Stakeholders’ analysis involves the evaluation of the people in an organization that will be affected by the decisions intended to be implemented. Before the adoption of the new rules, policies or infrastructure among other changes, it is crucial to ensure that resistant to change is dealt with in advance. The imperativeness of stakeholders’ analysis in change management is to enable the stakeholders to own the change. Consequently, the effects of change are absorbed with minimal resistance. In stakeholders’ analysis, the process focuses on determining the differences in interest, perception, and opinions concerning the intended change. It is worth noting that people will always differently interpret projects conducted by an institution due to the differences in economic, social, religious, and demographic aspects. Therefore, the key assumption in conducting a stakeholders’ analysis is that people in a given organization unit, share commonalities (Change management learning center, 2012).
The stakeholders’ analysis will be conducted in two phases. The first phase includes conducting the analysis without participation of the actual stakeholders. This will give baseline information to be evaluated and proven in the second phase. Phase two involves an interactive study by the analysis team and the actual stakeholders to understand the actual take of the matter from the involved group. The model involved in stakeholders’ analysis will target eight groups of all the groups in the health care organization targeted by the change. These groups are categorized on the basis of three factors (legitimacy, power and urgency) as described by Jacques Chevalier. The characteristic of the groups is illustrated in appendix I. The stakeholder power is the ability to influence the outcome of behavior or others in the organization negatively affecting adoption of the intended change. Legitimacy refers to the extent to which a group may use their authority to influence the change while urgency describes the ability to timely adopt changes without delay. Some of the stakeholders may use the urgency factor to decline the change being proposed. These factors will help in determining the area of change that needs to be addressed to and with the approach that should be used (Change management toolbook, 2012).
The process of change management ensures that the organization has an organized plan for monitoring the initiation, running, reviews, evaluation, grouping and approval of the planned change project. The process should follow a well delineated approach or path to reduce conflict among the stakeholders. The change management plan to be instituted will contain details as delineated in Appendix II. The plan begins with generation of the change options that are intended to be instituted. The change request is incorporated into the institution authority logs charts as a baseline outline. Consequently, the plan will be evaluated for validity and effectiveness. After the project is fully supported by the stakeholders in organizing the project, it will be authorized by the necessary offices; hence implemented in the institution.
For effective change management, the affected group of people in the organization should be addressed on the influence of instituting the change to their roles and duties. Generally, changes bring about redefinition of duties and roles. In some cases, responsibilities are shifted from one unit in the organization to the other. This may increase conflict, tension and anxiety in the working places; thus, lowering the productivity of the organization. Early communication and education of the affected groups will allay anxieties and fears, thereby increasing the potential to adopt the change. An in-depth analysis will be done on areas that will be interfered with once the change intended is instituted. The employees and other stakeholders will then be addressed on the areas of duties and roles that they will assume in the redesigned infrastructure of the organization. Human resources that will be involved in the study include experience of the individual in managing and running the program, skills and knowledge received through training. Those who have basic training on the operation of the change will be involved in educating and training of the others. This will be conducted in form of the continuing medical education programs, one on one training or group orientation programs. The institution will institute plans for active training of the individuals that will be directly involved in the operation of the changes being implemented.
Change ideas or plan should be time framed. A concise timetable for change management should be drafted. The schedule will include the dates and duties or activities to be implemented during that time. Therefore, the change project coordinator will outline the schedule to ensure that the stakeholders cooperate appropriately with the program. Having a schedule will reduce cases of time wastage and enhance efficiency of the project. The schedule to be followed will be as delineated in appendix III. The schedule will delineate the activities of the change project awaiting implementation. Individuals or the group targeted by these activities will also be identified. The next column includes the date/time when these activities will be carried out. The performance measures are outlined to gauge the effectiveness of the program. The schedule will ensure sound preparation of the groups involved and help to avoid time wastage.
