in order to effectively implement a policy change, what would be a manger’s best course of action?

by Randal Pouros Jr. 3 min read

Tips for effecting change implementation

  • Create a culture of change To successfully implement change throughout an organization, you must create an environment that promotes change. ...
  • Communicate changes to management first Discuss your intended changes with management employees first, which they can translate to their employees. ...
  • Recognize the impact of changes ...
  • Maintain open communication ...
  • Celebrate success ...

Full Answer

What is the best way to implement change in an organization?

8 steps to implement organizational changeIdentify the change and perform an impact assessment. ... Develop a plan. ... Communicate the change to employees. ... Provide reasons for the change. ... Seek employee feedback. ... Launch the change. ... Monitor the change. ... Evaluate the change.

What are the steps to implementing effective change?

5 Steps in the Change Management ProcessPrepare the Organization for Change. ... Craft a Vision and Plan for Change. ... Implement the Changes. ... Embed Changes Within Company Culture and Practices. ... Review Progress and Analyze Results.

What is the best way to achieve or ensure a successful change management?

Successful change management relies on four core principles: Understand Change. Plan Change. Implement Change....However, in general, you'll need to consider the following:Sponsorship. How will you secure, engage and use high-level support and sponsorship of the change?Involvement. ... Buy-in. ... Impact.

What are the 4 steps in the change process?

The stages are shock, anger, acceptance and commitment. People's initial reaction to the change will likely be shock or denial as they refuse to accept that change is happening.

How do you implement an action plan for change?

Follow up with your people with these essential steps: Explain the goals and objectives of the change. Explain why the change is necessary....How to Create and Execute a Plan for Successful ChangeIdentify projects for change.Develop an effective communication plan.Eliminate implementation barriers.Develop the change plan.

What are the 5 key elements of successful change management?

Successful change formulas involve (1) vision, (2) benefits, (3) sponsorship, (4) resources and (5) methodology. If any of these five ingredients are left out, the outcome won't taste all that great.

What are the three most effective ways to identify what needs to change in an organization?

All Answers (21)Sponsorship of the Change by Executive Leadership.Existence of a Change Network.Communication and Performance Support.

What actions will you take to lead a successful change initiative?

March 24, 2021Create the vision. People fear change because they cannot anticipate the outcome. ... Design a holistic success plan. ... Be clear about what you want people to do. ... Implement a robust support package. ... Hold people accountable for performance. ... Expect plan modifications.

Which of the following can best help an organization implement change?

Which of the following can best help an organization implement change? Align change with strategic goals and external conditions.

What are the 4 major components of organizational change?

For successful change implementation in organizations, there are 4 main components serving as pillars holding up the change. These pillars are various distinct phases of change – planning, leadership, management, and maintenance of change.

What are the three phases of change?

Through this organisational change management process, change practitioners work through three phases (Phase 1– Prepare Approach, Phase 2 – Manage Change, Phase 3 – Sustain Outcomes) to achieve successful project outcomes.

What are the 7 R's of change management?

Seven R's of Change Management ChecklistRaised. Who raised or suggested the change? ... Reason. What is the reason for the change? ... Return. What return is required from the change? ... Risks. What are the risks involved in the change? ... Resources. What resources are required to deliver the change? ... Responsibilty. ... Relationship.

How do you implement change in nursing practice?

Implementing ChangeCommunicate. Frequent and effective communication is especially important during change, because so much is going on. ... Foster a Team Culture. ... Identify and Empower Champions. ... Provide Feedback and Positive Reinforcement.

What are Kotter 8 steps to change?

8 Steps in Kotter's Change Model are:Create Urgency.Put A Team Together.Develop Vision and Strategies.Communicate the Change Vision.Remove Obstacles.Set Short-Term Goals.Keep the Momentum.Make Change Stick.

What is effective change?

Effective management of change provides a structured, consistent, and measurable change environment to be utilized across an organization and is a critical component in the success of its daily business.

What are Kotter's 8 steps?

What are the 8 Steps in Kotter's Change ModelCreating a Sense of Urgency.Putting Together a Guiding Coalition.Developing Vision and Strategies.Communicating the Change Vision.Remove Barriers to Action.Accomplish Short-Term Wins.Build on the Change.Make Change Stick.

What should managers understand about policy change?

Following the guidelines laid out by Harvard Business Review, managers involved in a policy change process should understand how to persuade and promote the policy change to employees effectively.

Why do policies need to make sense?

Policies need to make sense for your company’s size and the way you’re structured. For your new policy to be effective, you should also make sure the people tasked with carrying out the policy will actually be able to do so. Implementing a new policy that is difficult or even impossible for rank-and-file employees to carry out will just mean the policy will be abandoned in short order.

What is policy acknowledgment?

