Change Management in Hotels: Benefits and Risks of Managed vs Unmanaged Change

Change management brings together the processes, tools and techniques needed to manage the changes required to achieve the desired objectives, from a people perspective. This includes the organisational tools that can be used to help people make successful transitions that result in the adoption and implementation of change. In addition, managing change means carrying out any effort towards that change in a controlled manner, in order to minimise disruption and the inherent impacts of change. The decision to make changes depends on the business vision held by a hotel, its owners or its managers, but there are major differences between managing change properly and not managing it at all: When change is not managed properly:

• Productivity declines as the team becomes drained while changes are introduced.
• Pockets of passive resistance to change begin to emerge.
• Active resistance emerges and sabotages the change.
• The most valuable employees leave the company, representing a very costly loss of important assets, in addition to the cost of replacing them.
• Employees become disengaged from both the current situation and the future state ahead.
• Employees begin to question the change and the direction the company is taking.
• The team starts to wonder why the change is happening.
• More people begin taking sick days or fail to turn up for work.
• People find excuses or alternatives to avoid implementing the new way of doing things.
• Employees revert to the old way of doing things.
• Changes are never fully implemented.
• Changes are abandoned and cancelled due to a lack of support throughout the organisation.
• Groups emerge within the team: “us” and “them”.

By contrast, when change is managed properly:

• Employees have a solid understanding of why the change is happening.
• Employees are involved in both the solution and the change.
• Training is used to build knowledge after employees have made the personal decision to support the change.
• Resistance is identified in the early stages and addressed in time to bring people into the project.
• Key team leaders demonstrate their own accountability and that of the organisation by showing their commitment to change.
• Communications are segmented and tailored to different audiences, answering the questions that matter most to them.
• Momentum levers are built across different areas and levels within the organisation.
• Changes are less painful for the organisation and the team.
• A coalition of mutual support is created among leaders and managers, who ultimately drive the entire organisation forward.
• The likelihood of achieving project objectives increases.
• The organisation begins to build a success story around change, creating a better ‘backdrop’ for subsequent change initiatives.

There is a useful model for understanding and managing change. Each stage recognises a principle related to people’s response to and approach to change, in which people see, feel and then change.

1. Increase urgency: inspire people to move, and make the objectives real and relevant.
2. Build the guiding team: put the right people in place, with the right emotional commitment and the right mix of skills and levels.
3. Get the vision right: have the team establish a simple vision and strategy, focusing on the emotional and creative aspects needed to drive service and efficiency.
4. Communicate effectively to persuade. Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials simply, and always appeal and respond to people’s needs.
5. Empower action: remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and gain leaders’ support; reward and recognise progress and achievements.
6. Create short-term wins: set objectives that are easy to achieve, in small stages. Complete the current stage before beginning new ones.
7. Do not let up – foster and encourage determination, persistence and ongoing change; encourage continued progress by highlighting milestones achieved and those still to come.
8. Make change stick: reinforce the value of successful change by ensuring that a culture of change permeates your team’s own culture.

In forthcoming articles, I will explore change management in the different areas of a hotel in greater detail.