Essay Sample on Engaging the Organization in the Change Process

Introduction

Change is inevitable. However, for effective change to occur, proper communication should be in place (Barrett, 2002). In fact, many change attempts usually fail because of a lack of effective communication with key stakeholders such as the employees (Mellahi & Wilkinson, 2004). As a human resource manager in the given scenario, there are some communication strategies I would employ to ensure that the proposed change is communicated effectively to the employees. First, in appreciation of the fact that the management already knows what they need to achieve but perhaps do not know to get there, I would suggest a change process. In this case, the appropriate change process would be Lewin's model. Lewin's change model follows three simple steps of unfreezing (dislodging beliefs and assumptions of the employees), change and refreezing (locking and protecting the achieved change) (Kaminski, 2011). I would prefer Lewin's change process because it is simpler and "useful for communicating the overall change process to participants" (Mahato, 2015).

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Having identified the change process that guides communication to the employees, the next thing to do is to select a communication channel, and in this case, face to face announcement is suitable. This is because such a channel allows the management to get out messages in a timely fashion, build in opportunities for two-way communication that can help convey empathy (a crucial communication component in this scenario) (Beatty, 2015). In fact, conveying empathy alongside such a message of laying off employees will be crucial in showing sincerity in why the action had to be taken. It also allows employees to exchange directly with management and have their concerns addressed. Also, by involving employees and the managers, the face to face communication engages two critical components of communication (sender and receiver). An example of the message to be delivered to employees is given below.

"Greetings our ever committed employees. Our company is currently under a deep financial crisis as the overall economy is entering a depression. There has been decreased demand for our products and as a result, costs have exceeded profits because of low turnover. We have tried our best but unfortunately, the high costs of running the business have to come down if we are to survive such tough times. The only option we have is to retrench some of our employees (20%). We regret losing our hard-working employees, but for the company to survive we have been forced to undertake this step. We pray for your understanding. Kindly do bear with us. Thank you."

References

Barrett, D. J. (2002). Change communication: using strategic employee communication to facilitate major change. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 7(4), 219-231.

Beatty, C. A. (2015). Communicating During an Organizational Change. Organization Studies, 15(3), 337-352.

Kaminski, J. (2011). Theory applied to informatics-Lewin's change theory. Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, 6(1).

Mahato, M. (2015). Organizational Change: An Action Oriented Toolkit. South Asian Journal of Management, 22(4), 197.

Mellahi, K., & Wilkinson, A. (2004). Organizational failure: a critique of recent research and a proposed integrative framework. International Journal of Management Reviews, 5(1), 21-41.