3CO01 Assignment Example

What is meant by workplace culture, and why it is important to foster an appropriate and effective workplace culture? (AC 2.1)

Workplace culture refers to the environment created for employees, translating to the organisation’s personality or character, determining employees’ relationships and career progression (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). Consequently, a positive workplace culture fosters engagement, attracts talent, achieves job satisfaction and happiness, and impacts performance. Many factors influence the personality of an organisation, including workplace practices, management, leadership, policies and people (Hayes, 2018). Influential workplace culture is crucial for several reasons:

1. It attracts and retains talent.

As employees spend more time working than at home, they naturally prioritise working in an environment in which they enjoy spending time.  Culture and engagement are the highest priorities on the corporate agenda, with organisations that demonstrate the most robust cultures having a higher capacity to attract and retain talent (Dzwigol et al., 2019).

2. It fosters engagement and retention.

Replacing talent comes at a high cost, and thus, the organisation must prioritise its workplace culture, which is instrumental in keeping these employees engaged at work. Workplace culture provides employees with a better understanding of what is expected of them and how to attain their professional goals; it allows employers to keep talented employees on board longer (Hayes, 2018).

3. It cultivates an environment for healthy development

A strong workplace culture allows all stakeholders to initiate change and develop from a professional and personal standpoint. Moreover, it encourages employees to communicate their opinions and pursue values that they find essential (Rosenbaum et al., 2018).

4. It yields satisfied employees and fosters productivity

A positive workplace culture generates happy employees, increasing their interest in their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. A positive work environment is conducive for employees’ concentration, and therefore, translates to increased productivity levels (Hayes, 2018).

How organisations are whole systems, and how work and actions as a people professional could impact elsewhere. (AC 2.2)

How organisations are whole systems in which different areas and aspects such as structure, systems, and culture are interrelated.

Organisations comprise smaller, interconnected entities that perform specialised functions. Specialised functions are ultimately reintegrated into an effective organisational whole in various ways. The importance of viewing organisations as complex systems is that systems concepts provide insight into how they operate. Understanding the organisation as a whole is critical for adequately determining information specifications and designing suitable information systems (Dzwigol et al., 2019). Organisation units may be viewed as adaptive whole sub-systems with their emergent properties (Hayes, 2018). These components share a common purpose and resources and are primarily driven by organisational culture. Ultimately, understanding the purpose and mission of the system and its relationship to its environment is critical for adequately determining certain sub-system specifications and designing an optimal organisational structure, functions, and sub-systems.

An example of how good people practice and an example of how bad people practice can impact other parts of the organisation or beyond the organisation.

All systems and sub-systems are interconnected and interdependent. This fact has significant consequences for both organisations and the systems analysts who work to assist them in achieving their objectives. When one aspect of a system is altered or removed, this significantly impacts the rest of the system’s elements and sub-systems. For instance, an organisation’s management may decide to stop recruiting administrative assistants and instead substitute them with networked PCs. This decision may tremendously impact administrative assistants and supervisors and all organisational stakeholders who established communication networks with the now-departed administrative assistants. This organisational change amounts to a bad people practice. On the other hand, the management may introduce new technology to enhance operations and employee retention. This practice translates to HR learning and development policy changes, yielding career development opportunities for junior employees through new training courses.

How individuals may learn and develop in different ways in organisations and how this might be accommodated in assessing and developing skills and capabilities. (AC 2.3)

Employees’ learning and development entail working with the staff to enhance, improve, refine, and hone existing skills while cultivating new ones in organisational goals, mission, and vision (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). Despite significant costs featuring in employee learning and development, these efforts yield long-term employee retention. Individuals may learn and develop in several ways:

1. Blended learning

Specific skills can only be learned in person. This group includes skills that require physical action, e.g., running hardware equipment, and skills that rely on personal contact, e.g., sales techniques. The organisation’s training curriculum encompasses such skills, learning, and development that may be improved by adopting a blended training, Instructor-Led Training (ILT), alongside standard eLearning (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). ILT can include both teleconference sessions and traditional lectures. A modern eLearning platform, e.g., TalentLMS, allows combining these learning and development alternatives by seamlessly scheduling, managing, and monitoring ILT sessions with standard online training programs.

2. Soft Skills Training

An effective learning and development program must balance hard technical skills training and cultivate soft skills such as time management, conflict resolution, and leadership (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018). Soft skills training aligns with a blended learning approach, as various soft skills training entail cross-personal interaction and are challenging to implement in a standard online learning program. ILT tools such as teleconferences and in-person training are suitable for learning and development in a realistic context.

3. Learning Paths

A learning path amounts to a collection of training courses. An effective learning and development program must offer multiple learning paths based on the skills and future career goals at hand (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). When designing an employee learning and development program, the organisations should begin with the job positions that require staff training and combine courses in ways that allow employees of varying learning levels to advance to higher roles (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018). Here, it is critical to incorporate employee feedback. Learning paths may be accommodated in assessing and developing skills and capabilities by gathering input from regular employees via an organisation-wide survey and sitting with line managers and leaders to discuss mid-and long-term skill needs.

