Employee Engagement: Making Change. Possible. Andrew Neang IMT 581

Transcription

1 Employee Engagement: Making Change Possible Andrew Neang IMT 581

2 Problem Corporate change programs often fail because leaders do not fully engage employees in the process of design and implementation of the change. All too often, employees are told to accept change programs that they had no input into. The lack of employee participations results in views and concerns going unheard. No of sense ownership is generated among employees which causes change programs to fail due to lack of commitment to it. According to a 2006 McKinsey & Company survey of 1,546 business executives from around the world, asking them if they consider their change programs completely/mostly successful: only 30 percent agreed (Aiken, 2006). In contrasting these results with a research study by MJ Hudak & Associates that notes the top two reasons projects succeed are 1) executive support and 2) end user involvement. (Hudak, 2008). It highlights how executive support alone is not enough to implement a successful change initiative. Firms are not investing enough time and effort to discuss why change may be needed, the overall environment and strategic position that is driving such change with their employees. As result, employees don t see the point of the change and the uncertainty that it may bring only leads to resistance. Many firms have built flawed change programs since they do not address employee engagement in an in-depth manner. They fail to strike a proper balance between Top-Down and Bottom-Up management approaches to change. Leaders are force feeding change to employees without providing them an opportunity to allow helping establish both workable detail and effective implementation (Browne, 2006). Companies overlook the notion that it is the employees who have a vested interest in contributing to the change programs that are most enthusiastic about seeing it succeed. Failing to have a framework in place that engages employees and allows them to have part in the decision making process, will only make it harder for corporate change programs to succeed.

3 What is Employee Engagement? Employee Engagement refers to a workplace policies and practices designed to ensure that employees understand their role in their organization, committed to their organization strategic goals and values, motivated in findings ways to contribute to contribute to their organization success and are able to enhance their own of sense of well-being (Irvine, 2009). The policies and practices of employee engagement strive to create an emotional bond between that of the employee and the organization through communication, empowerment, rewards, recognition, and compensation linked to implementation objectives. Why does engaging employees matter? Engaging employees is a crucial issue if organizations want to succeed in implementing change programs in areas such as business processes, organizational structure and behavior to meet the increasing challenges brought on by internal and external forces. Change in an organization can t be implemented by management alone. Employees are the other half the equation as they will be the ones at heart of the change. Engaging employees benefits the organization in four ways: 1) Personal Investment A. Engaged employees bring a willingness to invest themselves in an organization which include: time, energy, skills, attention and knowledge. 2) Focus A. Engaged employees are more motivated and focus in helping the organization achieve their goals. 3) Enthusiasm A. Engaged employees have a passionate desire to contribute to organizations success.

4 4) Synergy A. Engaged employees are aligned with the organizations strategic vision and active participates with people across the organization (Levinson, 2009). By engaging employees in the process about how to solve problems and achieve overall goals it creates greater ownership, accountability and better, more practical ideas that are in the interest of the organization. High employee engagement has shown tremendous benefits for organizations such as Apple. Steve Jobs stepped back into Apple and focused the company on only few key breakthrough products such as the ipod, itunes and the iphone. The successful implementation of changing the organization s focus to these innovative products was facilitated by employees carrying out the change were engaged in the process and bought into the strategy and tactics laid out my management (Kanazawa, 2004). Situations such as when organization implements new technology and systems highlight how important engaging employee is vital to the success of the change. For example, an ERP implementation brings tremendous changes to an organization in terms of business processes and report structure. Employees are the key drivers in an ERP implementation and ensuring that they are engaged is vital since they are the process owners, software users and administrators of the ERP software (Nickmutt, 2009). If the organization were to fail in conveying their strategic goal and rationale as to why the benefit the organization and its users, the change initiative would fail and be detrimental for the business. Recommendations Building employee engagement requires management to be open and encourage participation and communication among employees. Furthermore, a system of rewards and incentives must be in place to let employees understand that what they do matters.

5 Communicate Convey strategic goals, rationale and overall direction of change. There must be compelling story of sorts that stakeholders can understand the point behind the change and agree with it Communicate constantly to reinforce need for change Use multiple communication channels to send out message such as websites, newsletters, social networking sites, etc Clarify any inaccurate information immediately so that employees are not confused or think that you may be hiding something (Beaman, 2006) Be a Role Model Leaders should take action that role model the desired change and mobilize a group of influential leaders to drive change in the organization. Specifically, choose delegates from the workforce to relay the message to staff, who may more receptive an explanation from someone on the ground rather than from management Provide Rewards and Incentives Establishing a peer-to-peer recognition program enables teammates to recognize one another by reinforcing behaviors reflecting your organization s vision and culture Leaders should recognize employee efforts at meetings or personally Surveys and Interviews Conduct surveys and interviews to determine employee views and needs. Conduct surveys to assess successes and problems (Guy, 2006)

6 Concluding Remarks Organizations must continue to refine their policies and practices towards employee engagement to ensure organizational changes can be achieved. In order to succeed in the long term, organizations must try to build a culture of engagement as oppose to only engaging employees when a new change initiatives come up. By having such a culture in place employees will be much more motivated to accept, take part in and understand why change in the organization is necessary. For many organizations, change is often made only when a problem occurs and engaging employees to support change immediately is not healthy. Choosing to engage employee continuously builds a strong relationship that shows commitment to one another and leads to overall commitment of the organization. Avoiding pitfalls such as poor communication with employees, offering unclear rationale for change and lack of leadership support to name a few is critical to avoid issues like resistance. Ultimately, employee engagement is a vital issue in change management due to employees being important component in making organizational change possible. From attempting optimizing organizational effectiveness to improving overall profits, ensuring employees understand and have a desire to take part will ensure making the change possible.

7 Works Cited Aiken, C., & Scott, K. (2009). The irrational side of change management. The McKinsey Quarterly, Beaman, K., & Guy, G. (2006, Effecting Change in Business Enterprise. Retrieved from Browne, N. (2006). Leading Change Guidelines for Managers. Retrieved from Irvine, D. (2009). The Employee Engagement Network. Retrieved from Employee Engagement: Isern, J., & Pung, C. (June 2006). Organizing for successful change management: A McKinsey global survey. The McKinsey Quarterly. Kanazawa, M. (2008). People Don't Hate Change, They Hate Corporate Change Programs. Executive Matters, Levinson, E. (2009). Why employee engagement amtters. Retrieved from Interaction Associates: Neville, B. (2008). Communicate Change. Retrieved from mjhudak: nickmutt. (2009). ERP Implementation and Change Management. Retrieved from CIO.com: