Implementing Sustainable And Ethical Change Essay For Commonwealth Bank Of Australia.

The purpose of this assessment is for you to gain experience in diagnosing change problems and developing plans to implement sustainable and ethical change solutions.

The process of change, is critical and challenging. It often requires substantial planning and application of resources to ensure that the organisation obtains an outcome consistent with the intended aims and objectives of the change program.

You are required to choose a case organisation you are familiar with, preferably one where you have currently or previously worked. You then need to identify a problem/ issue/scenario that is problematic for this organisation. This issue needs to impact on the entire organisation or a substantial section of it. You are required to diagnose the scope, causes, effects and impacts of the change problem and then develop a change plan to resolve this problem.

Your plan should consider the various issues and potential barriers that you (as a change leader) would face when planning and implementing your proposed change/s. Importantly, your change intervention strategies should acknowledge the factors which are critical for successful and sustainable implementation and any ethical issues arising from the proposed change. 

To frame your plan, you are expected to use a diagnostic model and/or a change model from those discussed during the semester.

The structure of your change plan should be relevant to your chosen organisation.

Change concept

Primary objective of every organization is to move towards growth and expansion along with the long survival in the global market. Growth and expansion objectives are considered as the major part of every organization's long-term vision and these objectives act as the motivation for the organizations in terms of regular updating its strategies and policies so that the right path could be followed in order to reach towards desired destination. While updating strategies, organization faces numerous issues change impacts the whole organization along with its employees. Thus, it is necessary for the organizations to address every challenge and issue faced by their stakeholders with the objective of attaining positive outcomes with the effect of implementation of change at workplace. In order to mitigate these challenges and issues, this report will include relevant plans to implement change at workplace in order to attain sustainable and ethical change solutions. Before implementing change program, an organization requires to follow certain steps through which the issues and challenges which could be faced by the stakeholders could be identified along with determining appropriate and relevant ways for the objective of reaching to the desired aims (Doppelt, 2017).

In this report, implementation of change will be discussed in relevance to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is a multinational bank who operates in New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom, and in Asia along with Australia. The company is engaged in rendering numerous financial services including business, retail and institutional banking services. Along with this, organization also renders funds management, insurance, investment and various other types of services. This has helped the organization to create their brand image in the global market along with targeting all types of customer segments. Being a mammoth player in the global banking industry, organizational functionalities should also match up with the international banking industry but the fact is that, organization was struggling with their communication strategies as they were not trending as per the latest business trends. Thus, the report will showcase issues faced by the organization with regards to their communication strategies along with an effective plan which could effectively diagnose the causes and the impact of change problems in relation with resolving those issues.

Change is a practical concept and it is necessary in every field with the objective of moving forward. Process of change is considered as challenging and the nature of change is critical, thus, it requires substantial planning and application of resources to ensure that the organization could be able to attain positive and desired goals (Chang, 2016). In this scenario, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was practicing traditional methods of communication to get in touch with their employees and customers. With the effect of these communication methods, whole organizational functionalities were getting affected and this not only affected organizational functionalities but it also created an enormous gap between the top level management and employees due to lack of communication. Apart from this, all branches of the banks were also not operated in an appropriate manner due to traditional forms of communications methods (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, 2015).

Change identification

Communication issue is considered as one of the top management issues and it is also considered as the failure for the organization because top-level management finds various issues in terms of communicating with the employees. It is necessary for every organization to develop transparency amongst its functionalities because employees are the people who actually execute the plans made by the top level management. Although, Commonwealth Bank is a mammoth player of the banking industry due to non-upgradation of their communication strategies, organizational performance was getting affected. In the scenarios of implementation of change, resistance and anger from employees are obvious as they were never getting involved in any crucial functionality, decision making processes and other important affairs (Cummings & Worley, 2014). No matter, how big or small change is being implemented at the workplace, if employees were always kept out and never aware of the changes, it will never fulfil organizational expectations.

This was the major issue for the organization this issue was the most determinant factor through which not only functionalities of one department, it affects the overall performance of the organization. In order to change workplace communication methods, organizational top level management decided to implement certain advanced and trending communication methods. This change was recognised by the organization after realising issues and challenges faced by the whole organization due to weak communication tools (Cameron & Green, 2015). The communication methods used by the Commonwealth Bank was affecting relationships between top level management and employees due to which their efforts were not aligned towards the organizational vision. This was ultimately hampering organizational overall performance.

Bonding and coordination amongst the employees, the weak relation between management of organization and employees, lack of motivation for the employees, lack of communication mediums to connect with external stakeholders, etc. are some of the influential factors which made organization realised the need of change (Hayes, 2018). Due to these factors, Commonwealth Bank suffered from consistently declining performance, high labour turnover and resistance from employees towards every implementation of change at the workplace. The primary reason behind these factors was the weak communication strategies and this was affecting organizational performance at domestic as well as the international level (Head & Alford, 2015).

To address these issues, organizational management realised that there is an immediate need for change in the communication strategies with the objective of enhancing organizational performance and to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Commonwealth Bank operates at international level and to manage the activities at international level, trending communication methods need to be adopted as these are capable enough to develop and maintain appropriate coordination between the headquarters, branches in other countries and subsidiaries so that desired goals could be adopted. With the help of effective communication strategies, the organization would also be able to develop coordination amongst the employees and organizational policies (Pugh, 2016). This will result in enhancing organizational performance along with developing the relationship between the organizational management, employees and its subsidiaries.

