Change Models for Human Service Organizations

Organizational change models designed for human service organizations include the ARC model, the sanctuary model, getting to outcomes, and design team. Their use might require assistance from expert consultants. Each includes high participation of staff members, using structured systems and processes to identify opportunities to improve operations in a program or in administrative operations, followed by analysis and brainstorming to generate improvement ideas. Innovation and intrapraneurship are concepts that have been adapted from the for-profit sector for application in the human services. Innovation can be defined as a process, method, product, or outcome that is new and creates an improvement. Intrapraneurship is the use of entrepreneurial principles within an organization to solve problems or improve operations. Cutback management is not specifically identified as a change model, but is a process for changing organizations by addressing funding cuts, through methods ranging from efficiency improvements to, ideally, finding new revenue sources.

You as a Change Leader

The executive or other member of the organization who is in charge of the change initiative will need to engage in self-assessment to identify the need for personal development of any change leadership competencies and skills and then implement a plan for leader for development. Traits including a high energy level, emotional maturity, personal integrity, self-confidence, and an achievement orientation are valuable assets. Task, relationship, and change behaviors and the use of influence tactics are all essential. A change leader must develop self-awareness, including the understanding of one’s basic philosophies and preferences as well as strengths and areas to develop. Ethics issues are relevant in organizational change leadership. All of these dynamics of change leadership will affect how a change leader will design and implement an organizational change intervention.

Challenges and Opportunities

Human service organizations are faced with environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The COVID-19 pandemic, other healthcare challenges, expectations for evidence-based practice usage, and racial justice are vivid examples. Clients and communities deserve effective services delivered by competent, compassionate, and committed staff members. Taxpayers, donors, philanthropists, policymakers, and board members deserve to have their contributions used to deliver programs that are effective and efficient. All these forces create demands and opportunities for organizational change. Planned organizational change can happen at the level of a program, a division, or an entire organization. Administrators and other staff will need complementary skills in leading and managing organizational change. Staff deserve opportunities to have their unique competencies used to achieve organizational goals. Organizational change involves leading and mobilizing staff to address problems, needs, or opportunities facing the organization by using change processes that involve both human and technical aspects of the organization.

Support and Resistance

Gaining and maintaining support for the change process must occur throughout the initiative, with a particular emphasis on supporting staff who are involved and, as part of that, dealing with any of their concerns or resistance to the change process. A great deal of attention needs to be paid to developing, and then maintaining, support from staff and other stakeholders for the process. This includes identifying and dealing with resistance, especially by understanding the sources of resistance and proactively addressing them, for example, by providing training and other necessary resources. It is important that adequate resources in terms of staff time and any necessary financial and technological support are made available. Widespread participation of staff in the change process will be a potent source of support. Care should be taken not to “overtax” staff by requiring too much of their time for change activities.

Institutionalization and Evaluation

When all changes have been approved and implemented, steps must be taken to create mechanisms that will institutionalize the changes, to ensure that they become part of the normal culture and operating systems of the organization. This will involve changes to policies and procedures and perhaps staff training. Job descriptions and performance appraisal systems may need to be modified to support the new systems. These processes should not be seen as static, but should be monitored and assessed for adjustments and continuous improvement. A good evaluation of a change process can be useful to show improvements to stakeholders, such as boards, policymakers, community members, funding organizations, and others. Having staff see vivid examples of the success of something that was probably very demanding of their time and maybe their psyches should give them some satisfaction as well as more optimism about their future in the organization.

Using Consultants

There are two fundamental types of consultants. Process consultants offer methods to use to solve a problem but rely on the client organization to decide how to use the methods, including making the decisions on what to actually do. The more well-known type of consultation is referred to as expert consultation. These consultants are contracted to fully complete a project or set of tasks. There should be a very detailed process for assessing and selecting a consultant and developing clear plans regarding roles and change activities. Issues, including confidentiality, how “deep” the consultation will potentially go into issues in the organization, and how much the consultation will include developing internal skills and knowledge of staff, are especially important. Organization development is a major process consultation method and field of practice. Such consultants are experts in change management processes, including conducting employee surveys and facilitating workshops and problem-solving groups.

Introduction

Anyone in an organization has the potential to become an organizational change agent. A review of common ways of viewing organizations (e.g., as machines, cultures, or organisms) gives change leaders frameworks to understand and make sense of organizational operations. The purpose of this book is to offer a package of theory, research, and practice that can provide guidance to anyone working in a human services organization, from practicing administrators and other staff to students and consultants, who see opportunities to improve some aspect of an organization’s functioning. The evidence base includes the human services and general management literatures and the author’s research on organizational change. Four cases of change initiatives provide examples of the concepts and materials in some chapters. The sections of the book include challenges and change opportunities, a conceptual framework, change leadership, a change model, generic organizational change methods, and change methods for human service organizations.

Data Collection and Assessment

Building on the assessment process described in Chapter 5, this chapter provides detail on methods for gathering data and turning data into information to help identify problems, needs, or opportunities for change. The tools here would be useful in assessing the content of the change regarding which issues, problems, or other concerns need to be addressed. Action research is a process of gathering data, analyzing data, developing action plans, implementing plans, and then gathering data again to assess results and identify new opportunities for change and improvement. Employee surveys, customer surveys, stakeholder surveys, management audits, existing organizational performance data, and “unobtrusive” measures such as turnover rates can be used to identify areas needing attention. Surveys of clients and other stakeholders of the organization can be valuable in showing opportunities for change. Appreciative inquiry, an alternative to action research, focuses on identifying what is working well and building on that.

Staff-Initiated Organizational Change

Staff-initiated organizational change is a series of activities carried out by lower or middle-level staff to improve organizational conditions, policy, program, or procedures for the ultimate improvement of service to clients. It has similarities with the more top-down approach to change covered in Section 3; both approaches are intended to improve the functioning of the organization, and both use some of the same processes, such as problem analysis and problem solving. Staff-initiated organizational change is different in that it is initiated by staff at lower levels. Steps include assessment, preinitiation (change agents assessing and developing their influence and social capital and inducing or augmenting stress so that the problem will be addressed), initiation, implementation, institutionalization, and evaluation. This approach may present some risk for lower level staff, depending on the leadership styles and philosophies of managers and the overall culture of the organization. If proper conditions exist, improvements in organizational operations are possible.

Launching the Change Initiative

The first implementation step is to determine an overall change strategy (empirical-rational, normative-reeducative, or power-coercive). Broadly and fully communicating the need and desirability of the change is necessary for staff to see the relevance of the change goal. This can include data from the earlier assessment of the problem and how achievement of the change goal will lead to a better future for the organization. Change leaders might show how the change is compatible with the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Change leaders cannot “overcommunicate” regarding the need for change. Creating a sense of urgency needs to be framed from the employees’ perspectives: how the change will address a real problem and what bad outcomes are likely if the problem is not addressed. Communicating the change vision involves referring to the new ideal future of the organization and also outlining the basics of the change process to be used.