Essay Example on Change Management Impact

Convergys Information Management Group, Inc. (CIMGI) is a sub-division of the parent company Convergys Corporation. CIMGI is separated from the old Cincinnati Bell Information Systems and later Bellsouth, in 1998 (2017). This division develops, sales, and supports the information billing systems for the telecommunication carriers and its customers.

In 2004, CIMGI acquired additional business from one of the largest employers in metropolitan Atlanta, which was Cox Communications, Inc. Cox Communications supplies billing services to many customers across the country. Due to the growth at CIMGI, the response time to customer issuesinternally and externallybecame overwhelming to employees in this division, which is a twenty-four by seven operation. Employees were required to additional hours to their regular workweek in an effort to response to the customer needs. The long hours to the regular workweek was having an impact on business. Further, the long hours was having an impact on the quality of work employees produced each week. Employees began calling in sick or requesting vacation during critical times. Managers were in an uproar over employees taking off at these critical times. These managers reached out to human resources for assistance with production and moral issues. Human resources worked with these managers to come up with a change management plan to improve moral and increase production.

The Purpose for The Change

Convergys Information Management Group Inc. (CIMGI) leads its industry in customer experience by providing outsourcing services (2017). The goal and mission of CIMGI provide client solutions and services. Part of providing these solutions and services are to ensure the needs of the customers are satisfied in a timely and effective manner. When the needs fall below expectation, management needed to intervene with a solution. Management reached out to human resources to assist with changing the way this department did business. The way the department was doing businesslong hours and increased workloadwas not improving the bottom line, which was loss of revenue. Reduction of revenue would result in the loss of a major contract and could possibly mean deficit in human capital. Therefore, it was imperative that the management team and human resources implement a change management plan to resolve the issues at hand.

The People Involved in The Change

Senior Leadership

The senior leadership team wanted to ensure the current contract remains intact.

Managers

Wanted to improve production and morale

Human ResourcesWorked with senior leadership and management team to drill down further to gain a better understanding of the key issues that are causing low production and morale. Further, human resources worked with managers to build a business case to create a change management plan. Lastly, it was the hope that building a business case to implement a change management plan would yield a return on investment by increasing productivity and employee morale, identify potential risk, managers were leveraging the strength by encouraging high performers and working with those who were underperforming while ensuring milestones were met.

Training and DevelopmentConducted development assessment to assist managers with improving the individual and overall performance of the employees. Further, training was provided on the various systems to ensure proper usage of hardware and software. Lastly, trainers sat with employees to ensure proper communication with customers.

The Change Implementation Methods

The trainers provide human resources the results from the development assessment plan and action on how to deliver the outcome to the management team. Human resources met with the management team with the results. The results revealed that 50% of the department was performing their job accordingly; however, there were deficiencies in communicating to the level-two support the entire scope of issues and too much time spent attempting to provide possible resolutions. The trainers recommended creating logs in a SharePoint file that was accessible to level-two support that documented the problem and fixes implemented and allowing level two support to provide solutions within their scope. Further, level-two support communicates back to the employee through the SharePoint system the progress made to bring closure of an issue. Implementing this process eliminated the need for these employees to attempt to fix issues that were out of their scope of work. Therefore, this process reduced stress on the employee and the customer.

The development assessment identified that 30% of the employees were better at performing a level-two support task, which would increase their performance and ultimately the overall production. Therefore, these employees were moved into roles that allowed them to work more in detail with the level-two support and less customer interaction. Moving these employees into a level-two support role increased productivity and performance.

Management and human resources determined that the other 20% of the employees demonstrated leadership abilities based on the development assessments. Therefore, management and human resources worked together to build teams within teams. Those employees with leadership abilities would lead those teams. Part of the leadership role for these employees would include monitoring calls, reviewing the production reports with their teams weekly, address any issues or potential issues and allow their team to discuss possible resolutions within their scope and bring major issues to management as needed. Further, managers would meet with the team leads to discuss any risk or threats to the way they were doing business. Lastly, the management team would meet with the senior leadership team monthly to discuss the progress, production, and performance.

