Organizational Change Plan

Organizational Change Plan Part II

In today's modern world organizational change is a reality and this reality won't be changing anytime too soon. "If anything, organizations can expect to face the need for even more change in the future, at an ever faster pace," (Taylor, 1984). At other times new leadership comes into an organization with a new plan as to how the organization will or should function. To avoid gross changes throughout an organization careful planning of the purposed change need to be implemented. Implementing and monitoring an organizational change is a difficult and a critical task. It has never been easy and is getting more so with the accelerated rate of changes in many organizations. "Whether the change is being forced by external issues or being brought about internally by leadership decisions, most people seem to resist change even if they agree it is needed," (Burnes, 2009, p. 376). There are different tools used to monitor the purpose change in an organization such as interviews, observation, comprehensive questionnaires, surveys and diagnostic models such as the change monitor tool created by created by Killian Bennebroek Gravenhorst, a member of the International Council on Organizational Change.

The Burn Unit is in the process in implementing the purpose change of Team Nursing discussed in the previous paper and has formed two teams who will be the test pilot team. This purposed change will take into affect the latter part of next month. This purposed change has also brought forth a lot of confusion, miscommunication, anger, and disruption to some nursing care. Having a change monitor as suggested by Killian Gravenhorst should be useful and helpful in monitoring the progress in the Burn Unit and hopefully get everyone on the same sheet of music. The Change Monitor was developed to help organizations deal with purposed changes that will have major consequences for an organization and the employees who have to carry out these changes. Another model being used in conjunction with the change monitor is Kurt Lewin change model which is based the three step process of unfreeze, change, and freeze which will provide a framework for the change monitor to implement a change effort, which is sensitive and at times may seem impossible. The Burn Unit is in the unfreezing phrase still. It's providing the staff the perspective of their day to day activities such as unlearning bad habits, and open up to new ways of reaching their objectives. Basically, current practices and processes have been reassessed in order for the wheels of change to be set in motion. The Burn Unit will enter the change phase in April, introducing and the implementing of team nursing. It has been a challenge trying to sway the negativity among the staff on the new process. Aside from introducing something new the change monitor will try to eliminate old ways of doing things and years of habitual practices. This will be done by observation of the staff, in-servicing, keeping the staff informed and in the loop as well as identifying the test pilot teams who will help create the buy in and ownership at the level necessary to make the change successful.

The change monitor for the Burn Unit will be the nurse clinical specialist who has been involved and has implemented team nursing in other facilities. The change monitor will map out the current situation in the Burn Unit as an ongoing change process. She will also improve on any problems that have been identified, strengthen, and retrain what is going well. The change monitor will allow enough time for reflection during the change process, structure discussions with the personnel involved in the test pilot (looking underwater, listening, and probing); illicit universal participation especially from those who are less apt to voice their opinions and support the realistic action plan that gives energy because the team came up with it themselves. The change monitor will look at the patient ratio for the Burn Unit where before it used to be two to three patients (depending on the acuity/wound care) to one nurse. If justified the ratio is allowed to go up to four patients to one nurse and six to eight for a team. This can become very overwhelming for a team leader and its team. Many nurses new and old will need to learn or re-learn time management skills, nursing policies and procedures and build on their nursing foundation. Time management will be very crucial during this time to ensure that the patient's needs are being addressed as well as the nurses. The team leader is expected to build on his or her critical thinking skills to assist in detecting and intervene when problems arise with the patients. The change monitor will assist in tying, assisting, and implementing everything together in hopes to make the organizational change process run smoothly.

The next step in the purposed organizational change is to examine how the relationship between the organization's process, systems, personal, and professional roles have affected the proposed organization change in any way. There had been talk about team nursing being implemented in the Burn Unit but when the test pilots were organized many of the nurses considered they had not been consulted and had received little preparation for this change. Many of the nurses voiced they had no input in the organization process of the implementation of team nursing. They indicated they had little input into the decision making process and found themselves in a situation where they 'just had to get on' with what had been decided. The way test pilot teams worked to provide care to patients were each approached differently within the teams. "Some nurses described the use of task allocation within the team, some worked together in teams going from patient to patient, others were allocated their own patients in the team situation and required some of the care of these patients to be provided by other nurses as they were not able, for example, to give medications," (Andrews, Cheesman, Ferris, Fudge, Galvin, Graham, & Jackson, 1999, p. 242). All teams had team leaders and these leaders in the most part had patient loads. There was disarray within the test pilot teams and the other staff noted by the change monitor.

The change monitor identified communication techniques used and not used to address the implementation issues. "Effective communication is the mortar. There must be open, honest communication within each step of the process, and communication must connect the steps to each another," (Feinberg, 1980, p. 46). Poor communication is the fastest way to damage any type of efforts towards change. Communicate relevant details of implementation plans within designated timeframes to appropriate teams in