By Iqbal Hassan, Deputy Executive Director (OGRA)
In the age of globalization and technology, many organizations realize that digital transformation is compulsory, however, it is a common fact that employees repudiate to accept change and to adapt to innovations and new methods of doing official business. It is a common cliche that people do not like change or to come out of their comfort zones easily. Unlike children they are reluctant to learn new things. Mostly children perceive things through all their impulses and learn it quickly, whereas, adults have to first unlearn the previous knowledge to relearn new knowledge or the fear of being lost in between learning and unlearning process creates hindrances and they lose their confidence. The first reaction to change is usually defensive and employees chose the path of silent ignorance and wait till the change efforts are ended or digital adoption fails.
Now a question arises here, how to bring a positive change among employees’mindset? Leon Festinger, a psychologist at Stanford University says that people tend to act in compliance to their attitude and this is an involuntary reaction called cognitive dissonance which bring behavioral changes which affect rationalization and adoption of new attitudes. For example, behaving with things that are aligned with your personal values may result in intense feeling of discomfort.
In order to bring positive change in the organization, the leader/Head of Organization should first communicate the reasons for change in a clear and consistent manner and highlight the purpose and values of the goal like digitalization at workplace enables organization to collaborate effectively, transparently manage projects and tasks, resolves service requests and defects, automates mundane business tasks, integrate third party applications and generate data driven reports with paperless environment and helps in ease of doing business.
There are two types of organizational changes; first are adoptive changes and second are transformational changes. Adoptive changes are small, gradual and evolve with time, whereas, the transformational changes are larger in scale and require immediate action to withstand with contemporary world.
Therefore, employees should be informed that digitizing the workplace takes a step ahead in adopting the ever-evolving business dynamics and will enhance country’s world ranking in ease of doing business and will help in sustain with current world. Digitalization will unite the workspace, minimize operational costs, enhance productivity and efficiency, create revenues, helps to act safety issues promptly and all that is possible with positive change.
Secondly, for positive change and to bring digital transformation in the organization, it is equally important that the office atmosphere needs to be friendly and incentive based encouraging employees to go for change with fun and ease. They should learn together and celebrate every milestone to foster culture of adaptability and unlock innovation and succeed in transformation collectively.
Finally, positive change requires inducements and that reinforcement can be in the form of training, bonus, increment or any financial/societal status quo like promotion compelling employees to change their behaviors towards adoption of new knowledge or learning. The employees will go for incentives and will ultimately learn new things and bring change in their attitude. The change in outer behavior often results in change in inner approach and positive change in employees’ attitude will follow the creation of a suitable training and support tools to strengthen the new way of behavior and learning. Ultimately, the behaviors of learning and transformation will be achieved amicably.
