CHANGE & RELATED STRESS MANAGEMENT

CHANGE & STRESS

 

 

Whenever managers implement changes, they should be concerned about the stress they may be creating.

 

If the stress is significant enough, it may well cancel out the improvement that was anticipated from the change.

 

In fact, stress could result in the organization being less effective than it was before the change was attempted.

 

STRESS:

 

The bodily strain that an individual experiences as a result of coping wit some environmental factor is stress.

 

Hans Selye, an expert on this subject, said that Stress constitutes the factors affecting wear and tear on the body.

 

In organizations, this wear and tear is caused primarily by the body’s unconscious mobilization of energy when an individual is confronted with organizational or work demands.

 

Why Study Stress?

• Stress can have damaging psychological and physiological effects on employees’ health and on their contributions to organizational effectiveness. It can cause hear disease and it can prevent employees from concentrating or making decisions.

                                                                                                                                 

• Stress is a major cause of employee absenteeism and turnover. Certainly such factors severely limit the potential success of an organization.

 

• A stressed employee can affect the safety of other workers or even the public.

 

• Stress represents a very significant cost to organizations.

 

 

MANAGING STRESS IN ORGANIZATIONS:

 

Since stress is felt by all employees in the organizations, managers must do the following:

 

1. Understand how stress influences worker performance
2. Identify where unhealthy stress exists in organizations
3. Help Employees handle stress

 

Understand how Stress Influences Worker Performance:

To deal with stress among employees, managers must understand the relationship between the amount of stress felt by a worker and the impact on the worker’s performance.

 

Extremely high and extremely low levels of stress tend to have negative effects on production. While increasing stress tends to bolster performance up to some point, when the level of stress increases beyond that point, performance levels begin to deteriorate.

 

Certain amount of stress among employees is generally considered to be advantageous for the organization because it tends to increase productivity, however when the employees experience too much or too little stress, it is generally disadvantageous for the organization because it tends to decrease productivity.

 

 

SYMPTOMS OF UNHEALTHY STRESS IN ORGANIZATION:

 

Symptoms are as follows:

 

1.      Constant Fatigue

2.      Low Energy

3.      Moodiness

4.      Increased Aggression

5.      Excessive use of Alcohol

6.      Temper outbursts

7.      Compulsive Eating

8.      High Levels of Anxiety

9.      Chronic Worrying

 

A manager who observes one or more of these symptoms in employees should investigate to determine if those exhibiting the symptoms are indeed under too much stress. If so, the manager should try to help those employees handle their stress and/or should attempt to reduce stressors in the organization.

 

Helping Employees Handle Stress:

 

• Create an organization climate that is supportive of individuals.
• Make jobs interesting
• Decision and operate career counselling programs

Factors for Change Management

FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHANGING AN ORGANIZATION

 

The following factors should be considered whenever change is being contemplated:

 

1. The Change Agent
2. Determining What should be Changed
3. The kind of Change to Make
4. Individuals affected by the Change
5. Evaluation of the Change

 

THE CHANGE AGENT:

 

The change agent might be a self designated manager within the organization or an outside consultant hired because of a special expertise in a particular area.

 

This individual might be responsible for making very broad changes, like altering the culture of the whole organization; or more narrow ones, like designing and implementing a new safety program or a new quality program.

 

Special skills are necessary for success as a change agent. Among them are the ability to determine how a change should be made, the skill to solve change related problems, and facility in using behavioural science tools to influence people appropriately during the change process.

 

Perhaps the most overlooked skill of successful change agents, however, is the ability to determine how much change employees can withstand.

 

Managers should choose agents who have the most expertise in all these areas. A potentially beneficial change might not result in any advantages for the organization if a person without expertise in these areas is designated as a change agent.

 

 

DETERMINING WHAT SHOULD BE CHANGED:

 

Organizational effectiveness depends on 3 classes of factors:

1. People
2. Structure
3. Technology

 

People Factors are attitudes, leadership skills, communication skills, and all other characteristics of the human resources within the organization; Structural Factors are organizational controls, such as policies and procedures; and Technological Factors are any type of equipment or processes that assist organization members in the performance of their jobs.

 

For an organization to maximize its effectiveness, appropriate people must be matched with appropriate technology and appropriate structure.

 

 

THE KIND OF CHANGE TO MAKE:

Most changes can be categorized into one of the 3 kinds:

 

1. Technological
2. Structural
3. People

 

These 3 kinds of change correspond to the 3 main determinants of the organizational effectiveness – each change is named for the determinant it emphasizes.

 

STRUCTURAL CHANGE:

 

Structural change emphasizes increasing organizational effectiveness by changing controls that influence organization members during the performance of their jobs.

 

Structural change is aimed at increasing the organizational effectiveness through modifications to the existing organizational structure like:

 

1. Clarifying and Defining Jobs
2. Modifying Organizational Structure to fit the communication needs of the organization
3. Decentralizing the organization to reduce the cost of coordination, increase the controllability of subunits, increase motivation, and gain greater flexibility.

 

Although structural change must take account of people and technology to be successful, its primary focus is obviously on changing organization structure.

 

Managers choose to make structural changes within an organization if information they have gathered indicates that the present structure is the main cause of organizational ineffectiveness.

 

The precise structural changes they choose to make will vary from situation to situation, of course. After changes to organizational structure have been made, management should conduct periodic reviews to make sure the changes are accomplishing their intended purposes.

