{"id":309,"date":"2022-02-20T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T21:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/?p=309"},"modified":"2022-02-18T12:05:11","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T20:05:11","slug":"assignment-1-external-scan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/assignment-1-external-scan\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 1 | External Scan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Figure

Figure 1 Change Model from External Scan<\/p><\/div>\n

The initial response to the recent pandemic at our campus was a rapid transition to remote work. This transition presented challenges, opportunities, and common elements of leadership that led to change success. I had the opportunity to speak with three colleagues about their experience with change success in the Admissions and Student Recruitment office: one recruiter and two admissions assessors. These colleagues wish to remain anonymous and will be identified as recruiter, assessor #1, and assessor #2.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, the student recruitment team spent most of their time traveling and presenting to prospective students in face to face settings. Now in the virtual setting, they needed to find a strategy to maintain their personalized approach to each student interaction and effectively communicate to an online audience. The recruiter reflected that attempting to replicate their in-person interactions in a virtual environment as a direct translation was stressful and difficult. Instead, they found more success by implementing a well thought out strategy that was tailored to the virtual environment (Recruiter, email message to author, February 14, 2022).<\/p>\n

On the admissions team, one assessor spoke about the recent implementation of the new applicant database that allowed increased transparency and communication between stakeholders. It required a considerable amount of training for the staff in terms of using the system and general digital literacy. Fortunately, with the transition to online platforms virtual training has now become more efficient, reaching a greater number of staff per session. The challenge, however, is that the training and support team has not been requesting for or incorporating meaningful feedback from the staff. This has led to staff feeling less engaged in the learning process. The assessor suggested that staff are willing to learn and change, but training sessions should address ongoing challenges and new changes instead of providing basic and refresher training repeatedly (Assessor #1, email message to author, February 16, 2022).<\/p>\n

In addition to their regular job duties, the other assessor is also responsible for supervising the work-study students in the office. They have found alternative ways to train and onboard students in a virtual space, where previously, the students would arrive in the office for each shift. The challenges included the lack of technology and access to the university system from the students\u2019 homes, both of which were readily available if the student worked in the office. The assessor felt overwhelmed due to the lack of support from leadership, and advocated the need to be flexible in their planning and expectations to drive change (Assessor #2, email message to author, February 17, 2022).<\/p>\n

The common elements for successful change across the three colleagues are shown in Figure 1. Firstly, start with a well thought out plan to address the change. This includes building awareness about the change, presenting a plan, and incorporating feedback prior to implementation. Building awareness is a key stage when initiating change (Boyce, 2022). Staff who are well-informed about the challenges and the expected impact of the change effort are more likely to commit to the plan. According to my colleagues and Jones (2022), leaders should demonstrate openness, honesty, transparency, and good communication to promote employee engagement. Secondly, implementing the change requires consistent training and support. Staff are willing to learn if they are provided training on the new systems, processes, and changes, as well as digital literacy and skills to be successful in their jobs. As stated by Boyce (2022), virtual and hybrid models will persist beyond the pandemic and digital literacy is a key issue for all employees. Considerations about user needs and access to technology should also be made as resources and support are less available when working remotely. \u00a0Lastly, all three colleagues highlighted that the environment is constantly changing, and leaders and staff need to be prepared to revise the plan on an ongoing basis. This requires leaders and staff members to maintain flexible expectations of what their work could look like, incorporating feedback to refine strategies regularly, learning and embracing new technology and out of the box solutions, and staying engaged and involved in the process.<\/p>\n

Similar to Flynn (2022), our recruitment team responded to their challenges in the virtual setting through creative solutions. They found success with ideas they experimented with and plan to incorporate these strategies even as they return to their face to face interactions with students. In reference to the Luecke method, successful change efforts begin with accepting the need for change, and seeing it as an opportunity to grow. Then, integrating effective strategies from the change plan into the existing organizational processes and culture (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). Most importantly, the final step of the Luecke method is to monitor and revise the change plan to address new problems. This is a notion shared by each of my colleagues to reflect and revise the strategies on an ongoing basis as changes occur. Ultimately, all three colleagues argued for the same factors that promote change success as stated by Al-Haddad and Kotnour (2015): presenting a vision or goal, defining the roles of the employees in the change plan, supporting the change effort through guidance, commitment, and involvement at the leadership level, providing training to employees, and allocating strong human resources to evaluate the change outcomes.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28<\/em>(2), 234-262. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/JOCM-11-2013-0215<\/a><\/p>\n

Boyce, C. (2022). Voices of leadership: Interview with Christy Boyce<\/em>. [Audio]. Royal Roads University MALAT Course Site. https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt525\/schedule\/voices\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Flynn, C. (2022). Voices of leadership: Interview with Chad Flynn. <\/em>[Audio]. Royal Roads University MALAT Course Site. https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt525\/schedule\/voices\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Jones, C. (2022). Voices of leadership: Interview with Christina Jones<\/em>. [Audio]. Royal Roads University MALAT Course Site. https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt525\/schedule\/voices\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The initial response to the recent pandemic at our campus was a rapid transition to remote work. This transition presented challenges, opportunities, and common elements of leadership that led to change success. I had the opportunity to speak with three colleagues about their experience with change success in the Admissions and Student Recruitment office: one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}