(Solution) Evaluative Review

·       Assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

·       What you feel works or does not work and why.

Note: This may be an appropriate section in which to demonstrate aspects of your learning from the four programme modules your assignment is addressing.

As aforementioned, this evaluative review focuses on anticipation and responding to change effectively in MCIT organisation. According to Aninkan (2018) for an organisation to maintain their competitive advantage and dominate their sector, investing on effective change management strategies is essential. In MCIT organisation, anticipating and responding to change is essential for the organisation to shift away from their current state of operations and achieve a specific desired future state for effectiveness. This is a strategic workforce planning practice comprised of different components.

Strategic workforce planning in anticipating and readiness for change

Adopting the definition of CIPD (2023), a strategic workforce planning entail a holistic strategy used to assess and analyse internal business drivers and goals. The outcome of this is offering an appropriate framework for entities of entire sizes for meeting encountered challenges encountered in complex and uncertain circumstances. As part of ensuring MCIT anticipate and is ready for change, having the appropriate people with relevant skills and labour for delivery of the organisation objectives contrary to expectations and unexpected change. The current strategic workforce planning implemented in MCIT involve understanding internal workforce operations informed by need, staff needs, turnover and skills demand in a specific job role. According to Wang et al. (2023) this approach primarily prioritise on annual-based planning cycle with a short-term based view of workforce needs. For example, in 2022, Post-COVID 19, the organisation partnered with a short-term courses provider for capacity development of the employees to be able to withstand with economic changes. This was inadequate in terms of pursuing a long-term view of workforce needs and skills demanded for future.

External environment factors impacting need for change

As evidenced in Adam and Hanafi (2022), organisations are directly impacted by internal and external factors hindering their effectiveness to anticipate and be ready to embrace change. For the different external factors, understanding them is essential for identifying change resistance at an individual, group and organisation/institutional levels. Specifically, in MCIT, understanding the external factors would influence their preparation in encountering the changes and keeping it up with current pace. Through the adoption of PESTLE factors model (CIPD, 2024), it is possible to source contextual information on organisation direction, brand positioning, growth target and risks to productivity. In anticipating and being ready for the change, this establish validity of different technologies and impact on product development. In Saudi Arabia case, trade restrictions impact on need for change with economic growth/decline influencing ability to put in place systems for withstanding with the change. The social factors influence career attitude and need for population growth. The technology such as Generative AI increasing popularity in KSA impact on organisations success in their business environment.

Recognising gap of what is needed today and in future

The anticipation and readiness for embracing to change is informed by what the organisation has today, need to execute their operations and future needs. According to Tucker (2022) the gap analysis would be essential for identifying skills workforce possess and which are required for working towards achievement of resourcing strategies and capacity development. For MCIT case, in order to anticipate and be ready for change, the best practice would be to understand skills for the organisation lack. The outcome of this is making strategic plans for future growth and development of the employees. As part of their practice, gap analysis is implemented in every department as opposed to a holistic strategy of the change implementation. This is particularly in regard to learning and development opportunity strategies.

Implementation of an action  plan

Despite of being an old report, HBR (2000) noted that majority of the organisations change strategies including installation of new technologies, downsize, restructuring or changing a corporate culture are characterised with limited success rates. The report noted upto 70% of change initiatives end up changing. A more recent research in HBR (2023) noted that at 43% in 2022, employees will for supporting change reduced from 2016 74%. The failure of these change programs is failure of embracing an appropriate action plan for embracing change. Establishing the change management would adopt an action plan guided by ADKAR Analysis model (Thekkekara, 2023). This include awareness identifying what is involved in change, desire of supporting, knowledge in terms of skills and checklists and ability for providing feedback and evaluation. At the end, reinforcement is achieved for reinforcing change with incentives.

