Discussion and 6-10 page paper

Resistance and Communication

Monieke Woods

HRM 560

Dr. Beck

5/28/17

The most baffling and intractable issue which executives of the business usually face is resistance for change. It may take a number of forms ranging from increase in the number of job quits, persistent output reduction, requests for transfers, sullen hostility and slowdown strikes among others. It has been noted that the most common reasons for resistance for change is actually fear for the change (Tailby, 2015). This include fear for not being able to perform well enough or fear of unknown and uncertainty. It is challenging for any given organization to evade change since new ideas usually promote growth for their members and the company as whole. Change normally occurs for various reasons such as increase or decrease in funding, new staff roles, new technology acquisition, new vision, mission and goals among others.

Resistance to change in an organization is caused by various factors such as poor communication whereby news regarding change are most of the time spread through the hierarchy and details are at times skewed thus members end up receiving second-hand, inaccurate information. Thus poor communication can end up causing resistance to change. Another factor that may cause resistance to change is self-interest. Ego at times interferes with ability to adapt to a certain change. Some individual want to maintain the status quo to better progress their own agendas while others have different motives. At the end, staffs acting in their own self-interest rather than organization’s good will and therefore resist to change (Dutta, 2012).

Additionally, when organization fails to accommodate employees regarding matters of the organization and the same employees happen to hear of a sudden change, they might end up resisting as they may feel excluded from decision making process. Since change calls for mastering of new skills, resistance is inevitable especially when it’s a matter of new technology and therefore organization can prevent this resistance by offering training and education to employees.

A better way to ensure an easy and smooth transition when implementing a change within an organization is by ensuring that you have a wide knowledge of the staffs who are going to be directly or indirectly affected by that change and know the best means to relay the information to them. A better way to ensure that one have the knowledge of how the staffs could respond would simply be to sit down with their managers and get to know a little bit of employees background at hand to ensure a better and easy transition (Stonehouse 2013).

At one point entire management will have an opportunity to sit down with their direct players and formulate the most suitable action plan. First the management will need to give out questionnaires to their staffs to find out which benefits are most essential to them. In addition, the employees will be asked to give the rate value to which they would prefer the benefits be paid. From that information, the organization is able to get the census of what majority of staffs at hand would prefer and from that point they will be able to make applicable changes. After deciding what exactly transitions will take place within a company, it is important to get something visual for all staffs affected to see. Provision of these details to them will give them a chance to do accurate research and gather the required information during the initial meetings allowing them to know what will occur, together with option to take information with them at home for discussion and review. Finally, when all information is reviewed and the involved parties show a clear understanding of the changes at hand, the transition may be implemented without fear of any resistance (Cornescu & Adam, 2016).

Resistance to change is directly related to communication since no any transition that may occur without information being passed. The degree of resistance to change will vary depending on how the information was passed. If communication was made effectively with participating parties having been involved, then the degree for resistance to transition may be low or even none (Cornescu & Adam, 2016). Effective communication will be ideal in building a case in an environment where there is a widespread belief of a change in bringing positive organization transformation. A two-way communication is the best and every party need to produce feedback to better understand how the information was received.

Dutta, (2012) suggest that selecting the best communication strategies for your organization helps in eliminating a number of barriers which may result in several issues affecting organization such as resistance to change among others. Effective communication however, depends on defining clearly the objectives of the message, taking into the account on the needs of receiver or employees at our case, selecting the best mode and method of communicating, awareness of how noise can distort the message and finally ensuring a chance or feedback is given to clarify message understanding.

An organization may wish to communicate certain values and cultures of their organization. These may include aspect of high level customer service, ethical and responsible behavior of employees among others. I would recommend underscore and explore approach to communication since all the aspects will be trapped hence positive response towards employee work behavior will be observed. When communication role changes in an organization, changes to tools or systems that employees use on daily basis are also affected and direct supervisors are found to be the most effective to implement change due to their relationship with the employees. It is recommended that when a key message is developed, it should be tested with employees and it should be done informally either on one or during selected staff meetings. The organization should make sure that they get some of their employee’s reactions suspected to be amongst the most hard to win over. Their ideas should be solicited regarding changing the entire message or part of it. Permitting these staffs to shape their message will achieve two goals; one, it will improve one’s message by likely making it more success, and two, by making one’s harshest critics likely to feel as part of the communication process thus bringing them on board. A follow-up is needed when the communication cycle is complete. It should be structured so that one can capture how he message was emotionally received as well as how its consent was well understood. In case an audit is not accepted, one may want to conduct another communication wave (Tailby, 2015).

According to Stonehouse (2013), it’s very important for any given organization to plan for its new projects and initiative. This would give access to the best practices when communication about change in an organization. First, the company should use the preferred senders to convey information within an organization. Benchmarking research reveals that staffs normally prefers to hear messages from two different people within the organization in order to validate that information. Answering the questions on why the change is happening and the risks associated with not changing are too critical issues that also need to be addressed. Senior leaders should focus on the future vision and therefore the reason to why the change is occurring should be repeated throughout the project. Also on how the employee will benefit from that initiative should be addressed to avoid any chances of resistance and as a result, the project may gain support from the employees (Tailby, 2015).

References

Cornescu, V., & Adam, R. (2016). Organizational Change — Managing Employees Resistance. Challenges, Performances and Tendencies in Organisation Management, 381-389. doi:10.1142/9789814656023_0042

Dutta, M. (2012). Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Change. doi:10.5703/1288284314647

Stonehouse, D. (2013). Resistance to change: the organisation dimension. British Journal of Healthcare Assistants, 7(3), 150-151. doi:10.12968/bjha.2013.7.3.150

Tailby, S. (2015). Employee Representation. Managing Human Resources, 289-313. doi:10.1002/9781119208235.ch14