Introduction
Organizational change is currently a topic of concern in both scientific and managerial literature. This goes without saying that there is a great need to focus on the development of programs regarding the organizational changes. This is more so because everything including research depends on the number of efforts put towards ensuring that there is effective communication which contributes significantly toward organizational change. However, current studies show that despite all the attention and research done, the organizational programs still don't yield the expected results. There are several factors that have been established as factors contributing to these failures. This includes the specified roles of the change agents (Bennebroek Gravenhorst et al., 1999), the general organizational culture as well as the timing of the effort input towards the required change.
For an organization to experience a positive change, there must be effective communication. This allows for the efficient implementation of the desired organizational changes. It is through communication that the necessary plans and strategies are put in place, filtering the unfavorable ones with an aim of improving the productivity of an organization. Certain communicative approaches are essential in as far as attaining an effective communication for organizational change is concerned. There are also strategies that are used by the managers in communicating on what is expected of their subordinates in order to achieve the desired change (Kroth,2007). In this case, the managers are supposed to have a clear definition of what they want to get as the end result of the implemented change. This means that regular monitoring evaluation of the performance is mandatory in order to experience an effective organizational change. They should also have the necessary skills to change management strategies. This includes allowing the participation of various employees as well as listening to their views and contributions towards the matter at hand and also making sure that they act as the role models in addressing the concerns. To make the change efforts successful, it is important to ensure that the employees are adapting to change and that there is minimal or no resistance to change through proper communication. If the resistance to change is reduced, then this means that efforts toward organizational change will be effective (De Ridder,2003)
Broad Objective of the study
To establish the relationship between effective communication and success in organizational change.
The specific objective of the study
To access the attitude of. the employees towards the organizational change and how this can affect their productivity and their readiness to embrace the change.
To identify the roles of effective communication in organizational change.
Aims of change communication
Change communication in an organization should aim at addressing the concerns of the employees and provide the appropriate solution. Researcher in this field of communication has described the importance of communication as a way of seeking the views and inputs of the employees in order to gain their commitment and overcome the barriers that they might experience in the process of change. There are some change management objectives. The first objective is to tackle the concerns of the employees. The communication should focus on addressing the worries of employees which includes the management of the changes experienced and the various motivation strategies. It should be effective enough in that everyone in the organization is able to Cleary understand and embrace the need for change. It should also inform them about some of the changes they will experience in their line of duty. The other objective is that of building trust. This will, in turn, enhance positive attitude and increased levels of cooperation and thereafter yield a positive impact on the performance outcome. This also facilitates the commitment of employees to the organization as well as making their relationship with the top management more open and satisfying. The other objective is motivating the employees (Kroth,2007). Research establishes that communication provided by the organization makes the job satisfying to the employees.it is through communication that their concerns are addressed and the suitable solutions established. This also encourages the participation of the employees in decision-making processes. There is a reduction of uncertainties which highly influences the outcome. The information about the changes and its intentions increases readiness for change and also reduces uncertainty (Arnemakis,2007). An example of such cases of uncertainty is when the employee starts wondering whether he or she will still sustain the job even after the change or the doubt on whether he will still be in a capacity to be productive enough just like there before the change was implemented.
Limitation of the study
The fact that communication is not the sole factor that can facilitate success in an organizational change. The decision made and the strategy designed towards change is actually the cause of an effective change. Furthermore, in the literature reviewed, there is little or no emphasis on efforts made to evaluate organizational change. This means that there is no lesson learned after the previous change and therefore the past mistakes can recur. Trying to make a community change within an organization may really take a long time and this has a high possibility of affecting the level of productivity as the employee transits through the change.