 

                        Matrix Organization:

 

Matrix Organizations is a traditional organization that is modified primarily for the purpose of completing some kind of special project.

 

Essentially, a matrix organization is one in which individuals from various functional departments are assigned to a project manager responsible for accomplishing some specific task.

 

The project itself may be either long term or short term, and the employees needed to complete it are borrowed from various organizational segments.

 

 

PEOPLE CHANGE:

 

Although successfully changing people factors necessarily involves some consideration of structure and technology, the primary emphasis is on people.

 

Organization Development (OD): People Change emphasizes increasing organizational effectiveness by changing certain aspects of organization members.

The focus of this kind of change is on such factors as employee’s attitudes and leadership skills.

The process of people change can be referred to as organization development (OD). Although OD focuses mainly on changing certain aspects of people, these changes are based on an overview of structure, technology, and all other organizational ingredients.

 

GRID OD:

 

One traditional used OD techniques for changing people in organizations is called Grid Organizational Development, or Grid OD.

 

The managerial grid, a basic model describing various managerial styles, is used as the foundation for grid OD. The managerial grid is based on the premise that various managerial styles can be described by means of two primary attitudes of the manager: concern for people and concern for production.

 

 

 

INDIVIDUAL AFFECTED BY THE CHANGE:

 

To increase the chances of employee support, one should be aware of the following factors:

 

1. The usual employee resistance to change
2. How this resistance can be reduced

 

Resistance to Change:

 

Resistance to change within an organization is as common as the need for change.

After managers decide to make some organizational change, they typically meet with employee resistance aimed at preventing that change from occurring.

 

Behind this resistance by organization members lies the fear of some personal loss, such as a reduction in personal prestige, a disturbance of established social and working relationships, and personal failure because of inability to carry out new job responsibilities.

 

Reducing Resistance to Change:

 

1.      Avoid Surprises

2.      Promote Real Understanding

3.      Set the Stage for Change

4.      Make tentative Change

 

 

EVALUATION OF THE CHANGE:

 

One must evaluate the change one makes. The purpose of this evaluation is not only to gain insight into how the change itself might be modified to further increase its organizational effectiveness, but to determine whether the steps taken to make the change should be modified to increase organizational effectiveness, next time around.

 

Evaluation of change often involves watching for symptoms that indicate that further change is necessary. But the decision to change must not be made only based on the symptoms. Additional Change is justified if it will accomplish any of the following goals:

 

1.      Further improve the means for satisfying someone’s economic wants

2.      Increase Profitability

3.      Promote human work for human beings

4.      Contribute to individual satisfaction and social well being.

Change Management – First Deal with Harboured Resentments

The impact of Harboured Resentments could be the following:

1. You have traitors in the game, who pretend to be committed to what you are planning, but are secretly waiting for or even planning your failure. You trust them and they will betray you.  If you delegate to them, then it is your funeral.

2. Some of them will be vociferous about their upsets, of course, not the real issues, but some other issues, like why your plans will not work etc., It is good, that atleast these people have been identified by you. They may not be easy to deal with, but atleast you know who they are.

3. The real dangerous people are the ones, who have the harboured resentments, and do not say anything against you. They are the ones, who will pretend to play ball, and at the right time, not do what you expect them to do, or, work behind your backs and create strategic attacks on you. This is very difficult to deal with and almost impossible to address once they have begun their attacks. The only time, you can be effective is , if you can identify them and get them to be transparent and get their issues addressed. Otherwise you have neutralize them, marginalize them or even remove them – even if they are otherwise good capable people.

Ignore this at your own peril.

For help in identifying these kind of people in your organization, you can get in touch with us.

MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS

managementinnovations2020@gmail.com;     manojonkar@gmail.com ;     91-9375970812

Key Challenge of Change Management & How to deal with it

There are innumerable challenges in any Change Management Processes, whether the change management is in a for profit or not for profit organization.

The key factor that everyone knows for change management is People.

But, what may not be known is the real challenge in dealing with People. The real challenge in most cases is the harboured resentments. Harboured Resentments may be for any reasons, may be against anyone, against the person leading the change movement or the top management, or the old management.

Harboured Resentments are very difficult to be dealt with since, most of the times, one does not even know who has what harboured resentment, and naturally, the person concerned is not communicating the same.

Most Change Management efforts fail or give less than optimum results because of the Harboured Resentments.

Some things that one can try to deal with the challenge of Harboured Resentments are:

1. Before starting any change management exercise, make a list of people involved in the current situation and how they could be affected by the change. What kind of conversations they are having for this change? Who are they blaming and for what? what are they upset about? what is taking away their attention? where are they getting stuck?
2. Get all the reasons for the proposed change up on the table and have everyone empty the cup with regards to the need for the change.
3. Ensure that the environment of Blame on anyone, is dealt with and everyone is trained and enrolled to communicate. Tell everyone that there will be Harboured Resentments and if they do not speak up and they do not get complete it for themselves, it will come in the way of the performance.
4. Each Person has to be encouraged continually for being in full communication and any upset or potential upset has to be resolved with urgency.
5. Teamwork and clear cut accountabilities for each and every person will help.
6. Creating small winnable games for the teams to start experience winning.

For further inputs on this aspect of Change Management, please be in communication with us.

MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS

managementinnovations2020@gmail.com,  manojonkar@gmail.com, 91-9375970812