Change in organisations

The involvement of Occupational Safety & Health Associates in reviewing and developing the role and relevance of occupational health and safety in your OHS/Human Resources program will necessarily precipitate some changes to your organisation.

Some of the points we understand about change in organisations are listed below.

1.         Change is a learning experience for individuals.

2.         Change occurs after, rather than in advance of, the need for it.

3.         Change is discontinuous.

4.         Change is the sum of little changes experienced by individuals and groups.

5.         Individuals and groups learn at different rates depending on their "readiness",
            their preferred learning style (affective, cognitive, behavioural), and personality
            dimensions (power-influence, radical-conservative, high / low achiever, etc.)

6.         Effective change is initiated most frequently from the top.

7.         Bottom-up change can occur, but does so rarely.

8.         Planned change is a long term activity - years rather than weeks
            are involved.

9.         Antecedents to change may be co-operation, fear, love, hate, conflict,
            anticipation, etc.

10.       Change is easiest with successful and highly motivated individuals. 
            (Conversely it is more difficult to introduce with the less successful and the
            less highly motivated.)

11.       Change needs to be reinforced by (or consolidated through) structural change.

12.       Interventions (structural, technical, social) may be used (by those with power)
            to hasten the introduction of change.  (Especially where size reduces the
            external pressures.)

13.      Use of interventions should be discontinuous, as learning overload
            is possible.

14.        Planning is lacking in most official changes.

15.        External consultants should be seen as planning and initiating change
            rather than implementing it.

16.        Members and internal change agents should implement desired changes.

17.        Technical systems and external environments introduce limitations on change.

18.        Change within one group will affect others.  Interdependencies are endemic
            to role systems.

19.        Change leads to positive and negative outcomes.

20.        Resistance to change is usually to the method of introducing change
            (rather than to the change itself).

21.        Overcoming resistance is a process of "selling" the intended change to
            those who will be affected.

22.       The easiest way to introduce change is to involve those affected in designing
            the change (ie. their own learning).

 (The next article will discuss using occupational health and safety as an agent of organisational change.)