About Expert

Key Topics
Question: CHANGE MANAGEMENT PLAN IN PHARMACY
Alphapharm is a drug making company of the Australia. Manufacturers of the Alphapharm produces various generic pharmaceutical medicines and exports more than countries. The organization is performing very well and earning a higher profit than their existing customers. However, the organization performance has been facing different issues due to the manual system of the organization which delayed the whole work. Therefore, the quality of the work directly depended on the manual system of the organization. Thus, the checking all data came out as an expensive and time-consuming process of the organization. The associated costs of the paper-based document management system further added up to the cost of stationery, printers, and office supplies, etc., adding to the significant expense in the organization. (Small, 2016) Due to establishing the operating system in each department and absence of an integrated communication system in the organization added to the chaos. All these prevent all the issues causing problems in delivering the customer service.
Therefore, the organization decided to go paperless by adopting document management system and shifting all its work to the electronic filing. The main motive behind paperless organization was to get closer because of the rising popularity of integrated digitalization culture. Digitalization system helps the organization in storing the digital version of the data which can be used in future and further helps in reducing the manual work.
Create The Sense Of Urgency: As per the views of the Kotter, the organization should prepare to accept the change taking place in the organization for keeping the level of complacency as low as possible. The management team of the Alphapharma planned that the employees of the organization should be made aware regarding the changes. Management of the organization can do all this by organizing various awareness activities regarding the negative consequences taking place in the case. The transformation is not considered the facts seriously that will trigger the sense of urgency, including the serious implications for not accepting the transformation.
Building A Powerful Coalition: The management of the Alphapharma will first assemble the IT team for leading all the change efforts. The IT team helps the management in creating a solid foundation towards the requirements of hardware, software and grid technologies which help the management in creating a digitalized environment. The management of the organization timely ensures that the change is being implemented by a strong coalition of other departments. The changes are valued when led by a powerful organization coalition.
Form Strategic Vision And Initiatives: For guide the direction of change in the organization, the management will create a compelling vision for the future. The top management of the organization prepares a plan related to the software and hardware requirements (Harmon,2014). A Strong vision of the organization will avoid all the confusions among the values and staffs to determine the change easily. In case the management of the organization fails to convey a strong vision, it might lead to the incompatible project as well as its activities.
Enlist Volunteer Army: The senior management of the Alphapharma organization, as well as the IT team, will utilize every possible medium and way for communicating the initiatives and vision of the organization to their employees. The organization believes in a strong, simpler, clear and understandable vision. The management will try to harness the possible methods for sharing and promoting the vision. A detailed vision with a clear communication would be adopted in this step. It is necessary for the organization that the concerns and anxiety of the employees must address honestly and openly.
Enable action by removing barriers: During the implementation of the integrated system, the organization would require intense actions from the employees. For performing, all these changes the organization will identify such candidates who can deal with such changes in a significant manner. All employees of the organization, guided by the management as per the necessity of change. This helps the organization in addressing all the barriers and take corrective action for avoiding these barriers.
Generate Short-Term Wins: The organization is aware of the fact that the transformation process of change is serious therefore it take longer time for proper accomplishment. Therefore the organization will set short-term goals like digitalization of individual departments and then create an integrated computerized environment followed by a Wi-Fi enabled environment in the organization. All this helps the management in avoiding resistance from the employees for such change over a longer period of time, during which all the involved employees in the change process rewarded by the organization for their contribution to the successful implementation of change.
Sustain Acceleration: The acceleration of the progress in the organization must be sustained by consolidating all the gains and improvements for producing more changes. For this, the organization will use credibility policies and procedures which help the management in creating a better initial vision.
Institutionalize the changes: All the changes that will be performed by the organization should be anchored by the management to complete the change process. The senior management of the organization, as well as the concerned executives, would be realized upon the factors that help them during the changes.
Kotter's model was used for incorporating the countermeasures for avoiding resistance after identifying the potential barriers. It was identified that trust and not urgency was the key step for handling the changes due to the various conflicts and frustration among the employees. Additionally due to the history of the organization's management of being highly open for changes helped the organization to take necessary consequences in case any situation goes wrong. The vision of the organization was ambitious; the organization adopted very well language for imparting their ideas to everyone present in the organization. The capability of the IT team was considered the most important criteria for the implementation of the digital system in the organization. Therefore, the common vision and common language helped the organization to break their vision in a strategic manner. Furthermore, while implementation of the fourth step of Kotter's model it was seen that the communication of the vision in large part of the organization was one of the major concerns (Pollack,2015). The management had a detailed communication over the pros and cons of the implementation of the change in the organization. The departments were seen to be cordial with the each other assisting in the transformation process. This would have turned into a great potential barrier if the employees lacked cooperation and lack of spirit. It can be concluded that the organization should be very focused towards identifying as well as removing the obstacles through continuous improvements by motivating and empowering the employees and respective departments. Consequently, it can be said that the success was highly visible and very well communicated. Alphapharm Organization further reinforced new norm and values along with the incentives and rewards.
The following are the recommendations for improving the change management process in Alphapharm organization:-
Resistance management: The resistance from the employees is expected and should be addressed proactively. However, persistent resistance can prove out to be an issue. Therefore the change management should identify and understand the managers and employees to help them throughout the organization. There is a need to adopt a resistance management in the organization for supporting the change management team and identify the change resistance amongst employees.( Nanji,2014)
Team Work: The employees must be asked to be cordial and cooperative towards the change management team so as to make the change management plan successful for the organization. Effective teams and teamwork is a synonym for the successful changes being done in the organization.
Training Development and Delivery: The employees must be asked to undergo intensive training so as to deliver productive efforts and to gain the right amount of skills and capabilities. The change management team will be responsible for developing the training requirement on the basis of the knowledge, skills, and behavior of the employees.
Small, A., Gist, D., Souza, D., Dalton, J., Magny-Normilus, C., & David, D. (2016). Using Kotter's Change Model for Implementing Bedside Handoff: A Quality Im
Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., & Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013). Improving patient care: the implementation of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.
Pollack, J., & Pollack, R. (2015). Using Kotter’s eight stage process to manage an organisational change program: Presentation and practice.Systemic Practice and Action Research, 28(1), 51-66.
Harmon, P. (2014). Business process change. Morgan Kaufmann.
Nanji, K. C., Rothschild, J. M., Boehne, J. J., Keohane, C. A., Ash, J. S., & Poon, E. G. (2014). Unrealized potential and residual consequences of electronic prescribing on pharmacy workflow in the outpatient pharmacy.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(3), 481-486.