Change is a quite complex process. It is the nature of people that nobody instantly becomes ready to change. Resistance to change is the most baffling problem, which the manager has to face.
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The following approaches or techniques are commonly employed by managers in order to overcome resistance to change.
1. Education and Communication
The useful technique is to educate the employee who resists to change. The concerned manager should clearly explain what the change is, why it is likely to be introduced and why the changes is required. Likewise, they should give special focus to enhance the employee skill. For e.g. give basic computer training, interpersonal development, capacity building and so fourth.
In other words, the useful technique of overcoming resistance to change is to educate the people who resist change about the advantages of introducing change and the limitations of not having it. The management mostly educates people about the need and objectives of change.
2. Participation and Involvement
Participation helps to give people involved in the organizational change a feeling of importance. It makes people feel that the organization needs their opinions and ideas and is unwilling to go ahead without taking them into account. Those people who are directly affected by the change should be given opportunity to participate in that change before the final decisions are reached. This technique calls for a dialogue with the resistors and allow them to participate in the change program. Participation ensures commitment from members. It also creates psychological ownership.
3. Facilitation and Support
Another approach to overcome resistance to change is to facilitate and provide support to the employees. This includes providing training in new skills, or giving employees time off after a demanding period of change. Similarly, manager can give emotional support by simply listening to the employees. The change agent listens to the subordinates, provides emotional support and gives training and skills to cope with the change. The agent through emotional support helps the resistors to adjust to the new demands.
4. Negotiation and Agreement
Another approach to deal with resistance to change is to negotiate to reach to an agreement for accepting a change. It means that management buys the acceptance of change with incentives. For example, management could offer the union a higher wage or no-layoff contract in return for a change in work procedure or a manager could be given an attractive job assignment if he accepts the change. When the group is resisting change in a strong way, negotiation and agreement will be helpful. The change agent offers incentives to resistors under this method in order to tackle the resistance problem.
Negotiation particularly deals with a group of powerful individual who resists to change. For this specific reward package can be used to deal with a powerful individual. However, it increases the cost of organization but it is assumed that if powerful individuals are ready to avoid resistance to change, s/he convinced rest of his team mates.
5. Manipulation and Cooperation
Manipulation is a way to decrease resistance to change. It involves selectively using information and events so as to have some desired effect on employees. For example, a manager may tell another manager "to look at the proposal as I've already gotten the potential go-ahead at the corporate level." Similarly, cooperation involves giving individuals a meaningful role in designing and implementing change programs. When all other techniques have failed, manipulation is usually resorted to by the change agent.
6. Explicit or Implicit Coercion
Under this approach, manager may use explicit or implicit coercion or force to handle the resistance to change. Manager may force employees to accept the change by threading with the loss of job, promotion, pay raises, incentives and big projects and so on. The change agent threatens the resistors with the loss of job, or status or promotion possibilities etc. or by actually firing or transferring them.
Last on the list suggests tactics is coercion. The organization as a last resort, can apply direct threats on the resistors to make them ready accept the proposed change. Threats of transfer, loss of promotion, negative performance evaluation, and dis-satisfactory recommendation are the example of coercion.
To sum up, though there are various ways to reduce resistance to change. Thus, above all, consensus, involvement and ownership should be encouraged for overcoming resistance to change.
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