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After completing my high school, I worked for GreenAcre, one of the local greengrocers in the area. The experience of change in the firm is my first-hand experience of what real change means. Although the company is small, it demonstrated how effective change could enhance the competitive advantage of a business. Back in 2006, GreenAcre was a struggling grocery store. Supermarkets and other major retailers were squeezing the company from the market as they introduced vegetables and fruits to their portfolio. When joining the company in 2007, the primary concern for the owners of the company was efficiency. The employees who were responsible for delivering goods did not provide them on time while those who were responsible for sales did not attend to the customers. The company’s stores were a mess. In 2007 alone, sales had fallen by more than 30% with revenues dipping to an all-time high. [“Write my essay for me?” Get help here.]
The manager of the stores was a frustrated man. When I was being interviewed for the job, he kept lamenting how the current employees had failed to live up to their promises. By 2008, the owner of the business saw that the business model was not sustainable and sought to sell the company. The first order of the new company was to assess the reasons for the dismal performance of the company through an internal audit. The company sent a secret auditor to learn how each employee performed their jobs. After a three-week period, we were called to the office by the new management. The report cited lack of efficiency, poor customer relations, reduced response time, as well as negative attitudes of the employees towards customer as the primary reasons for the downturn of the company. [Need an essay writing service? Find help here.]
After, examining the audit report, the first order of business for the new management was to lay off workers who were redundant and those whose performance was dismal. Before the layoff, the company explained the reasons for letting them go. The second step was to develop a training program for all employees on proper customer relations. As Blattberg, Kim and Neslin, (2008) observe, some of the proper customer relations skills include communication skills, monitoring and handling customer complaints, maintaining customer contacts even after sales, as well as building trust. The third step was to develop and implement information technology in the store operations to allow for centralized monitoring of sales and inventory. An app was later designed and included into the system to allow customers to order products from home. Within three months, the sales had rebounded. The sales people were more responsive and delivered goods to their customers on time. The centralized system was tracking deliveries to and from the company with ease. Loss of merchandise, an issue that had plagued the previous management, was no more.[Click Essay Writer to order your essay]
I believe that much of the success of the change in the company was a result of how the management approached the employees before implementing the changes. Communication between the new management and the remaining employees was constant. I remember that the manager would visit each store, persuading employees on why the sustainability of the business was necessary not to the managers but the welfare of the employees. Before the training program, the managers conducted surveys targeting employees from different stores of the same company. According to Palmer, Akin and Dunford (2009), such studies enables a company’s management to gauge the employees’ attitudes toward potential changes in the enterprise. During the implementation of the changes, the management had a person on the ground to ensure that the training programs did not inconvenience the employees and that it met their developmental needs. [Click Essay Writer to order your essay]
One of the key lessons learned during the change process was that change could only be successful if the employees are considered in the decision-making process. While some were reluctant to implement changes, persuasion by the management pushed them to accept the changes. By the time I left the company in 2010, the sales had soared, and the employees were enjoying better remuneration packages as result of the turnaround of the company. Today, the company operates more than 20 stores and is considered one of the most customer-friendly stores in our home area.
References
Blattberg, R. C., Kim, P., & Neslin, S. A. (2008). Database marketing: Analyzing and managing customers. New York, NY: Springer.
Palmer, I., Akin, G., & Dunford, R. (2009). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