Assessment of Strengths and Weaknesses

The current process by MCIT of anticipating and responding to change strategy include integration of resistance management actions. This is informed by Forbes (2021) findings which highlight 70% of change initiatives failing in achieving their set goals primarily as a result of lacking managerial support. For MCIT, the management and government of KSA through facilitation in financial support. Also, the approach adopted by MCIT is categorised as people-facing roles who are engaged in conducting resistance management strategies. Similarly, in MCIT, leadership and management are at all times adopting the 3C’s of effective change anticipation and responding approach. The 3C’s effectiveness is identified in CCL (2024) study involving 275 senior executives reflecting on successful and unsuccessful change input with more than 15 years of leadership and management experience on best practice in change management. The 3C’s in the organisation prioritise “Communicate” which is focusing on why for increasing buy-in, Collaborate for breaking down the silos and encouraging boundary spanning and Commitment which entail persistence and adapting to prevalent challenges.

For strengths, anticipating and being ready for change would assist MCIT to manage any resistance which could occur. For example, during COVID-19, MCIT was aware of the potential change in their workplace. They hence put in place measures of managing the changes in advance. As a result, they managed to introduce flexitime at the initial phases of COVID-19. Later, they fully enrolled to remote working for non-technical departments.  Another strength is existence of management and administration support in the entire change process. The rationale of this is that change can only be successful if management and administration offer effective support (Forbes, 2021). Thirdly, anticipating and responding to change is characterised by an active collaboration and an all-inclusive process. Collaboration is achieved in MCIT organisation by prioritising on aspects of communication, collaboration and commitment (CCL, 2024). This is while effectively using the available resources for successfully implementing the change process. The process of change implementation is holistic and involve multiple stakeholders which would be facilitated by utilising available resources.

For weaknesses, the current process in MCIT fails in integrating a continuous based market analysis. Despite regularly pursuing external environment analysis by use of PESTLE analysis tool, it is inadequate. According to Kamal et al. (2020) there is always a need for pursuing market-based research, industrial reports analysis and competitor analysis. This would be appropriate for monitoring occurring trends, evaluating new entrants and disruptive technology for anticipating likely shifting of market and opportunities/threats identified. Another weakness is the process of MCIT failing in terms of lack of alignment with organisation vision, mission and values. According to Rousseau and ten Have (2022), this is an evidence of lack of flexibility and adaptability to the changing situations. The last weakness is lack of a clearly formulated and data supported strategy of change implementation by MCIT. The organisation does not adopt SMART goals which means the process is inefficient and ineffective. They mainly rely on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for anticipating the change process.      

The weaknesses include failure of MCIT to implement a detailed market analysis. The lack of detailed market analysis means that the change process would not be detailed with all barriers of the change process being hindered (Kamal et al., 2020). Another weakness is lack of skills and capacity to be able to anticipate and successfully embrace change. The process of change is continuous and require all the  time acquiring skills and knowledge. The need for acquiring relevant skills is informed by the PESTLE Analysis findings. Also, MCIT suffers from existence of lack of an appropriate link in the organisation change process and organisation strategy. The lack of alignment lead to disconnect of the change process with the efforts of the players in the change process. This is with the change process being long-term with the SMART objectives being inadequate to guide through the change process (Rousseau & Ten Have, 2022). To be able to anticipate and manage the change process require an organisation to have clearly aligned organisation objectives/strategies with the expected change outcomes.

What works/does not work and rationale

As evidenced in Rousseau and ten Have (2022) which evaluates evidence-based change management process, anticipation of change is a critical starting point in reacting to change and its eventual implementation. This is while responding process involving adequate preparation and strategically implementing the process. For MCIT, they already understand that the organisation operate in a competitive and consistently changing business environment. This contribute to the organisation always investing on effective workforce planning strategies which are customised to the organisation business needs. Nevertheless, the organisation strategy of using SMART change anticipation and responding strategies is inadequate. This is with all stakeholders needs analysis being ineffective and limited in terms of scope hence affecting holistic alignment of their anticipation and responding process. Also, the process is not aligned to vision, mission and values of MCIT hence not working to provide expected outcomes.