Policy acknowledgments should come with a deadline for completion, which can help ensure employees are following the new policy in a timely manner . Of course, deadlines also often mean that someone will need to follow up with stragglers to obtain their acknowledgments.

How to introduce a policy to employees?

In some cases, rolling out a policy via email alone can be effective. In other situations, it’s better to introduce the policy through in-person information sessions or formal training events. It can also sometimes be helpful to foreshadow a coming policy, giving employees advanced notice that you will be introducing changes. Try to anticipate potential questions ahead of time so you can be prepared to address them.

How to put reciprocity into action?

You can put reciprocity into action by offering something employees will appreciate as part of policy changes. Enlist those who already believe in the policy change as allies. Let them help spread the word to their peers. Provide talking points that explain the positive side of the changes.

How to contact Integrify for policy management?

For more tips on effective policy implementation and to learn how workflow software solutions can help your organization with policy management, contact Integrify online or call us at (888) 536-9629 today.

Why is it important to review policies?

Finally, it’s important to review policies periodically to ensure they still make sense in their current forms. Sometimes, review timeframes are driven by regulatory guidelines. In other cases, your company’s board of directors may drive policy reviews.

What are the benefits of change implementation?

Changes are usually implemented to achieve greater efficiency in meeting business goals or to adjust processes for new goals .

What is change management?

To effectively implement change will require change management, which is a process that helps employees prepare for an organizational transition using various resources and strategies. You need to develop a plan that will gain employee buy-in, then guides them and provides the necessary tools to achieve the intended objectives.

What does it mean to implement change?

When implementing change within an organization, it means that you are making a decision that will transform the organization in some way. Such change will vary, whether it involves a new business strategy, employee practices or the implementation of new software or equipment.

What is the preparation phase of a plan?

Develop a plan. During the preparation phase, you gained insights into what changes you need to make and now must determine how to implement them. You must create a plan that sets the direction for your organization, including how to achieve the necessary changes and measure whether they were successful.

How to gain buy in for a change?

To gain buy-in when implementing change, you must demonstrate the necessity of the change. Often, the best way to prove your case is to use data that supports your decision. This data will vary based on your business, but you may use customer or employee surveys, strategic business goals or budgetary to justify the need for change. Beyond explaining the rationale, you also need to identify the benefits the change will bring. Employees who understand why the change will help them or the business will boost their interest.

How to communicate a change plan to management?

Begin with the leadership team. Communicate your intended changes with management employees first, then move on to their employees. These managers need to understand your vision and the benefits of the plan, which they can then communicate and promote to their teams.

How to communicate change to employees?

Communicate the change to employees. To effectively convey the change to employees, you need to develop a communications strategy. In this plan, you will outline your main messages, identify your audience and determine who or what medium will deliver this information.

What is the first step in developing a policy?

Step 1: Consultation. When developing your policies and procedures, you must consult with all relevant stakeholders, including health and safety representatives, contractors (particularly those who work with you regularly), and of course your employees. Consultation should ensure that every person in your workplace understands the importance ...

What happens if managers condone practices that do not fall within the policy?

If managers condone practices which do not fall within the policy, it could be argued that disciplinary action against an employee who fails to follow the policy is unfair. The consequence of any deliberate breach should be appropriate to the severity of the breach, whether it be: counselling;

Why should policies and procedures be reiterated?

Policies and procedures should also be reiterated and discussed with staff regularly at team meetings to ensure that employees remain aware of the importance & advantages of the policies and procedures.

How often should you review OHS training?

an OHS training policy may only need to be reviewed every 3 years, but a chemical handling procedure should be reviewed more often due to the level of hazard involved.

Do all employees and contractors need to be made aware of the changes to policy and procedure when they occur?

All employees and contractors need to be made aware of the changes to policy and procedure when they occur.

Which stage is just as important as the development stage?

But the next stage is just as important as the development stage, the implementation stage…

Is there a point in adopting a policy which aspires to the best practice possible?

There is no point in adopting a policy which aspires to the best practice possible if your business cannot realistically adopt the procedures set out.

What is the importance of sustaining a policy?

By properly planning, ensuring that the change is not too big, and putting the change in writing, you will maximize your chances of successfully sustaining your policy.

Why do new policies fail?

One of the biggest reasons new policies or policy changes fail is because they are too ambitious, too comprehensive, or too dramatic. If your human and capital infrastructure is not adequate or sufficiently prepared for the magnitude of a change, you will struggle to maintain the change over time. Thus, it is important to take the time to assess the capabilities of your workforce to help you decide whether your proposed policy change is too big.

Why is it important to plan for a change in the workplace?

The reason planning makes changes more successful is that it requires the decision-makers to stop and think. It is not unusual for business owners or managers to face a problem with employees they want resolved immediately; however, acting impulsively in these situations can lead to policies the owners or managers are not prepared to enforce in the long term.

