Managing Change at Faslane free essay sample

Source: Julia Belogun Veronica Hope Hailey As indicated above, the changes at Faslane took place in several fronts simultaneously such as People, organisational structures, systems, etc. The following examples can be extracted from the case study to reinforce my reasoning as given above; Organisational changes ? Structural change o Trimming down the management layers from seven to four. o Transforming the organization structure from functional to bureaucratic. ? Leadership change o Handing over the management of Faslane to BNS by the MOD o Reducing the entire management team from 250 to 125 and to current level of 12. Appointing a lesser number of senior managers with change management experience as opposed to a fleet of managers without any know-how. ? Strategic and re-engineering change o Re-designing the approval obtaining mechanism to consume a maximum of six days reducing from 56 days by removing unwanted review points. ? Fundamental and incremental change o Willingness of the MOD to reduce costs and enhance service levels. o Improve and enhance the operational and decision making process Systems changes ? Process oriented change Prior to change, people focused on buildings and infrastructure overlooking the service aspect, now the focus has shifted to delivering a quality service from buildings and infrastructure. Changes involving people ? Changes involving people came about by way of changing the attitudes and behaviour of people to achieve efficiency and performance improvement. This was automatically triggered as a result of other changes that took place in the organisation in terms of organisational and system changes. 2. 0 The change style of John Howie and the role he plays in the process of change tends to take the form of a Transformational leader. John Howie demonstrate most, if not all of the special attributes of a Transformational Leader, which are listed below, ? go beyond the day today management problems. ? Commit people to action and focus. ? Commitment to achieve future goals. ? Provides vision to transform the future. These characteristics are evident from his approach and initiatives throughout his stint of change management in the organization. They include, ? Getting the services from personal from BNS who has exposure to change. ? Getting people from the organization to volunteer to give change ideas. Cost reduction by creating awareness among the employees. ? Organizational Procedures/processes changes. ? Changing the responsibility and accountability structure of the senior management. ? Customer service level enhancement through changing the focus. ? Liaising with external parties to ensure the smooth functioning of the organization. 3. 0 It is of vital importance for the success of any change management proces s to pull the correct levers for change at the correct paradigm of time. As such, when analysing the case, one could observe several types of levers for change were utilized. They are; ? Commitment: communication, participation and involvement of the people who are subject to change would eliminate any fear of change. ? Customer service: tilting focus of employees from buildings and infrastructure to providing an excellent customer service. ? Changing procedures: changing existing procedures that could be an obstacle to the change process. ? Involvement: encourage the involvement of all stakeholders concerned with the process of change. Organisational structural: layoff of the cumbersome functional organisational change structure from seven layers to a more bureaucratic Structure with only four layers. ? Resourcing: Getting right people to right jobs either by external sources (new recruitments) or by the existing staff cadre. Other levers for change that can be used are; ? Performance management : introduction of performance or contribution related pay schemes. Measurement: to determine how well an employee is carrying out the required task. ? Teamwork: Team performance management by way of rewarding the best team effort. 4. 0 ? BNS may face with rising political pressure as a result of questions raised in the minds of both public and politicians alike, as to how greatly reduced cost has compromised the national security and how changing important procedures (to raise customer service standards) concerning a Naval base supporting the nations nuclear deterrent would affect the national security. Unemployment in the Dunbartonshire area may rise due to huge layoffs and voluntary redundancy plans. Therefore, former employees might have to resort for help from social welfare services which in turn would mount pressure on public to demonstrate wide spread protests against the new management of the Naval base. ? The condition of the buildings and infrastructure of the naval base may deteriorate due to partial or total negligence on part of the employees as the new management has an increased emphasis on shifting the focus of the employees in delivering an excellent customer service over the maintenance of same. . 0 It is clearly evident looking at the facts and figures that the change management process is a success. Targeted goals are achieved surpassing by huge margins well before the targeted time frames, targeted levels of service are met satisfactorily and transformation of people in the organization has lead leaders to manage people and teams to get more responsibility of their teams (Accountability and teamwork). Conclusion Managing the change process effectively is of vital importance for success of same. Applying the correct levers for change and using the correct change agents are of equal importance. Implementing change in the organization has successfully taken place as a result of motivating the employees to take part in the change process, by managing the process, by building stability in to new structures and processes and by shaping the political dynamics of change (Nadler and Tushman, 1980). Reference Amstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong’s HandBook of Human Resource Management Practice Mullins, L. J. (2005). Management and Organisational Behaviour