It goes without saying that employees’ cooperation and the contribution of all team members in a project are highly important for its successful completion. However, the company’s manager may face considerable resistance to any changes from his or her subordinates – even if changes are beneficial (Robbins et al., 2018). For instance, a team may be diverse, and a substantial number of individuals prefer to keep the status quo. At the same time, for efficient work, this resistance should be minimized.
First of all, a competent manager should understand the reasons for employees’ resistance to change. In general, the main ones traditionally include the belief that the change is not in the organization’s interests, habit, fear of personal loss, and uncertainty (Robbins et al., 2018). As a result, it is immeasurably essential to identify why exactly people resist change in a particular team in order to apply an appropriate technique to improve the situation. Thus, a briefing with all employees should be conducted in order to give them an opportunity to express their ideas concerning changes and why they do not want them (Robbins et al., 2018).
Workers frequently do not see the expediency of changes, got used to working independently, do not want to lose personal convenience and autonomy, or have some prejudice against other team members on the basis of their cultural peculiarities. In this case, it will be appropriate to apply the technique of education and communication (Robbins et al., 2018). It helps reduce resistance explaining to employees that changes are beneficial for all members of the organization and their activities will be respected in the same way as before. In addition, this technique helps to eliminate harmful stereotypes against people that may occur due to poor communication.
Reference
Robbins, S. P., Coulter, M., Leach, E., & Kilfoil, M. (2018). Management (12th Canadian ed.). Pearson Education.