The rate of organizational change has accelerated dramatically over the past 2 years due to COVID-19 pandemic. Changes and uncertainty has started swirl inside and outside the workplace. Most of the organizations inclined towards remote working culture. In other situations, top management trying to manage such changes. Employees are unhappy by such changes due to less productive. Consistently incorporating changes has become key survival for any organizations, therefore organizations are under tremendous pressure to initiate and bring organizational changes. Changes process are pretty challenging and most of the organizations are facing challenges to incorporate change because of employees often generate sense of fear and assume that the introduction of changes as an unfair means. Hence, they generate negative attitude and behave opposite reactions towards change which is known as resistance to change. Based on the above discussion, it can be said that the success of change whole and sole depends on shaping employee’s attitudes towards change which means coping with Resistance to Change or motivating the employees ready to change. Some recent studies suggest that the importance of organizational justice practices in shaping employee response toward change. In current scenario, changes for organizations are mandatory. Organizations are aware of the need to keep update as per current change demands. If the change is not being managed properly in the organization, it will impact on organization’s productivity. Every change faces a lot of resistance and conflicts between employees and organizations. The most important things to manage and resistance in a positive manner. If conflicts arise within an organization, a lot of issues will arise that effects on organizational performance.
While most of the organizations assume that resistance would never occur, but it is very important to understand that resistance is a natural affective reaction for imbibing with change, and is necessary part of the learning process. It is important to understand why employees are resisting towards change and also important to understand the importance of change which allows organizations to sustain in market.
The present case discusses a reflection of psychological mind sets of employees who are not willing to accept any change or reluctance to change or resistance to change. A multi-national company XYZ is a British Software company with approximately 1400 employees which is facing problems for the last one year’s due to technological change in environment. As a result, this environmental factor has started effecting on employee’s performance and productivity which were not up to the mark. They were assuming that technology would not intervene in their working style and organizational culture. But the reality was quiet different, top management of the XYZ company had started reinforcing to each and every employee to absorb new technology and accordingly they can improve their performance.
To bring changes in organization were not an easy task or we can say that successfully leading others through the change process is arduous task for management. Studies suggest that psychological aspects of employees like – some employees will always take change in a negative manner and also think imbibing changes bring great the loss of a familiar way of doing things. Secondly, employees who are comfortable depend on past experience may feel insecure knowing that they will need to inculcate new skills to move forward. One of the greatest challenge in front of top management was that some employees are reluctant to change or resist to change because they usually insecure that change will not result in any kind of development. Fourth, employees were also reluctant to change because they did not want to come out with comfort zone. Fifth, employees generally get stressed out due to the fear of the unknown. Despite of so many training programs employees were not able to cope up with technological skills.
To manage with such challenges top management decided that to recruit fresh candidates that are equipped with new technology or willing to learn new technology. Or they decided to prioritize those candidates with job experience in the tech savvy industry, assuming they would more likely to stay with organizations and would be significant contributors. They also decided to fire some employees who are under performer or average performer.
Q1. Discuss, the greatest challenge in front of XYZ company.
Q2. Suggest strategies how to inculcate technological change among employees?
Q3. Discuss recruitment of new employees is the only solutions?
JIMS, Kalkaji
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