Why it is important for an organisation that change is predicted, planned and effectively managed? (AC 3.1)

The organisational change affects programs, structures, and procedures; it typically involves a significant shift in its strategy (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). The new strategy establishes how tasks, skills, and behaviours or working models will be redefined. Predicting change entails using relevant tools and techniques to forecast areas of organisational change such as industrial directions, operational expenditures, profits and losses, and sales. Predicting change aims to foster better strategies based on informed predictions (Hayes, 2018). Predicting change is critical as it offers the ability to make informed decisions and devise data-driven approaches. Therefore, financial and operational decisions are derivatives of current market conditions and predictions of the future.

The type of change in question and the reason for it informs how the organisation plans the change process. Developing a business case to outline and describe business changes explains changes to employees and keeps planning on track (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018). A compelling business case for change is critical for navigating the change process and yields better time management once the process begins. Key elements to consider while planning for change include testing the change argument, listing the steps needed, setting and clarifying project goals, determining change management objectives, and identifying critical milestones.

Managing organisational change fosters increased employee morale and is a crucial driver of positive team building. Also, effective change management enables job satisfaction and, by extension, employee retention (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). These factors have a positive and direct impact on productivity and quality of work. Ultimately, effective change management shortens production cycles and minimises costs.

How change can impact people in organisations, such as changing their role or status or financial situation, and the different ways people may respond to change. (AC 3.3)

In any change situation, employees often experience challenges adjusting to the new norm. Thus, organisational change may impact people in several ways:

1. Life changes resulting from restructuring

Some organisational changes translate to significant restructuring, yielding sweeping changes such as salary cuts, lost benefits, job downgrades, job loss, and relocation. These changes may have devastating effects, especially for employees who have dependents.

2. Impeding social relations

Various elements of change implementation may impede social relations at the workplace. For instance, rearranging the collegial composition may translate to employees losing or being introduced to new co-workers, increased competition for the same positions during the restructuring process, or getting a new line manager. Thus, structural change may hamper workplace social cohesion and unity of direction (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018).

3. Decreased sense of job predictability

Employees’ sense of job predictability and future employability often decreases after specific organisational changes. Reduced job predictability means an attenuated ability to form reasonable expectations about the future concerning short-term job characteristics versus long-term employment prospects (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). Reduced job predictability is, thus, synonymous with job insecurity.

People may respond to change in three fundamental ways:

1. Being non-active

This category of people is opposed to change and remains in denial. These people choose not to address the issue at hand and develop negative attitudes around change. For example, an employee may perceive a change as unfair, resisting the process by failing to undertake procedures that drive change forward.

2. Being reactive

This category of people acts in response to the effects of change. For example, an employee may discover that they may lose their job through restructuring and visit various placement agencies but end up in a new job that does not fit their skills set.

3. Being proactive and positive

This category of people embraces change as a necessary and inevitable process, actively planning to adapt to a new norm. People in this category have better control of the situation at hand as they are involved in predicting, planning, and managing change.

The nature and importance of different roles that people can play practice professionals concerning change agendas. You might consider roles such as gatekeeper, champion, facilitator, critical friend or record-keeper. (AC 3.2)

To manage change effectively, various people practice professionals must participate:

1. Change Practitioners

Change practitioners employ a structured change management methodology, formulate strategy, design role-based and activity plans, and support other roles (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018). This role is critical in providing focus and monitoring change management activities. This role serves to cultivate responsibility and accountability.

2. Sponsors

Sponsors visibly and actively participate throughout the project cycle, establish a support coalition, and communicate directly with employees (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). Effective sponsorship is critical in predicting the project’s success or failure. This role’s commitment to change inspires acceptance of change in employees and gives authority to the rest of the change management roles.

3. People managers

People managers act as communicators, liaisons, advocates, resistance managers, and coaches (Jayatilleke and Lai, 2018). This role is critical as it comprises the members who must change how they execute their jobs to ensure successful change. People managers offer support to employees, and their attitudes and actions are depicted in their people.

4. Project manager

A project manager designs the actual change, manages the technical part, engages the change practitioner, and integrates change management plans with the project plan (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). This role is critical as it concentrates on the project’s design, development, and implementation. In the absence of direction and management, the technical aspect of the project may not advance.

Reference List

Dzwigol, H., Shcherbak, S., Semikina, M., Vinichenko, O. and Vasiuta, V., 2019. Formation of Strategic Change Management System at an Enterprise. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 18, pp.1-8.

Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave.

Jayatilleke, S. and Lai, R., 2018. A systematic review of requirements change management. Information and Software Technology, 93, pp.163-185.

Rosenbaum, D., More, E. and Steane, P., 2018. Planned organisational change management: Forward to the past? An exploratory literature review. Journal of Organizational Change Management.