Assignment : The Get Well Health Care Company directors noticed a significant drop in the companies customer service ratings. It was determined that an Agile Lean approach to improving the methods f
Assignment 6 By Govind Rao
The Get Well Health Care Company directors noticed a significant drop in the companies customer service ratings. It was determined that an Agile Lean approach to improving the methods for receiving, processing, and resolving customer questions and complaints was needed. The CEO of the company is anxious to get the effort underway. You have been appointed to lead this effort. You are told by the CEO when she appoints you that the employees of the customer service unit are unaware of the change that is to occur, nor are they aware of the drop in the customer service ratings. You decide to use the ADKAR Model to assist the employees in this unit address the change.
In this assignment you are to list and explain each step of the ADKAR Model and describe what you would do under each of these steps to help the employees of the customer service unit navigate this change.
Answer:
ADKAR stands for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. In today’s organization implementing a change is not an easy task as it requires research before coming up with a change. In addition, not all members of the organization welcome a change. In this case, the members who are reluctant to the change must be educated on the benefits of the change.
In order to implement ADKAR in the get-well care company, I would follow the below-mentioned process:
Awareness: The first step in the ADKAR model is to create awareness in the organization about the new change. As mentioned above, not all employees of the organization welcome the change. We often find people who are reluctant to the change and some who are happy to welcome the new change. To create awareness, I would follow the approach to first ask the CEO of the company to be present at the meeting and have her introduce me to the customer service representatives. In this way, the sales reps will not feel that a new person who is recently hired is telling what us to do and what not to do. In addition, if the CEO is in the meeting, the sales reps have no option but to adhere to the new change.
Desire: In this step, I will try to create a desire for the sales reps to adhere to the change by educating them with the advantages of the new change. As the majority of the reps will want to welcome the new change, there will still be some employees who are resistant towards the change. In this case, I will have a one on one meeting session with the resistant employees and try to convince them. If they are still resistant, I would ask them to look for a new job.
Knowledge: Knowledge is very important because if the employees do know how the lean tools work, the change will be of no use to them. For this, we need to set up training classes that will help the users to learn the change and implement the change in less time. Once the change is implemented, the customers will be satisfied with the service and automatically increase the customer service ratings.
Ability: Once the knowledge training is done, we need to know if the employees have the ability to perform the work based on the gained knowledge. In most cases, the employees will have the ability to perform the job, but in some cases, we will have employees who are slow learners and who may take more time to gain expertise in the learned knowledge and get the confidence in the ability to perform the job with the new change. In this case, I would give them additional training and have a test room where they can practice the recent changes.
Reinforcement: This is the last step of the process. Reinforcement must be put in place so that employees do not try to do the thing the old ways to get around things. The process may seem cumbersome in the initial days but in the coming days, the employees with see the benefits of the change. During transition reinforcement is necessary.
