When Employees at Work Don't Get It (Term Paper Sample)

Change Research and Application Report: When Employees at Work Don’t Get It.
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Introduction
This report focuses on the use of feedback for performance improvement. It is sometimes very hard for someone to know that they are incompetent in their job until someone else points that to them. This is the reason why feedback is important for any individual and organization because employees are able to improve their performance at work and also improve their skills for future job opportunities. However, not all employees take feedback positively and improve on their performance especially if it is negative feedback. This could have very dire or serious consequences on the organization. It is therefore very important for a manager to make sure that the response of employees to feedback is positive and enhances their performance. This article will analyze that through Stanley’s et al (2005) article.
Review
The article by Stanley et al (2005) discusses the feedback in organizations and the role it plays in the performance of the employees, development of career and the success of the organization. It also presents the most important organization and individual factors or precursors, which eventually affects the employee’s ability to perform or improve. The article point out that feedback is important to employees for career development, motivation, performance management and development. This is because they are able to monitor their progress. However, negative feedback usually takes a toll on the employees and they sometimes end up not improving their performance at all, given that they already have an impression that their effort is useless. Negative feedback can be used to improve employees only if employers take different approaches on how to go about it.
In enhancement of performance, the article states several models that can be used. These models are Lewins three stage model, Lippitt, Watson and Westley model (an expansion of Lewins model), Schein model (updated Lewins model). The models help in understanding the change process and its management at the macro level. There are two models from therapeutic literature that help in individual change, that is, Hanna’s model and Prochaska’s Transtheoretical model.
Change among employees depends on their willingness and ability; however, the authors came up with five IPs (individual level precursors) that are likely to improve how employees respond to feedback, that is, awareness, sense of necessity, confronting change, willingness for feedback and development orientation. They also came up with five Ops (organizational level precursors) which also affects the rate at which an individual changes. They are organizational alignment, organizational feedback environment, formal individual growth opportunities, accountability and compensation systems. They also state levels of organizations where change is conducive and likely to take effect faster and those that are not conducive. The conclusion they draw to is that the managers can determine the response of feedback given to employees either directly or through other sources (Stanley et al, 2005).
Implications and Recommendations
Implications
For any organization to change there should be individual change. It is very hard to convince an individual to change if they do not want to. In addition, it may take a while before an individual changes on how they do things given that after a long time of doing the same thing, it becomes a habit and changing a habit takes a while. There are also personal attributes like bad attitude that a development practitioner cannot get rid of, no matter how hard they try. There is also the element of having the willingness to embrace the change; this is a personal choice which no development practitioner can interfere with. This may a hurdle for the development practitioner. Another thing that is likely to happen, is that given the fact that only individuals change, the whole organization may experience difficulty due to the fact that some individuals change while others do not. The organization ends up having a mismatch in the capabilities and general productivity.
Recommendations
It is important that there is development orientation in order to have individual change. However, it would be very important to have employees that need no or little change in the first place. As stated above, it is very hard to convince an employee to change even when they are willing to. It is like convincing an alcoholic to quit alcohol, unless they go through a process to help them it is hard and even when they do there is likely to be a relapse. It is therefore important to have employees who have less to change in order for them to adjust faster and efficiently.
Application
Petite Palate which opened in 2006 and close in October 2008 was a baby food company. It was doing well in 2007 and its organic food was been sold on Amazon. The founders Beels and Naylor presented their business plan to investors hoping to raise five million. However, in fall, 2008, the investors worried about the economy withdrew and the company was left with...