Describe Change Management, and why you think employees may resist it. Provide specific examples of how you, as part of the Management team at a healthcare company, can positively impact change management and create buy-in from your staff.

Change Management is a tool used by managers in organizations to ensure the smooth transitioning of the organization and its people from one point to another during change. In other words, it is simply the management of change.

In life as in organizations, change is an eventuality therefore unavoidable, what is, avoidable is the loss of personnel and/or organizational cohesion due to change; hence the mastering of change management processes is now a must have skill in the array of today’s manager. 

Change is a deep complex psychological event and it happens for various reasons, here are some of the reasons that precipitate change Deregulation, Foreign Competition, Depressed World markets, (Elliot, 1990)

There are a myriad of reasons why employees may resist change, some are:

1., 

In a situation where change may lead to streamlining of jobs and employee may loose his/her job, the employee may resist change. Even in some instances act to protect themselves from a perceived threat for example workers in Bethlehem Steel where the organization cut 50,000 staff in 7years, many of the remaining salaried workers joined the United Steel Of America (Elliot)

2.

How Change is communicated can affect outcomes, the mere suggestion of change can often prompt negative reactions and feelings—even if change hasn’t taken hold yet (Wainger, 2016). This may be as a result of bad past experience of the employees.

3.

Lack of engagement with employees by the management. Employees are stakeholders as well, if they are not carried along during the change process; there may be resistance.

4.

“Misunderstanding and lack of trust. Peo- ple also resist change when they do not under- stand its implications and perceive that it might cost them much more than they will gain.

5.

Parochial self-interest. One major reason people resist organizational change is that they think they will lose something of value as a result” (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008)

6.

Employees may be afraid the possibility that the change would usher in a new era wheretheir skills are no longer useful and there is need to learn new sills that they might be unable to master, thereby making them redundant.

7.

Negative crowd opinion, in the case where many employees have a bad opinion about a change, chances are they would infect the other employees who in turn may succumb without asking for clarification.

If I were a part of a management team at a healthcare company, I would implement some of Kotter and Schlesinger’s response to change resistance and they are: 1. Education and communication- One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it before-hand. 2. Participation and Investment- increases commitment level of employees during the implementation of the change. 3. Facilitation and Support- carries employees along though may be time consuming and expensive if it requires training. 

 I was once a part of a door-to-door Polio vaccination team, we were to work for 3 months and we got paid daily, irrespective of the number of kids vaccinated/attended to by each official. This somehow generated a lackadaisical attitude towards work, I for one set quotas for myself daily and beat it, by week three I was made the leader of a team of five and told to show them my method with hope of replication. This led to grumbling amongst the other four, after explaining repeatedly how I achieved my high numbers by going into the low-income neighborhoods and where homeless people were congregated, no increase was achieved. I provided transportation from out of pocket to encourage them going into those areas but no changes still. I was forced to apply Kotter’s less tasteful option for responding to resistance “Explicit + implicit coercion”.

From start of month two we were paid in teams, where the team lead logs and signs against the days worked, so I attached a minimum number of vaccinations for each member of my team as work done before I will sign. This had their attention and number of kids vaccinated increased. To be fair, the system was flawed from its foundations and this response can cause employees to loose loyalty/interest or even quit altogether, hence it should not be applied lightly.

“Lead the change, don’t manage it. People want to be led through change not managed through it” (Pennington, 2017) because successful change requires both leadership and management.

Reference 

                   Elliot, R., D. (1990). The Challenges Of Managing Change. Personnel Journal 69 (3) Pp 40 Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/accountingtaxbanking/docview/219770816/abstract?source=fedsrch&accountid=34773

                    Kotter, J. P. & Schlesinger, L., A. (2008). Choosing Strategies for Change Pp2-10 Harvard Business Review Retrieved from http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sdpfellowship/files/day3_2_choosing_strategies_for_change.pdf?m=1444230821

                     Pennington R. (2017, July 12th) Change Your Culture, Change Your Result Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/change-your-culture-chang_b_10931010.html

                     Wainger, L (2016, April 18) 5 Change Management Lessons from Mac and Cheese Huffington Post