfortable with e-Learning format , virtual training processes, Skype and others.
Conclusion
Hence, from the above discussion, it can be said that management of conflict is an
extremely difficult and crucial process in the organizational management. In my case
organization, I have depicted conflict initiating from the incorporation of new technology. I have
described various frameworks related to the topic exploring the existing literature. Lastly, I have
reflected critically recommending how such situations will be handled in future.

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