Change management

Two workers discussing something in an office

Listen to a consultant talking about the basic stages of the change process and the people in a change management team.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Before change, there must be analysis. Organisational change is a costly and difficult business, and there must be a real business need reason in order to change current practice. Typically, changes are attempts to reach new markets, to improve productivity or to cope with drastically reduced funding. A good analyst will identify the key problem.

Once it's clear what change is required, a change strategy has to be developed. In other words, somebody needs to say what should be done. Sometimes the idea will come from a visionary within the company, perhaps an imaginative and persuasive member of the management team. Otherwise, the company might bring in a consultant to help them find the right solution. Either way, management should also consult with staff at this stage. There should be meetings to help raise awareness for the need for change and to give employees a chance to suggest their own solutions.

Next comes what's probably the most problematic stage: implementation. Above all else, making the planned change a reality requires communication. Staff will need to be informed of new procedures and, where necessary, trained in new skills. The most important member of the change management team at this stage is the gatekeeper. It's their job to be available to staff, to help them deal with problems they may be having with the changes and answer any questions, making the change as painless as possible.

Finally, there's the consolidation stage. There needs to be a way to collect feedback from employees on how the change is being received. Because there will still be some resistance to the change, even at this stage, someone needs to act as a champion for the innovation. The champion gives encouragement and raises morale by congratulating everyone on a successful changeover and on what's been achieved.

Task 1

Exercise 1

Task 2

Exercise 2

Discussion

What kinds of changes have you experienced where you work?

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Language level

B2 Upper intermediate

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In my career life, I have experienced a lot of changes. I have changed duties and responsibilities as my position s and department. Currently, we all are working in the time of covid 19. 50% of staffs have been implementing works in the early. It's a bit difficult to handover between the two teams in a risk situation and this is the first time of us.

Dear Team, about this Preparation Task: I think, without reading or listening the specific text, it's impossible to do the Task right, because, generally speaking, some of the words could perfectly compound with the others making several form collocations, like: ''current practice'' or''current procedures'', ''key problem''or ''key solution'',"raise awareness'' or ''raise feedback''or ''raise funding'' and so on...Am I right? Thanks in advance Nikoslado

Hi Nikoslado

Thanks for your comment and sorry for my delay in getting back to you. What you say makes sense and so I have made a note for us to have a closer look at this one day.

Thanks.

All the best

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

During my career I experienced a lot of changes, like being absorbed by a multinational company, launching new markets, and the last one, starting smart working in time of Covid19. Regarding smart working, it's interesting that it has been possible implementing work from home in just a few weeks and also with good results. It has been determining the rapid assessment and decision making of the management team in a risk situation and the involvement of the staff since the first times.

The kinds of changes I experienced is structurally in nature.

What kinds of changes have you experienced where you work? When they changed the rules and put staff performance evaluation made the employees so scared about their evaluation was out of 100% and who under 60% they take the the first warning if someone take 3 times under 60% they will fired them from work. The change it makes them afraid of losing points and sometimes motivates them to be better by taking reward for the good performance. This will improve the employees performance in my opinion.

and some times fires the employees, i hope the KPI are clear and fair to all.

Nowadays all changes very quickly. Referring to my work, I should be aware of the demands for my profession, maintain my professional skills and perform my work with high quality to be demanded on the market of translations and interpretations. My work is compelling, but the flexibility is amazing, I mean. By far the most experienced change I experienced in my work is the application of CAT program. It is a tool that in large measure helps to speed up my work and make it easier offering such useful features as translation memory, terminology management, termbases, both the spelling and the grammar checker. There is two option: I can work online having access to the Editor web, which opens in the browser or use the Editor for Desktop, which syncs with the cloud in real-time and supports offline work. The application of artificial intelligence in the work is the sign of the current 21st century and CAT program having an intuitive interface is a basic key to greater productivity, that is not an innate skill. The other sign of the current 21st century is that we should be proactive and always be on time for everything.

To my mind by far the most important reasons why people are sometimes resistant to change are firstly misunderstanding about the need for change because the reason for change is unclear, secondly the fear of the unknown and thirdly the lack of competence, because changes in necessitates changes in skills, and people will feel they won’t be able to make the transition very well.