Communication plays a critical role in change management. Effective communication regarding the change should be emphasized. People should receive the message timely, and from the rightful channel depending on the communication strategy adopted in a given institution/organization. According to Foster, 2012, successful change is dependent on timely, appropriate, comprehensive, and precise information communication. The appropriate message that is necessary to communicate in this change project include the importance of the change, the affected group in the institution, roles and duties that will be affected, the process of implementation of the project, and the people involved in the implementation of the change project. The importance of the instituting the change should be targeted at the principles, mission and vision of the institution. This information will be communicated officially from the rightful authorities using formal communication means (Mindstool.com, 2012).
In regard to the institution, the information will be dispatched using memos, meetings, coffee breaks, posters, lunch-time briefings and institutions website. This will ensure that every stakeholder in the institution gets rightful information regarding the intended changes. The institution will also use the organizational management office top to welcome opinions, complaints, clarification and concerns regarding the change program. These measures will ensure that the rightful information regarding the changes is communicated, and all concerns are addressed to before the project starts (Mindstool.com, 2012). Consequently, the institution will change resistance. The project communication plan will be as illustrated in appendix IV. The plan include columns of the message recipient, objectives of the message communicated, content of the message to be communicated, the channel to be used in propagating the message, the exact time for the passing of the information and the expected outcome from the message communicated.
The vital communication issues that are expected to be encountered includes communication barriers, organizational culture that influences communication, determining the best communication strategy to be employed and reducing ambiguity of information communicated. These are crucial areas that influence the communication in a group or an organization. Communication barriers may have a negative impact on communication plan such as involvement of technical terms, interference from grapevine and informal organizational communication. The project director will reduce the use of technical terms unless in unavoidable circumstances to avoid or minimize the effect of these communication issues. Communication will be done formally and any emerging issues will be tackled by the project coordinators amicably (Hare, 2012).
The communication will be done internally to ensure that all the stakeholders have the rightful information before the information reaches the media group. This will ensure the consistency of message dispatched to the public by the media either with company authorization or as secret leaks of the media to the public. The institution will also identify Public Relation officer who will be dealing with handling the public issues concerning the project. This will maintain the image of the company by ensuring that information communicated to the public is correct, and values of the institution are safeguarded.
Evolution of the change project enables the organization to determine the efficiency, effectiveness and impact. This determines the need to revisit the plan and make the necessary recommendation, amendments, improvement or modification of the plan and ensures that the targeted results are realized. Evolution is either formative or summative. Formative evaluation involves ongoing evaluation with the aim to determine the areas that need adjustment to maintain the project on the right course. Summative evaluation is the end course, an evaluation of which is done to determine the overall performance of the project. It is offering instruction and recommendations to be implemented in future projects (Hare, 2012).
The institution will involve the two forms of evaluation. Formative evaluation will be used at different stages of the implementation of the change management plan. This will ensure that fault/hiccups or hitches in the plan that needs to be addressed to before exacerbating complications. The indicators to be used in stage will include compatibility with other institution’s programs, increase in output compared to the substituted program, cost of the program, time factor and adaptability among different stakeholders. Summative evaluation will be done when the change management plan is fully implemented. This is crucial in determining the worthiness of the change in the organization. The indicators to be used during this evaluation step will include benefit-cost ratio, number of patient served per day, productivity of program, performance of the institution, and technological flexibility (Hare, 2012).
After evaluation, it is recommended to give feedback to the stakeholders involved in the project. Therefore, a plan will be drafted to communicate the results of evaluation, recommendation and performance of the project compared to the set measure, goals and objectives. In communicating the information, it will be ensured that every person involved in the project gets conclusive information of the project outcome.
Conclusion
In conclusion, change is the avenue that allows organizations to adapt to current market trends. The improvements in technology have increased the need to adopt new measures. The change management strategy to be instituted is focused on a number of steps such as stakeholders’ analysis, redefining roles and services, determining the resources to be involved in management and formulating the plan schedules. The communication plan captured the analysis of salient messages to be communicated, the means of communication that will be employed and determining the possible issues that may arise from the communication plan. The report has also focused on Evaluation and communication of the outcome.