Why do you write down policies?

By writing down the policy, you reduce the chances that it will be misinterpreted or that it will change organically overtime. It also serves as a tool to ensure that all supervisors are applying the changes the same to all employees while providing great evidence when employees file wage and discrimination claims. By putting your new policies or policy changes in writing, you help ensure that the policy you want stays that way over time.

Why do decision makers take time to plan?

They can then tweak the plan to minimize its negative effects while maximizing the positive ones , or they can decide to abandon the plan altogether. It also gives them the opportunity to identify and assess any potential legal liability that may be hidden under the surface of their desired policy.

Is it good to implement new policies?

Implementing new workplace policies or changing existing ones can be a great way to improve employee productivity, enhance engagement, and/or control unwanted behavior. However, changes to workplace policies are really only worthwhile if they are sustainable over time. Failure to sustain policy changes can have several negative consequences. For example:

Can a new policy create confusion?

it can create confusion among employees and supervisors, some of who may still be operating under the new policy and some who may not;

What is the first phase of change management?

In the first phase of change management, you’ll lay the groundwork for your entire change management plan. During this phase, you’ll develop a situational awareness, identify potential challenges with leadership, and perform an impact assessment.

What is Change Management?

Change management is the process of systematically managing how well employees accept and adopt organizational changes. It’s about ensuring your employees buy into and champion the changes your business makes.

Why is mismanaged change bad?

Mismanaged change often creates stress and confusion because employees don’t understand why changes are happening . Some may even feel angry if they weren’t involved in the process or feel like their feedback was ignored.

How to train employees?

Once you have a documented process, it’s time to train your employees. One of the most effective ways to do this is through show-and-tell and role-playing. It’s one thing to read a script. It’s another to see it in action.

How many change management initiatives will fail?

Despite the growing number of initiatives, 70% of all change management initiatives will likely fail .

When you're just getting started with change management, do you want to communicate with your employees?

When you’re just getting started with change management, you’ll want to communicate with your employees from the get-go. They need to understand the problem and the pain it’s causing to realize why change is necessary. This will help create buy in and support for the changes to come.

What to outline for sponsors?

Outline expectations for sponsors and the specific details of what you'll need from them. Training Plan. Change often requires us to change our behaviors, and usually this involves training. Identify what needs to be learned, who needs to learn it, and how the training will be delivered.

Diagnose the Need for Change

Recognition of the need for change mostly occurs at the top management level or in peripheral parts of the organization. The change may be due to either internal or external forces. This step involves the identification of specific change that is required and defining why it is necessary.

Develop the Goals of the Change

Once the necessity of change is defined, both problems and opportunities must be evaluated in order to develop the goals of the change. Here It becomes important to clarify the needed changes in the products, technology, structure, and culture.

Select a Change Agent

The change agent is an individual within an organization who is charged with the leadership responsibility to implement a planned change. The change agent needs to be Proactive and alert to things that need revamping, open to good ideas, supportive of the implementation of those ideas into actual practice.

Analyze the Current Environment

In the fourt of the change management steps, the change agent sets and gathering data about the climate of the organization in order to help the employees prepare for change.

Select and Implement the Method

This step requires the decision on the best way to bring about the change.

Develop a Course of Action

The sixth of the change management steps involves actually putting together the plan. This step also determines the when, where, and how of the plan. The plan is in fact like a road map. It notes specific events and activities that must be timed and integrated to produce the change.

Implement the Plan

After answering all the questions, the plan is put into operation. Once the change has begun, initial excitement can dissipate in the face of everyday problems.

Why try to change policies?

As a result, they're often difficult to change, and efforts to do so require patience, sensitivity, and hard work if they're to be successful. Why go to all that trouble? Why not just try to get around or ignore policy in the particular instance you're concerned with, and leave it at that?

What is a set of policies?

Just about every organization, governing body, and other group has a set of policies - the official or unofficial rules which these organizations employ in relating to the world. Policies - generally based on a combination of logic and people's assumptions, correct or incorrect, about the way the world is and works - dictate how those groups operate, and can have a great deal of influence over community health and development.

What are the assumptions about the way things should be?

These are formed by a combination of the values people learn as children, conventional wisdom (what "everyone knows"), local custom and community norms, cultural factors, religion, and "common sense" (which may be neither common nor sense).

What is the basis for community decisions?

Policies are the basis for community decisions. If you can change the policy, you may be able to affect - for the better, we assume - community decisions about an issue well into the future.

What are the 8 P's of a strategy?

In broad terms, those guidelines take you through eight areas. To make them easier to remember, we've called them the Eight P's: Planning, Preparation, Personal contact, Pulse of the community, Positivism, Participation, Publicity, and Persistence.

What is a well-organized community-based initiative?

