Initiating Change In Health Organization: Strategies To Minimize Resistance

Health

What matter most for any human being is the access to the basic human wants; food, shelter, clothing and health. Our concern focuses on the health pillar, health services offering organizations, the culture in and leadership of the organization and the difficulties of initiating change to this culture in the organization (Hargett, Doty, Hauck, Webb, Cook, Tsipis & Taylor,2017).

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The state of well being or being diseases or injury free both physically and mentally is what is referred to as health.  Otherwise one may be infected by a disease, sustain an injury or develop emotional and psychological illness cultivated by lifestyle, genetics and inheritance, the environment state and the relationship between people and friends. In this case one is left with no option rather than seeking for the specialist attention for checkup and treatment.

This refers to the offering of the medical attention to people suffering illness both at home or in commercial health organization such as hospitals, dispensaries and pharmacy and chemist through diagnosis, treatment and counseling the individuals under health critics.

With the regard to the context, culture means the measure of quality of an individual or the society in with the comparison of the attributes that are regarded as excellent in the aspect of concern or the improvement of mind through training. Definitely organization health culture therefore refers to the top quality health care services offering by organization dedicated to health.

Changing of the heath care organization’s culture is therefore a dream the organization’s management and leadership department should not expect to come true overnight. It has been well urged that it’s impossible to train an old dog new tactics. Changing of the initial ways of doing things may not be taken rightly by employees in the health sector, on this basis they may decide to respond to the proposal for change by resisting the change. It has been witnessed in all categories where the leader has tried to force changes in the organization things fallout. At a wide view of things, look at what has always happened when leaders of a political territory have tried to force changes to the rules of law of the people, they demonstrate in all streets opposing the leaders the democratically elected themselves (Woods, Baker, Charles, Dawson, Jerzembek, Martin, & Willars, 2014)..  

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Change therefore is more of a process than an event and should be conducted in a very strategic way for it to be effective in the future. The following are various ways in which the leader of a health organization may effectively make changes of the organization with minimized resistance.

Much of the resistance our health organization leaders face happens due to failure of implementing the changes they want right at the starting points. Research has shown that it is a normal human behavior to oppose changes however beneficial they could be now or in the future. But take into consideration where the new rules of work are declared right in the first opening of the organization. Every health officer seeking for a working opportunity to serve in the organization will have no option rather than embracing the rules the way they are (Strömgren, Eriksson, Ahlstrom, Bergman & Dellve, 2017).

Health Care

How can be the scenario, where the health care unit wants to reduce the compensation of a health worker with a certain amount? Compare this scenario with a situation where the salary of the health officer is the amount is equal to the salary of the prior after reduction. For sure this tow cases have different moods and the first case may even lead to violet demonstration along the streets while in the second case the organization would be operating well with health officers with in good terms with the leadership of the organization.

For instance, assume; the reporting time to work by the health officer is 7:00am, a little change on this time by 30mins and fixing the arrival time as 6:30am.This will have a negative psychological effect to the officers and the most immediate response they will give is the resistance to the rule, unless it will be implemented accompanied by exponentially high benefits in compensation to the offices.

However, if the arrival time to the health centre was set right in the opening of the organization as 6:30am, then any professional heath officer seeking for the employment in this organization will be well prepared to arrive at work on this time This same time may be viewed as very early by those officers who has been used to arriving to work at 7:00am, only 30min before the prior time.

The comfort with the status quo of any person is the live wire you should not dare to touch. Everybody has the fear of falling into a trap of giving in to unknown in the future. Research on the working mechanism of the brain shows that “resistance is not a psychological reaction to change; it is a psychological reaction itself”

A little change in the normal ways of doing things by a person is similar to reverting what the brain already knows. However human beings have this special capability to adapt to change. In some occasions the pain caused by this change is too much to bear and resistance force cannot be stopped.

Definitely, an officer who has been well awarded in the current ways of doing work is not expected to perceive the change on working procedure rightly. In the same note there are officers who have invested a lot in the current ways of working, they also stand chances of resisting change (Williams, Perillo, & Brown, 2015). The toughest of all the resistance to be expected is the situation where the employees who initiated the current ways are to be affected by the change in the fear of added duties to perform.

In this consideration, the leading team aiming to implement change should therefore be well prepared to get resistance from the health workers. They should therefore sit and indentify any causes of resistance to change of the subject before launching change. This will enable them to draft procedure on how they will address and handle these teams (Wong & Cummings, 2009).

The leaders should consider the strength and weaknesses of every individual. This helps the leader to indentify the workers combination that will give the best productivity on assignment of a certain responsibility. It is also necessary in this case to consider how every worker will be involved in this collaboration (Gagnon, Attieh, Dunn, Grandes, Bully, Estabrooks & Ouimet, 2018).

