Change Readiness or Needs Assessment Audit

Scenario

You have been contracted as an HR consultant by a U.S. LLC in Wilmington, Delaware, to solve their internal issues.

This ► U.S. LLC is a branch of a Singaporean software solutions provider with 140 employees and $20M revenue per year. The CEO of the Singaporean headquarters wants to open new markets in the United States, gain access to new customers, diversify risk, leverage resources, and increase profits. To meet these goals, she tasked a VP to establish and take charge of the U.S. branch.

Unfortunately, the newly formed U.S. branch has been facing several problems from the beginning.

  • Employees at the call center and the sales and marketing division are disengaged and emotionally fatigued as a result of contradictory communication between the branch’s leadership and the leadership at the Singaporean headquarters.
  • The branch team members feel frustrated and undervalued as a result of conflicting feedback from their VP and management team.
  • Messages from leadership lack consistency, especially regarding policies and practices related to human resources.
  • There is no training for team members.
  • Communication problems between the Singaporean headquarters and the U.S. branch are resulting in low employee morale.

Overall, the standard operating procedures (SOP) followed successfully at the headquarter office in Singapore could not be replicated at the U.S. branch. As a result, the CEO’s vision of successfully furthering expansion into the U.S. market remains unfulfilled.

Prompt

Perform the change readiness/needs assessment audit for the U.S. branch and submit a report of your findings to the VP in the course scenario. As the HR consultant, this would help you identify the readiness of the U.S. branch employees to adopt change plans. In this report prepared for the VP, you will discuss the change readiness of the workforce and leadership, willingness and capabilities for change, and any historical barriers to change from past planned or unplanned change management experiences.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
• Based on the Employee Engagement Surveys data, create visuals that illustrate areas in need of change at the U.S. branch. Your visuals should address the following:

  • Appraisal, job-role stagnation, and promotion or recognition
  • Apathy or disinterest regarding the vision, mission, and values of the organization
  • Lack of trust in managers, especially senior leaders
  • Impressions about the organization’s attitude to inclusion and diversity
  • A justification of your selection of data points from the Employee Engagement Survey results

• Discuss employees’ confidence in change management practices:

  • Consider the information available through the Employee Engagement Surveys and Leaders’ Self-Evaluations.
  • Do employees have a high degree of confidence in the company’s leadership? Explain your reasoning.
  • Explain the urgency for change at the employee and leadership level.
  • Analyze the middle managers’ (team leads’) role in creating an adoption mindset:  ■How would they serve as a bridge between the senior leaders and the frontline staff? ■ Are they ready to take ownership of the proposed change? Explain your reasoning.

o How do leadership styles and power distribution impact change readiness?

• Identify opportunities to increase change readiness/trust at the U.S. branch:

  • Why are some employees more accepting of change while others might be more reluctant?
  • How does the Forms of Resistance Grid explain the common reasons for resistance to change?
    ■ Refer to the Exit Interviews and explore the Forms of Resistance Grid to discuss any two forms of resistance from this list: ambivalence, peer-focused dissent, upward dissent, sabotage, refusal/exit.

• Use Hofstede’s cultural dimension model and the Exit Interviews, Employee Engagement Surveys, and Leaders’ Self-Evaluations to explain cultural considerations that may have created difficulties for the employees of the U.S. branch to adjust to the Singaporean headquarters’ SOPs:

o Summarize the importance of culture considerations using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model in the context of the U.S. branch and the Singaporean headquarters.

  • Explain how Hofstede’s model helps analyze cultural differences based on specific evidence and not on pre-conceived notions about different cultures.
  • Discuss how differences in specific dimensions of Hofstede’s model may result in misunderstanding and change management frustration or failure.

o Discuss individualism and one other dimension from the list below that might impact the cross-cultural communication and business practice differences among the American and the Singaporean employees:

  • Uncertainty avoidance
  • Power distance
  • Long-term orientation