Interestingly, even positive changes can be challenging to manage since employees need to make changes and adjustments in their work habits.
Obstacles to Change
While every change is different, the typical obstacles to change usually include some of the following:
- Employee resistance. This can sometimes be due to a lack of understanding of what is driving the change and the immediate or long-term benefits of making a change.
- Employee morale issues. Often times these are due to fear of how the change may affect them personally.
- Communication breakdown. This can include the full spectrum of communication issues, from no communication whatsoever to excessive communication that leads to confusion and frustration.
- Insufficient or lack of training. Changing processes, work habits, or policies often requires significant employee re-training.
- Employee turnover. Even though change may be beneficial to the organization, some employees will feel their values are no longer aligned with the company values, and decide to leave.
- Budget restraints. Significant changes in an organization can sometimes bear a heavy upfront cost, despite their long-term potential to save money.
The Manager’s Role in Managing Change
While successful change implementation requires buy-in and support at all levels throughout an organization, first line managers in particular play a significant part in ensuring the triumph of change initiatives. This is partly because of their relationship with their individual teams, and partly because they can drive operational change in a very hands-on and involved way.
In dealing with the obstacles mentioned above, this is what managers can do to address them in a very direct way:
- Employee resistance. To address employee resistance, managers can explain the rationale behind change initiatives and highlight immediate and long-term benefits for the organization at large and the employees themselves.
- Employee morale issues. By addressing concerns, questions and anticipating employees’ fears, managers can help improve morale during difficult transition times. Building the relationship with employees can also help in this area, as employees will feel more comfortable voicing their concerns if they have a good working relationship with their managers and peers.
- Communication breakdown. Communication – clear, concise, timely – is a crucial component of any change initiative, and can have a huge impact on its success or failure. Communicating key information in a timely manner, providing feedback to upper management, and addressing questions and conflicts right away can make a world of a difference during the implementation phase.
- Insufficient or lack of training. Providing training, feedback, and supervising employees to ensure adherence to new processes are all key ingredients and represent a key part of a manager’s responsibilities.
- Employee turnover. Managers should continuously gauge their team members’ motivation and loyalty, to ensure turnover is kept at reasonable levels. While some people have a difficult time accepting change, with appropriate coaching and attention, they too can be retained, even though they may require more work on the manager’s part at the beginning.
- Budget restraints. To ensure budgets are appropriate, managers should ideally provide input into budget discussions and give feedback along the way to upper management, letting them know of any budgetary concerns and possible solutions.
As managers consider these challenges and their role in overcoming them, they also need to look for support from other internal or external resources. Training and Organizational Development specialists, for example, can be very effective not only in training managers themselves on how to manage change, but also in conducting team building events or focus group sessions to gather feedback on how change initiatives are progressing.
Sources:
Kotter, John P., and Leonard A. Schlesinger. "Choosing Strategies for Change". Harvard Business Review (July/August 2008)
Society for Human Resource Management. "2007 Change Management Survey Report”. www.shrm.org (April 2007)
Iulia Mihai - Iulia Mihai is a Vancouver-based Human Resources Manager, management coach and freelance writer. Originally from Romania, her passion for ...