A well-organized community-based initiative, especially one that includes people affected by the issue, is another group with some credibility, and one that has information and knowledge helpful in discussing policy. Its capacity for advocacy may be another helpful factor here.

What is the role of administrator in community based health and human service organizations?

Administrators and line staff of community-based and other health and human service organizations often have both technical knowledge of the issue - statistics, study results, understanding of root causes - and the personal understanding of its human consequences that comes from working with those affected. These organizations, as a result, have high credibility, and are appropriate leaders in a campaign for changes in policy.

What is policy change?

Policy change refers to incremental shifts in existing structures, or new and innovative policies (Bennett and Howlett 1992). Reform usually refers to a major policy change. To take the example of health care, reform is ‘the process of improving the performance of existing systems and of assuring their efficient and equitable response to future changes’ (Berman 1995:

Why is policy implementation important?

Policy implementation often takes place because a wide range of stakeholders interact between different levels – thus both central policy-makers and local actors on the ground are important for successful implementation. In addition, this combined approach allows for differentiating between various policy areas. For instance, while the suggested framework by Suggett (2011) in its current form could be further elaborated, it is a good start for differentiating between implementation strategies. It matters whether health care, taxation or education policies are considered. Even within policy sectors, implementation strategies are not the same for higher education and secondary education policies, for example (see Gornitzka, Kyvik and Stensaker 2005). As a result, implementation varies according to different content and type of policies.

What is rational choice theory?

Rational choice theory proposes a parsimonious framework in which actors are rational in the pursuit of their preferences and interact strategically with other actors in the system. However, as John (2003: 485) argues, ‘rational choice does not offer solutions for all cases and contexts’. The theory is better at explaining outcomes when preferences are settled, rather than clarifying the origin of preferences and the reason for change (John 2003). Game theory provides several advantages, such as a rigorous deductive theory and the potential to combine top-down and bottom-up approaches by treating all relevant actors as strategic players. But, as mentioned before, there are a few challenges, such as uncertainty and the lack of institutionalisation (O’Toole 1995: 54). Overall, there is considerable potential to apply rational choice theories, including game theory, to implementation, especially when there are testable hypotheses.

What are the benefits of bottom up approach?

Among the benefits of the bottom-up approach is its focus on centrally located actors who devise and implement government programmes, thus contextual factors within the implementing environment are important. Actors and their goals, strategies and activities need to be understood in order to comprehend implementation. Bottom-up approaches do not present prescriptive advice, but rather describe what factors have caused difficulty in reaching stated goals (Matland 1995). It is significant that strategies are flexible so that they can adapt to local difficulties and contextual factors. Nonetheless, bottom-up approaches have been criticised on two counts. First, policy control should be exercised by actors whose power derives from their accountability to sovereign voters through their elected representatives, but the authority of local service deliverers does not derive from this. Second, this approach tends to overemphasise the level of local autonomy (Matland 1995).

What is bottom up policy?

Hjern and Hull 1982, Hanf 1982, Barrett and Fudge 1981, Elmore 1979) thus criticise top-down theorists for only taking into consideration the central decision-makers and neglecting other actors. The bottom-up approach, developed by Hanf, Hjern and Porter (1978), identifies the networks of actors who are involved in service delivery in one or more local areas and asks them about their goals, strategies, activities and contacts. It then uses the contacts in order to develop a networking technique to identify the local, regional and national actors involved in the planning, financing and execution of relevant governmental and non-governmental programmes. This provides a mechanism for moving from local actors and decision-makers such as teachers or doctors up to the top policy-makers in both the public and private sectors (Sabatier 2005: 23). In terms of policy areas, bottom-uppers examine policies with greater uncertainty in the policy (Matland 1995: 155).

What is the strength of top down approach?

One strength of the top-down approach is that it seeks to develop generalisable policy advice and come up with consistent recognisable patterns in behaviour across different policy areas (Matland 1995). But top-down approaches are criticised for only taking statutory language as a starting point and hence do not consider the significance of previous actions. The approach may be said to consider implementation as an administrative process and ignores or eliminates political aspects. The emphasis on statute framers as key actors is another source of criticism (i.e. local actors are not taken into consideration).

What is the top down approach to policy?

Top-down theorists see policy designers as the central actors and concentrate their attention on factors that can be manipulated at the central level (Matland 1995). The most detailed top-down approach was presented by Sabatier and Mazmanian (1979), who identified a number of legal and political variables and then synthesised them into six conditions needed for effective implementation ranging from clear objectives, causal theory, legal structure of the implementation process, committed officials, supportive interests groups to no undermining of changing socio-economic conditions (for more detail on these conditions, see Sabatier 2005: 19). In terms of policy areas, ‘top-downers’ usually prioritise clear policies (Matland 1995: 155).