How Frequent Organisational Changes Affect Employees and What Can Managers Do.
Introduction
Today’s business world is constantly evolving. To keep up with the rapidly shifting environment, companies introduce process changes frequently within their organization to improve performance, and outdo their competition. In this memo, the pros and cons of frequent organizational changes are first investigated. By going through the effectiveness of adopting specific activities and leadership style in communicating changes, we seek to understand employees’ reaction to frequent process changes, and how it affects their work performance and attitude towards the organization. This will allow us to understand if employees learn and get better at change, or does change does irreparable damages.
Pros and cons of frequent organizational changes
When frequent changes are introduced, employees will grow to be accustomed to changes and eventually view it as a company culture. Therefore, whenever there is a change to be implemented, employees will be less resistance to change and accept the change. Employees will learn that changes are meant to improve their work productivity and effectiveness. Using the example of job rotation (Friedrich and Kabst, 1998) between various departments, employees will get accustomed to learning new skills which aim to increase work productivity and effectiveness. When employees are multi-skilled, job satisfaction and productivity increases and they also better understand how their work affects other employees. Employees would also feel that with more skills and knowledge, they are valuable to the company and this gives them a sense of job security.
Once employees accept frequent changes, they are able to learn and use past experience of change to help them cope with stress each time new change is implemented. They can better understand change is necessary and how the change can help them perform better with confidence and increase job satisfaction.
One of the frequent changes organization adopts is due to globalization.
Today’s business world is constantly evolving. To keep up with the rapidly shifting environment, companies introduce process changes frequently within their organization to improve performance, and outdo their competition. In this memo, the pros and cons of frequent organizational changes are first investigated. By going through the effectiveness of adopting specific activities and leadership style in communicating changes, we seek to understand employees’ reaction to frequent process changes, and how it affects their work performance and attitude towards the organization. This will allow us to understand if employees learn and get better at change, or does change does irreparable damages.
Pros and cons of frequent organizational changes
When frequent changes are introduced, employees will grow to be accustomed to changes and eventually view it as a company culture. Therefore, whenever there is a change to be implemented, employees will be less resistance to change and accept the change. Employees will learn that changes are meant to improve their work productivity and effectiveness. Using the example of job rotation (Friedrich and Kabst, 1998) between various departments, employees will get accustomed to learning new skills which aim to increase work productivity and effectiveness. When employees are multi-skilled, job satisfaction and productivity increases and they also better understand how their work affects other employees. Employees would also feel that with more skills and knowledge, they are valuable to the company and this gives them a sense of job security.
Once employees accept frequent changes, they are able to learn and use past experience of change to help them cope with stress each time new change is implemented. They can better understand change is necessary and how the change can help them perform better with confidence and increase job satisfaction.
One of the frequent changes organization adopts is due to globalization.
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