Role of intervention strategies for change is effective implementation of change at workplace along with dealing with the obstacles and barriers faced by the organization. Apart from this, intervention strategies are implemented for enhancing organizational performance as these strategies are capable enough to manage appropriate relation between the expected outcomes of the organization and the outcomes attained (Kuipers, et. al., 2014). In terms of Commonwealth Bank, major issues faced by the organization were suffering from issues like resistance and anger from employees as they were not involved in any of the organizational matters and there was no involvement of the employees in the organization and due to this, numerous issues such as weak coordination, correlation amongst the departments of the organization, etc. were faced by the organization (Hill, 2017).

Factors influencing change

Adaptation of trending communication strategy is one of the most appropriate and relevant intervention strategies for Commonwealth Bank. Digital media tools will be the prior choice for Commonwealth Bank in terms of making organization sufficient enough to deal with the challenges faced by the employees as well as by the organization. In addition to this, the organization could also focus towards adaptation of the internal chat system through which employees would be able to communicate with each other. This will lead the organization to develop coordination amongst the teammates and employees would also be able to communicate with the top level management without facing any sort of barrier or obstacle (Kuipers, et. al, 2014). Social media strategies could also be adopted by the organization in order to get in touch with their target and potential customers and it will help the organization to build appropriate brand positioning in the customers' mindsets. Social media channels are considered as two-way communication methods under which customers could be able to share their views, opinions and other concerns directly with the organization. On the other side, by providing immediate responses to those queries, organization would be able to establish an appropriate relationship with their target and potential customers which will ultimately help in originating opportunities to gain positive outcomes (Botha, Kourie & Snyman, 2014).

The major issue faced by the organization is resistance towards change and with the help of trending communication tools, employees will be informed for every change which will be implemented at the workplace before implementation. Openness in the communication will be developed along with making organizational functionalities transparent which will lead to encouraging employee engagement in the organizational procedures and it will boost up organizational performance.

Change is considered as the common process which is adopted by all organizations irrespective to their size, nature, and age. With the fast moving world, change has been the major aspect for the purpose for the purpose of matching up with the global standards, latest business trends, and customer’s preferences and demands. Regular adaptation of change helps the organization to deal with the rapidly changing business environment and it also helps the organization to sustain for a longer period of time (Doppelt, 2017). Change management is common topic nowadays, and the issues linked with this common topic are also common and in order to deal with the change in an effective manner, following change model will be adopted by the organization in terms of enhancing organizational performance along with dealing with the challenges and issues:

This change model is segregated into three steps i.e. unfreeze, change and freeze. This model describes that organization first needs to develop its goals and objectives and on the basis of those goals and objectives, their existing strategies need to be amended for the objective of developing new and modified strategies (Hussain, et. al., 2016). Following are the three steps of this model:

Under this step, the Commonwealth Bank's existing strategies will be demolished in order to make them as per the goals and objectives of the organization. This will help the organization to make their own way to reach towards its desired goals. As the organization is facing severe communication issues, thus, their existing communication strategies will be aborted (Smith & Wong, 2016).

Diagnostic model and change plan

In this step, relevant communication tools will be adopted for the objective of attaining desired goals along with reaching towards the desired destination. Under this step, relevant stakeholders will be invited so that they could share their views and opinions for implementing change at the workplace (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2016).

This is the last step of this change management model and under this step; all changes made in the second step will be freeze to make new strategies in relation to the organizational goals and objectives. Implementation of new and trending communication tools will be the final step of making a change at the workplace and this will also help the organization to maintain appropriate and better work environment for the employees to deal with the issues as well as to enhance organizational performance (Ellis & Abbott, 2018).

Conclusion

It has been concluded that change management is a necessary aspect for every organization and with respect to the revolutionary changes occurred in the global business environment in the past few decades, it has been observed that organizations need to mould their policies for dealing with the change so as to sustain in the global business environment for longer run. In this report, issues faced by the organization in relevance to the change adopted by Commonwealth Bank have been discussed. It has been concluded that the Commonwealth Bank was practicing with traditional communication approaches due to which there was no employee motivation, employee engagement, and openness in the communication at the workplace. This made the organization realised for implementing change at the workplace in terms of adaptation of trending communication channels for the objective of enhancing organizational performance.

References

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Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. Auerbach Publications.

Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M. and Pitsis, T., 2015. Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. Sage.

Cummings, S., Bridgman, T. and Brown, K.G., 2016. Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. human relations, 69(1), pp.33-60.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

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Ellis, P. and Abbott, J., 2018. Applying Lewin's change model in the kidney care unit: unfreezing. Journal of Kidney Care, 3(4), pp.259-261.

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

Head, B.W. and Alford, J., 2015. Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and management. Administration & Society, 47(6), pp.711-739.

Hill, T., 2017. Manufacturing strategy: the strategic management of the manufacturing function. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Hussain, S.T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M.J., Hussain, S.H. and Ali, M., 2016. Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge. 2(1). 22-30.

Kuipers, B.S., Higgs, M., Kickert, W., Tummers, L., Grandia, J. and Van der Voet, J., 2014. The management of change in public organizations: A literature review. Public administration, 92(1), pp.1-20.

Pugh, L., 2016. Change management in information services. Routledge.

Smith, L.C. and Wong, M.A. eds., 2016. Reference and Information Services: An Introduction: An Introduction. ABC-CLIO.