Implementing this change management plan was to improve production and morale, reduced the backlog, increased customer satisfaction, and increased overall revenue to the company. Further, implementing this plan built a case study for the CIMGI to acquire new business. Lastly, the company in the next several years was recognized for its world-class customer solutions.

The Budget Concerns, Timeline, and Measurement of Success/Metrics

The only budget concern to the business unit was the cost of the training department to come in to conduct the development assessment. The cost for the assessment was about $110 per employee. There were about 40 employees not including managers in the department. The overall cost for all employees was about $4,400, which is expensive and can have an impact on additional training needed throughout the year; however, the managers felt the cost of the assessment would have a greater return on investment.

The timeline to implement this change management plan was a little over six months. During this time, managers and team lead met weekly to discuss the department progress. Further, managers met with the senior leadership team monthly for updates on the progress and get an understanding on where the department was on the backlogs. Backlogs meant a loss in revenue.

Recommend A Follow-up Plan to Review Impact of The Change

Human Resources Function

The function of human resources was to ensure that performance milestones were met and address any potential issues. Further, human resources coached and advised managers as needed throughout the process. The human resource was also responsible for assigning employees their respective roles.

Additional Personnel Requirement.

Change management impact can result to the need of additional human resource, particularly when new roles are created. However, this is traded with training and development. The company can decide to train and develop their already existing human resource and evade the additional costs of hiring new staff. But I cases where the internal human resource cannot satisfy the new needs, then the department in charge can request for additional personnel to be hired and recruited to the firm. And this was common during the change management impact implementation phase.

Ways to Recruit Personnel.

Human resources recruited additional personnel through internal request to the training department. Further, the training department employed certified resources through associations and organizations that administered and translated the results of the assessments.

Organizational Alignment.

Organizational alignment is essential in making employees happy and engaged with their roles at the company. However, organizational alignment do not happen by chance. It is a result of well-orchestrated plan that takes considerable hard work and communication. The company, in its efforts to improve more and productivity implemented a number of organizational alignments.

Employee-role alignment is the first approach the company took. This alignment is based on getting the right employees for the job during the hiring process (Lavoie, 2015). However, for instances where the company discovers the employees have glaring deficiencies on the core skills needed, it can offer to train them. CIMGI invested thousands of dollars to train over half of the staff to fit the roles specified within the company. Training employees to improve on their skills or gain new skills increases the scope of what they can do and they roles they can handle, as a result improves morale and productivity.

Employee-goal alignment is another sort of organizational alignment used by CIMGI. Goals drive organizations, and it is essential that companies do have common goals that guides everyone (Lavoie, 2015). Meeting customer expectations is the companys principal focus, therefore all employees align themselves towards that goal. Achieving this form of alignment demands that the senior leadership makes setting the goals a collaborative process where everyone gets a chance to air his or her ideas, and integrating both to come up with the best which are common and reasonable to everyone. It precisely did that.

Cost Changes.

Spending $110 per employee training is no mean fit, and such high costs can negatively impact the companys revenue base. It is thus essential to adjust the costs to ensure that minimum costs are used in training. Employee-role alignment is the most favorable alignment to exploit to ensure costs are saved. In this case, a thorough assessment was done to ensure employees strengths are determined. For instance, over 30 percent were found to possess leadership skills. Such employees could be deployed to where their skills would be utilized without further training. Such an alignment would end up having less than half of employees in need of training, which would cost less than $2,200, ensuring that the overall costs are adjusted downwards.

Diagram of Your Plan

Establish the Change Essentials

Why is the change needed?

Build Leadership and Strategy.

Who will lead the change? What strategy will they use?

Create Shared Directions and Culture

Implement the Change

Consolidate and Monitor the Change

Sustain the Change and the Change Culture

0Establish the Change Essentials

Why is the change needed?

Build Leadership and Strategy.

Who will lead the change? What strategy will they use?

Create Shared Directions and Culture

Implement the Change

Consolidate and Monitor the Change

Sustain the Change and the Change Culture

The six-step diagram shows the stages of the change management model (Cameron & Green, 2015). It lists from the point where the need for change arises, is interrogated and considered worth before it moves to the next step where the leadership takes over and comes up with the strategy on how to go about it. Subsequently, a share vision, directions and culture is created among e...