Organization Health Culture

Before implementing change, it is necessary to communicate to the workers igniting their creativity in the possible solutions to the current drawbacks in the health organization. With this it may come to be a surprise to the leader after getting a better idea of item of change and mode of change rather than he thought was correct (Shanafelt & Noseworthy, 2017).

The leader should not be afraid of the reasoning challenge from the employees. Neither should he be strict to change his mind too (Georgalis,  Samaratunge, Kimberley & Lu, 2015).

If the health officers participate in this procedures there is assured high probability that they will easily adapt to the changes in contrary to opposing it.

As a leader you should be ready to prove it that it’s working, your communication should show passion. You should also be first to embrace change, it is a common phenomenon to see workers of an organization emulate what is done by their seniors. If it happens that the leader is serving as an example on the new changes, the resistance by the other officers is lowered (Adsul, Wray, Gautam, Jupka, Weaver & Wilson, 2017)

For instance, in case the change will require an extra working time and the recommendation of change is that; every employee should to work ten minutes the current time of arrival, as a leader you should lead this as an example by arriving even earlier than that. Otherwise the officers will look at it as a mistreatment; the obvious response to this will be resistance to this change (Lozano, Nummert, & Ceulemans, 2016).

The leader should be able to win the hearts of other officers by proving the opportunities and focusing on the advantages attached to this change. The resistance of health officers is bound disappear when the employees are clear on the benefit of change. These benefits must be stressed on to make sure that you motivate the health officer to accept the change for their own good (Heath, Appan & Gudigantala, 2017).

 Scenarios where law is made and forced to application, employees feel not to count as part of change as they do not understand what they stand to get in return on changing their normal working, this creates sense of insecurity and underrating in the decision making process (Robbins, Bradley,Spicer & Mecklenburg, 2011).

In this concept the leader need to practice his storytelling brain as he narrates how this changes will be of benefit to the culture of work, accomplishment of vision and mission of the health organization and how individuals are bound to benefit. For example, happy treated patient may imply many patients will be visiting us in the future; this will have an increase on earnings of the organization, implying that there will be salary increase to each worker and awards of recognition will be bigger (Elving, 2005).

The reason many ideas of change to an organization faces strong resistance is the impossibility of meeting the targets (Schyve, 2009). The goals set should be achievable. Some organizations thought that setting goals too high will motivate the staffs. But this is not always the case, some employees just feel that this is not achievable and there stand to no reason for trying it out. When an officer on duty accomplishes his duty at work minutes before time, he will have the morale of working harder the following day to finish the equal amount of work earlier. In contrast to the other case where the employee leaves work an hour later trying to reach the target, he is more likely to be even reluctant at work with the assumption that even if he do it faster wouldn’t help as there are low hopes on meeting the targets (Scott, Mannion, Davies, & Marshall, 2018).

Making changes right at the first time

State of mind cannot be experienced for one another. It’s also difficult to determine what an individual is thinking or understand the feelings and emotions he has by the look of eye. You will agree with me that change triggers thinking, people have different thinking capabilities and the view of things is therefore very different. A health officer may not see the sense of change even when it is meant to make his work easier and better in the future. When this is the case resistance to change is an assured matter. However, if the leaders could create a non-judgmental environment platform, on which workers will air their views and get response, they will be able to appreciate the value of change. This will curb resistance in the organization (Graetz, Rimmer, Lawrence, & Smith, 2006).

As a leader before you launch any change it is important to consider whether the necessary skill and techniques that the workers will need to perform their duties in the revised mode. If not, then this creates need for training the officers to equip them with the appropriate skills. There is no chance of expectation for one to carry out a duty in health organization without having acquired the necessary skills. If the leader decides to bypass this aspect, he should not be surprised by the negative feedback and resistance to change on the same (Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008).

Bad news makes the headline of any media while good news lag and come last. The leader should therefore keen on how information is communicated to workers and try the best he can to eliminate any chance for rumor. Sometimes rumors are spread by people of bad motif. If this land to the ears of the workers before an official communication is made on the same, the organization is more likely to suffer workers resistance on matter they don’t have true information on. Due to this reason, every leader should be extra conscious on communication. For the purpose of effectiveness the leader can stand and declare the official communication channel or media and any information that cannot be retrieved from this channel s are regarded as fault and untruthful (Mannion, & Davies, 2015).

Conclusion

In conclusion it is possible to change the organization culture and face less resistance but it6 will never happen dramatically. For this reason every leader aspiring for change to the benefit of the company and employees must be well equipped with the skill to handle it (Wikström & Dellve, ,2009).Otherwise the change meant for the better be result into a loss you cannot imagine.  Cases have been witnessed where doctors and their leaders fall in disagreement and they leave the patient dying in bed. Change is a process not an event (Van, Oreg & Schyns, 2008)).

Reference

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Expect resistance to change

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