Literature review
Organizational communication is the process that involves members gathering the relevant information about a particular organization and the changes that are encountered within the organization at a particular time flame (Lamerts,2001). The major objective of coming up with an effective communication is in order to inform the employees of the policy issues and what is expected of them. It is a way of conveying messages from the governing body to the subordinates and vice versa. This plays a major role in establishing a community within the organization by ensuring that there is peaceful co-existence and that the issues are addressed accordingly. Effective communication educates and informs employees, therefore, motivating them to embrace change at all levels (Lee, 2001). This is essential because it instills a positive attitude towards the implemented change which contributes to the success of the programs. Research done between management and employees during change shows that communication brings about acceptance and appreciation of change. Apart from management on the participation of the employees towards change, actual communication addressing the need for change is essential in addition to the modification of the organization. Research done in the previous studies show that the state of uncertainty experienced by the employees can result in negative energy towards readiness for change (Arnemakis, 2007). The fact that the individual might not be aware of his or her job security and have the fear that they might lose their source of income due to the changes that the organization is undergoing. Therefore, communication will be of great influence in easing the uncertainty feeling and preparing the parties affected so that they are ready to embrace the change.
Elving, 2005 came up with a conceptual framework used in the study of communications in the organizations undergoing changes. He developed six proposals that influence readiness and non-resistance to change. He stated that a low level of resistance to change indicates that there is effective communication in an organization (Elving,2008). This is so because there is a previous information distributed among the employees in issues to do with what is expected of them and what happens once their individual work is altered. She also emphasized that communication should be utilized in order to allow the creation of a community which will aim at maintaining high levels of trust and commitment among other values in an organization. He also advocated at considering the uncertainty in communication which might lead to negative effects towards embracing change. Moreover, he proposed that the stages of communication should go hand in hand with the phases of the change process. The objectives identified should be relevant in the specific stage of change. There are several stages of communication categorized as per the phase of organizational change. These includes:
Unfreezing stage: the is the phase whereby the main objective of communication is to prepare the organization and its workers for the expected change. At this stage, resistance is experienced depending on the magnitude of change and its effects on the general organizational structure and operation. This resistance, however, can be reduced to zero if there is a well-designed communication strategy to curb the initial resistance. This strategy should be able to communicate effectively on the objective of change and what is expected after the implementation of change[R1]. There should be information conveyed on the need for change and the variation between the actual and desired outcomes. At this stage, the communication is vertical, meaning it is conveyed from the senior-most management to the juniors. This can be done through writing or even face to face which is known to be the most effective (Klein, 1996)
The moving stage: this is during the implementation of change and it involves quite a number of activities. This is because most of the affected employees were not initially involved in the planning of the change implemented and are therefore confused about whatever the effects of change, they experience. This makes communication very vital at this stage. There are a lot of uncertainties at this stage. The main objectives that should be focused on in this case include the provision of accurate information about the change that is taking place at that particular time. The role of every employee should be well defined and the clear any case of misinformation in order to ensure that there are no instances of confusion which might affect the organizational operations negatively. This is a stage where the organization starts experiencing the impact of change and the outcomes are more tangible (Klein,1996).
Refreezing stage: the basic objective of communicating during this stage to come up with a more solid structural and procedural support to the new practices. It seeks to respond to the employee's concerns regarding efficiency and their relationship roles. The information flow at this stage should be multidirectional and more concrete and should be from the senior-most management to the lowest position. Due to the various factors, which are inevitable, the communication should aim at spreading the word of a change to the public and making them part of the change program (Klein, 1996). Communication has been made easier through the innovation of technology which facilitates efficiency in the distribution of information and the filing of written documents. Communication is the major process in which the employees exchange information and build meaningful relationships as well as maintaining the values and organizational culture (Klein,1996)
Methodology
This study explored the effectiveness of communication as a contributing factor to organizational change. The survey method was used in the testing of the hypothesis (Maslow, 2007). This method was found appropriate because it matched the intended use. The qualitative survey technique was preferred in this study due to the special features it possesses. The aim of this survey was to explain the variation in features of a population statistically. It is by use of a survey that researchers are able to collect data. In this case, a probability sample of the target population is used to represent the general population at large. The theories of standardized instruments which usually reduce or rather minimizes non-sampling errors which caused by the use of biased data collection instruments and the interviewer and interviewee bias which are in most cases founded on the social desirability. Surveys can also be amended where there is a need for continuous statistical analysis. Another importance of survey is that is has been found to be suitable in the measuring of responses to concerns regarding the attitudes and beliefs as well as the behavior of the subject under study (Zhang, 2009).
