Change Plan
Organizational and Environmental Pressures
The environmental pressures that Alphabet Inc. faces include political interference with organizational policies, government bureaucracy, and harsh competition from other companies in the information technology (IT) industry. Alphabet Inc.’s environmental performance has not been sufficiently satisfactory for the government. Hardware disposal methods are not regarded as efficient, which poses a great challenge in terms of compliance with environmental conservation standards and policies mandated by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and other environment watchdogs (Awasthi et al., 2019). Additionally, Alphabet Inc. is expected by the federal government to share client and employee information. Although the company highly prioritizes client privacy, it is sometimes forced to provide some confidential information to federal agencies, which significantly reduces customer faith in the company. Internally, cases of harassment and gender discrimination have been raised by employees. Unfortunately, the main perpetrators of the offences are leaders. Another pressure is competition in which rival organizations apply aggressive strategies that significantly make Alphabet Inc. to be highly innovative to survive.
These pressures have affected the organization through reduced employee performance, government lawsuits, and low overall organizational performance. Victims of sexual harassment have sometimes gone to court, which has brought out an unethical image of the company on the eyes of stakeholders such as clients. Additionally, the company has lost some of its talented employees who significantly contributed to its productivity. The issue of inappropriate waste disposal has painted a bad image of company in regard to environment conservation initiatives. The most crucial pressures that have to be addressed immediately include harassment and discrimination, compliance with government policies on waste disposal, and establishment of effective strategies to increase the company’s productivity and competitiveness. Failure to address harassment issues increases employee turnover rates, which will in turn increase recruitment and training costs (Awasthi et al., 2019). Besides, employees would go to court to get justice thereby depicting a bad image of the company among its stakeholders. Furthermore, failure to comply with government regulation on electronic waste disposal will not only attract hefty fines but also make the company appear careless in regard to environmental protection agendas, which will in turn lead to cancellation of some of its crucial operations. Further afield, if the pressure of competitiveness is not addressed, Alphabet Inc. will be outcompeted with its rivals to the extent that it will no longer be profitable.
Change Vision
Change Vision Statement: To be a listening organization that promptly addresses all your
needs.
Issues Identified
Our stakeholders form an important part of our team. Any problem that they encounter directly affects how we deliver our products and services. As your listening partner, we have identified many issues that had been raised and wish to address them in a timely fashion. Alphabet recognizes the efforts that our employees, suppliers, community members, and regulators in making the world a better place. While this fact is at the core of our operations, we also carry out regular environmental assessments to identify the problems that they encounter. Political and legal pressure, for example, affects the degree to which authorities define out activities. In this respect, we have encountered challenges arising from stringent hardware disposal rules, customer privacy, taxation, and pressure from trade unions. As a result, we have laid out a plan to address all the concerns voiced by all these stakeholder groups.
Vision Plan
In the next two months, we will roll out a program to improve our employees’ working conditions. This effort will include providing competent compensation packages, promoting diversity and inclusivity in the workplace, and improving their skills through periodical training and development programs. Employees will also not only be allowed to join trade unions but they will be given opportunities for career progression. To meet our regulators’ demand, we will comply with all the environmental laws by introducing proper sustainability standards. Additionally, we hope to express our readiness to comply with all the tax and business regulations. Finally, we believe in giving back to the society. Therefore, Alphabet will allocate funds annually towards corporate social responsibility programs. These initiatives will go a long way in empowering community members who form an important part of our team. These CSR initiatives will, for instance, be meant to support their small and medium enterprises, education, and infrastructure development. We apologize for any inconveniences that we have done to you and hope to build a stronger partnership from now going forward.
Lewin’s Change Model
Lewin’s change model will be applied to implement the new changes. The model applies social-psychological input to implement changes by manipulating human behaviors appropriately to bring a dynamic balance of driving and restraining forces respectively (Hussain et al., 2018). The imbalance that arises between opposition to change or problem agents and the restraining forces that need the changes is addressed by effectively making the driving forces agree and be satisfied with the changes due to the manner in which it is implemented. The model consists of three phases namely unfreezing, moving, and the refreezing phases respectively.
Unfreezing
The unfreezing phase is where the change vision will be introduced to all the affected stakeholders who are mainly company employees. At this stage, an evaluation of the resistance to change is done to determine the sources of resistance and reasons for resisting the change (Hussain et al., 2018). Effective leaders will be assigned the role of leading the change in which they work towards increasing group activities for change to reduce resistance levels among employees.
Change Transition
The change transition phase is where the actual implementation of the change is done. It includes strategic planning of all the activities involved in the change process, and effective communication and engagement of all employees (Hussain et al., 2018). All affected employees who are executives will be informed of the need to embrace an ethical culture at the workplace through meetings, workshops, and open discussion forums. Other employees will also be informed about the newly applied technologies and diversified products to increase the company’s performance and competitiveness. It is crucial to give employees moral support and encouragement so that they can cooperate and comply with the change process. As such, representatives of the main teams will take the role of guiding and supporting their colleagues so as to make employees identified with and feel like part of the change process.
Refreezing
In the refreezing phase, the implemented changes are evaluated to assess the extent to which they have been accepted by employees and other relevant stakeholders. It is crucial to conduct activity planning, change management system, and commitment planning so as to establish an effective reinforcement and monitoring system (Hussain et al., 2018). The selected representatives of each team will be tasked with the responsibility of appropriately integrating components of the change tasks, and coordinating their teams to effectively embrace the changes. The representatives will provide inspiration and encouragement to their teams by exemplifying the changes. Bottom up and open communication will be emphasized to encourage employees to give their feedback or report cases of non-compliance so that appropriate measures and interventions can be taken on a timely manner.
Potential Resistance from Stakeholders
Resistance to change is one of the leasing factors that can derail or hamper the change management process. Resistance may stem from different stakeholder groups, such as shareholders, employees, suppliers, or customers. Identifying each of the stakeholders’ concerns is critical in managing potential resistance from them. Shareholders, for example, may resist change because the proposals require channeling a lot of financial resources. For instance, allocating funds to improve the company's operational efficiency may translate to less profits on their side. As a result, they may object to the implementation of the change.
Corporate managers and executives may also resist the change efforts out of fear of losing their power and status. For instance, if the change agenda requires structural readjustments and changes in the company’s departments and processes, they may resist it because of fear that many heads will roll. Similarly, employees may resist the change if they believe that it will result in job insecurity (Damawan & Azizah, 2020). Some workers also fear change because they fear being transferred to other departments or taking up new roles that they are not trained to execute. To address these problems, a communication plan will be developed to gain stakeholders’ confidence in the change efforts. This will be followed by a training initiative to mentally prepare and familiarize employees with the new operational environment and system. Furthermore, a motivational program will be introduced to award stakeholders who cooperate and embrace the change agenda (Damawan & Azizah, 2020). Finally, all the stakeholders will participate in the change process so that they can be satisfied that their views were taken into account.
References
Awasthi, A. K., Li, J., Koh, L., & Ogunseitan, O. A. (2019). Circular economy and electronic waste. Nature Electronics, 2(3), 86-89.
Damawan, A. H., & Azizah, S. (2020). Resistance to Change: Causes and Strategies as
an Organizational Challenge. In 5th ASEAN Conference on Psychology, Counselling, and
Humanities (ACPCH 2019) (pp. 49-53). Atlantis Press.
Hussain, S. T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M. J., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. (2018). Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 3(3), 123-127.
bwilly
changeplan.docx
0
