Today’s changing demographics, globalization, and technology have led to a dynamic and competitive workforce. Individuals have distinct learning styles, personality types, and temperaments. These three components create a learning profile that affects daily working relationships. Because learning profiles differ from individual to individual, developing a dynamic learning team can be a great challenge for an organization.
Development of Human Capital Brings About Change
Organizations are also confronted with the challenge of aligning their business activities and objectives with the management of its workforce, or human capital. It is essential for an organization to bring together its fundamental business activities and objectives with its expectations from human capital in order to realize an integrated plan for training requirements.
Reisistance to Change Presents New Challenges
Employees may resist an organization’s training and development initiatives because such initiatives bring about change. Change generally implies innovation, the basic sense of introducing something new into the organization’s environment.
Organizational change in the sense of improvement refers to activities intended to strengthen and develop the performance of the organization and its employees.
Managing Resistance to Change
Resistance to change that is brought about by an organization’s training and development initiatives is common. Many change management concepts result in cosmetic unsustainable transformation rather than the desired durable change. Before change is implemented, there is a need to verify its suitability, to gain insight into the problems likely to be encountered during execution.
To ensure sustainable organizational change and development, there needs to be clear guidelines and strategies to ensure continuous rather than episodic change. Top-down bottom-up communication is critical to the success of organizational change, as well as allowing the participation of employees. When employees feel part of the transition, they are more likely to be supportive of the change effort. Organizational Change and Development are vital concepts in the survival and good performance of any organization, and require an intimate and effective inter play among the structures, participants and processes pertaining to the organization.
By Shirley J. Caruso, M.A., Human Resource Development
It is very true that every organization must remain innovative in order to sustain success. As pointed out in the beginning of the article, people or human capital comes with different flavors. Not everyone learns with the same teaching style, and personalities and attitudes vary from adult to adult. On top of all of these challenges, many employees like to stick to what they know. It is definitely a key factor in success to make a team or employees feel as though they are part of the change before it occurs. Sometimes, getting feedback from employees through surveys or invitation for input before the actual change is implemented, allows the employees to feel like they are part of the organization and that their oppinion matters. This definitely helps ease the difficulty of change. With proper development and training change can be brought about successfully. So it is definitely important to manage resistance to change before it becomes a problem, and to implement change with proper training to ensure a smooth and successful transition.
Especially in encomic times such as these, companies are implementing new ideas to continue their growth. With that comes changes, for which many employees resist bcause they are afraid of what change will bring. It is important that companies allow their employees to give feedback on some of these changes, which will make the transition easier to digest. It also boosted the morale of the employees and makes for a collabortive workplace.
In our economy it is crucial for individuals to stay competitive by strengthening and building on the competencies they already possess. When an employee demonstrates an attitude of resistance or indifference it is saying to employers that the employee is afraid of change. I agree that because our economy is a little shaky and more companies are frequently making changes the best way to ease an employee’s concerns is by involving them in the changing process. They will feel more confident that they are an asset to the company rather feeling disposable.
I agree with the article that everyone has a different way of learning and not everyone should be excepted to learn on the same level. I also agree that change is very hard to accept because I’m going through that with my current position and somethings I just can’t agree with what they are asking of me however I know it is part of the change and where they are trying to move the department forward and how the article states that if you feel that the company is implementing the changes without meeting with the employees to get feedback on how they feel about the changes being made will sometimes make things a little harder to accept.
In today’s tough economy, organizations need to implement changes in order to “survive.” Change does not have to be a negative thing, on the contrary, change may represent growth and improvement. However, many employees are afraid of changes if they are not included in the transition process. If the employees are a part of the whole process, they will be more willing to “unfreeze” their old ways of doing things, change, and use newly acquired skills (“refreeze”).
Although a company may see resistance from its employees when implementing change, the company must do what is necessary to run at peak efficiency.
Although it’s not easy to change the environment that we work in, one should understand it’s for the success of the business. When adapting to change it’s easy for my co-receptionist to learn it much faster than I do. It depends on each individual how they take the change (positively or negatively). The change can be successful only with the proper development and training program.
In today’s business world it is necessary and crucial for organizations to implement changes. The article makes reference to the fact many organization’s employee’s may be resistant to change. That is why I feel one of the most important points is for organizations to include their employees in decision making and implementation of changes within the organization. I think doing this may help an organization ease into transitions.
Change is inevitable, but change is not determined by the state of our economy or other negative situations. Postive change MUST be reactive rather than proactive,”To ensure sustainable organizational change and development, there needs to be clear guidelines and strategies to ensure continuous rather than episodic change.” Trust is a factor that seems to be forgotten by todays organizations when implementing change. Trust needs to be established through employee engagement and involvement in order to develop change agents, ultimately making change easier for an organization.
Change is going to happen no matter what and communication is the key element in the process. Employees need to be involved early so they understand the reason for the change and how it will affect them. Employees need to know the plan and timing for changes and they need to be able to provide their input and feedback. For change to go smoothly and effectively, it needs to be a team effort.
In order for a company to achieve positive goals and create an efficient management atmosphere, there should be a strong communication skill and a solid existence of technology material in all departments. I totally agree with the points of the article above. These two lead the company to a great change. It is the organization’s responsibility to listen to the employees and involve them in many orientation and training programs, and it is the employee’s responsibility to determine the abilities and create good results to the organization. It should be a challenge.
I agree. Before a change is implemented into an organization, individuals must understand why the change is necessary. Also, employees should be completely involved in the change so that they feel better about it and more open to the change.
To bring changes in the buisness for its success can sometimes be tough for the employee. Change has to be well planned and involves team effort to be successful.
The article opens up by suggesting how everyone is unique hence everyone’s learning style is different. Further on, there is the idea about an organization’s plan for changes when innovation is present. I agree that there are many employees who are resistant to change and may find it harder to adjust than others. However, I think learning about the organization’s employee on a personal level can help better understand their individual learning styles, thus making them more susceptible to change.
Any change is allways met with doubt and apathy, and is not until we see that it indeed, is going to be good for us that we enbrace it. Sometimes we may wonder why the system that has worked so well has to be changed. .
I agree with this article because it states that everyone has a different learning profile and it is common that people can be resistant to change. With the economy being rather poor, companies are making changes a lot quicker than in the past and with good organizational development from management; change can be successful rather than stressful.
I also agree with this article, because different people hold different personality types, and temperaments. Therefore, not everyone learns the same, so organizations should have different learning styles. I also agree with the statement that if employees get a say in some of the changes with in the organizations, change can come easy to them. With that said, many people are not good with change but if they know or think they were part of the change, they might just welcome it instead of refusing it.
I completely agree with this article. What stands out to me the most is the top-down bottom-up communication concept. Many companies would not have close to the success they have without enforcing this concept to their culture. It is very important to make any employee part of a transition that directly affects them in order to avoid any resistance to change.
I agree. Change is going to happen no matter what. Businesses are trying to improve and expand. Communication is key on all levels, there needs to be trust in an organization. With today’s economy though, people should be aware that change is going to happen and there is not much we can do about it except keep our heads up high and hope for the best.