Culture change management involves transforming workplace culture by identifying and eliminating barriers to change. It combines a mechanical perspective on improving quantifiable aspects of a company with a human perspective on personal change management. Successful implementation requires clear communication, education, and addressing employee concerns.
Culture change management is a highly structured organizational process that seeks to transform a workplace culture from its current state to a more desired state. It involves encouraging employees to accept positive changes in the workplace atmosphere. Perhaps the most important step in managing culture change is identifying and eliminating barriers to change that may be found in the old workplace.
A toxic workplace is detrimental to the success of a company and its employees. Change management begins when it becomes apparent that workplace culture needs to be transformed for the good of the company. In the past, dictating change was simple: managers communicated various new initiatives to employees who obeyed and carried out orders without question. Today, because of today’s employee empowerment, workers are much more likely to question company changes and reflect on how those changes affect them personally.
Current practices are the result of a combination of two methods: a mechanical perspective on change and a human perspective on change. The mechanical perspective focuses on quantifiable aspects of a company that can be improved: job functions, specific processes, or essential elements of a company’s strategy. This differs from the human perspective, as the latter focuses more on the internal psychology of individual employees and encourages personal change management.
The mechanical perspective also seeks to reform business concerns while the human perspective advocates for personal change and dissuades employee resistance to change. Business performance and growth metrics are the primary ways to measure the success of a more rote approach to culture change management. Employee performance indicators such as turnover rate, productivity rate and qualitative job satisfaction accounts are the main benchmarks for success in the more humane approach.
Merging these two perspectives helps companies better prepare for and implement a culture change management strategy. Companies are set up to identify and evaluate which processes, systems and business objectives need to be clarified and improved. At the same time, they are also prepared to guide employees through these changes based on the company values that employees have become accustomed to.
In practical terms, successful culture change management includes clear communication about what exactly is changing and the details of those changes. Communicating the reasons for the implementation is essential. Educating and advising employees about their new roles and goals is key. Change managers must also be on the constant lookout for misfit employees, listening to their concerns and reassuring them that the proposed plans will benefit them.
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