Organizational Change Management (OCM) is essential to the effective implementation of any Soltec Best Practice Solution™. Consequently, OMC entails thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people affected by the changes.

Strong resistance to change is rooted in deeply conditioned or historically reinforced feelings; the culture of a business. Often times, the culture of the organization may be one that is difficult to change, where patience and tolerance is required to help people in these situations to see things differently. Soltec’s Best Practice Solutions™ incorporates all change resistance factors in each of its five phases of implementation.

Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. Responsibility for managing change lies within the management and executives of the organization - they must manage the change in a way that employees can cope with it. Whenever an organization imposes new business practices and processes on its employees there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important factors in the OCM process.

Change is not a single event, but a process that unfolds over time and careful attention must be paid to the culture and current practices so you create something that is rewarding and satisfying to the employees. Sustaining change takes time and hard work and all efforts must be focused on moving forward so as not to slide back to the old way of doing business. Recognizing these requirements to change, Soltec has developed continuous improvement measurements to ensure that the proposed change is being managed properly and is providing the desired objectives.

Critical Success Factors to Change

1. Increase urgency - inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant
2. Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels
3. Get the vision correct - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency
4. Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against
5. Empowers action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognize progress and achievements
6. Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones
7. Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones
8. Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, and new change leaders. Weave change into culture

• As changes occur within the organization, there can be initial drop in effectiveness
• The management team has a responsibility to facilitate and enable change within the organization
• The most critical aspect of change is the behavioral change and its complexity & the time it takes to internalize the new process
• Redeployment and attrition of both management and subordinate resources may occur
• Regular meetings with affected employees and others will help to evaluate the change progress
• Creates critical mass for change and fosters of implementation of process/policy changes
• Drives organizations to achieve their goals and objectives
• Increases professionalism and service levels for internal and external customers