The survey measured both the perception and attitude of the organization members collectively. I was interested in establishing the relationship between effective communication and organizational change. How the issue of timely communication would influence the readiness for change among the employees in a particular organization and the different factors that would make them positively tune their attitudes and perceptions towards the change established. There was an interest in knowing the various factors that can make them reluctant to embrace change and how this can affect their general efficiency in productivity. An appropriate research design should be applied in order to ensure that the data collected is reliable and valid. The pretesting of the tools of data collection was also done in order to ensure that quality data is collected and minimal challenges are encountered in the process of data collection.
The tool used in the data collection was a questionnaire. It was well designed and covered all the areas of interest. The questions were clear and straightforward with all the rules guiding the construction of a questionnaire taken care of (Marlow,2007). The tool was pretested before commencing on the data collection activities. This was mainly used to collect data among the subordinate stuff in the organization. The respondents were assured that their privacy would be well preserved and therefore not supposed to worry much about the confidentiality of the information they word provide in the questionnaire.
The other tool that was used in this survey interviewing the top management and the supervisors, Here, we wanted to know how they perceived change and how its implementation has affected the human resource over the past years. The take on how they can make the employees embrace change and how they handle cases of resistant to change among the employees. Does it mean that they have to go back for refresher courses in case the change occurs? How long does it take for them to implement a particular change and do they do monitor and evaluation on the same? (Arnemakis,220) The data collected in this survey provided some very interesting insights about the relationship between effective communication and organizational change. We realize that communication can either have a positive or a negative influence in as far as the desired result of the change is achieved. Through this survey, both the broad and specific objective of the study was addressed.
The sampling technique that was used in this survey was a random sampling. This is where the population of interest was both the employers and the employees in the organization. Then the data collected was coded. Cleaning and sorting of the data was also done in order to make the analysis easier and possible and thereafter come up with valid and reliable results. The data analysis was done by Microsoft excel and later the presentation was done in form of tables and pie charts (Randenbush,2002)
Results/ Discussion
In this study, questionnaires were distributed according to the variables it was to measure. Both dependent and independent variables. They were 78 in total. The ones that were returned were 70 out of the 78 distributed. Among the 70 returned, 6 of them were unusable and therefore only 64 were usable in this case. on average, there was 82.6% response. Those who stated the advantages of embracing change in an organization marked 66.3% of the responses. They perceived the change as a way of making improvements in the manner they handled the organizational tasks. This shows that they had a positive attitude. On the other hand, 34.7% of the responded seemed to not really appreciate the issue of change. They claimed that when any change is implemented, there is always a high possibility that they’d lose some staffs. They, however, advocated that timely communication will be of great help.
The respondent also affirmed that communication in the organization makes them have a sense of belonging which motivates them in their duty. It is through communication that the management is able to allocate new roles and tend to the concerns of the employees. This way, they feel appreciated and the job is always satisfying as reported by the respondents.
The interviews were done to the top management helped in establishing some of the challenges they face when implementing the changes and how they handle any cases of resistance from the employees. They state that if communication is done on time and following the appropriate channel, then the change is accepted. This also creates cooperation and accountability at all levels in the organization.
Conclusion
This paper tries to establish the relationship between effective communication and organizational change. Communication is vital especially between the employers and the employees. It is a precursor to either the success or failure of the organizational change. Communication creates a community within an organization and this, therefore, implies that there is a peaceful coexistence between the players and both the long-term and short-term goals achieved.