How HR Manage the Changing Management!

How Human Resources
...Manage the Changing Management

By Hoda Nassef

Human Resources has many roles to play as a strategic business partner. HR managers are often called upon to oversee the change initiatives designed to get other managers and employees side by side with an organization’s business goals.

Change management is one of the most difficult and the most important tasks facing Human Resources. The key is to pursue a step-by-step approach where small changes build on each other. Effective communication, consistency, and a positive attitude towards change provide a solid foundation for attaining organizational change.

When dealing with change, there should be consistency in:

§ words and behaviour,
§ compensation,
§ performance appraisals,
§ promotion policies,
§ subordinate actions, and
§ organization structures.

A consistent message tells employees what to expect, as well as what they need to do, to make the company successful. A positive attitude towards change can be created through experience, team building retreats, strategic planning sessions, focus groups, or interactive workshops with management.

Reasons for failure include:

§ Inconsistencies between management’s words and their actions;
§ No system to evaluate the change and what it is to accomplish;
§ No change in compensation, performance appraisal, information or organization systems;
§ Management by ‘best seller’;
§ Unrealistic time goals for change; and…
§ The assumption that training is all that is needed for change to take place.

Identifying opportunities for improvement:

§ Keep up to date with developments in your sector – make sure you get valid, relevant, reliable information from various sources on developments in materials, equipment, technology and processes.
§ Consider the importance of these developments to your organization – carry out a regular review of developments and analyze their significance to your organization.
§ Pass information on developments to the appropriate people – if you think it is important, make sure your colleagues, members of your team and senior managers, are aware of its significance.
§ Identify opportunities for improvements – use information on developments to identify opportunities in quality.
§ Monitor and evaluate your operations continuously – always look for areas where improvements can be made and take appropriate action.
§ Identify any obstacle to change – take appropriate measures to alleviate any problem that may prevent improvements being made.

Assessing the pros and cons of change:

1. Get complete and accurate information – make sure you have sufficient, reliable information on current and proposed services, as well as products and systems, to allow you to make a reliable assessment.
2. Compare the advantages and disadvantages – use qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess the pros and cons of current and proposed services, products and systems.
3. Assess the implications of introducing changes – changes may affect cash flow, working practices and conditions, health and safety, team morale, supply and distribution networks, and customer loyalty; anticipate and assess the likely effect of changes.
4. Take into account previous assessments of introducing change – look at how realistic previous assessments turned out to be and use these to modify your current assessment.
5. Present your recommendations to the appropriate people – make your recommendations to senior managers or specialists in a way that helps them make a decision and in time to allow the decision to be put into effect.
6. Amend your recommendations in the light of responses – make appropriate alterations to your recommendations on the bases of the responses you get from senior managers and specialists.

Planning change:

1. Provide clear and accurate information – let those affected know about the proposed change in time for them to prepare effectively.
2. Get people involved – give people the chance to comment on the proposed change and help in the planning.
3. Make the case for change – give a clear and convincing rationale for the change and support this with sound evidence.
4. Identify potential obstacles to change, and find effective ways of avoiding or overcoming these obstacles.
5. Develop a detailed plan, including:
- the rationale
- the aim and objectives of the change
- how it will be implemented
- who will be involved and their individual roles
- the resources required
- the time scale
- how the plan will be monitored
- how you will know that the change has been successful.

Negotiating and agreeing on the introduction of change:

1. Present plans on projected change – communicate the changes and the anticipated benefits for your organization and for individuals, to team members, colleagues, senior managers, and others, in order to gain their support.
2. Conduct negotiations in a spirit of goodwill – make sure you retain people’s support and find mutually acceptable ways of settling any disputes.
3. Make compromises where appropriate – it may be necessary to make compromises to accommodate other priorities, but make sure these compromises are consistent with your organization’s strategy, objectives and practices.
4. Reach an agreement in line with your organization’s strategy, and revise your implementation plans accordingly.
5. Keep records of negotiations and agreements – make sure your records are complete and accurate and that they are available for others to refer to if necessary.
6. Where you could not secure the changes you anticipated, tell those affected in a positive manner – sometimes you are disappointed in not being able to obtain the changes you wanted due to other organizational priorities; explain the reasons for this in a way which maintains people’s morale and motivation.
7. Encourage all relevant people to understand and participate in the changes – explain the changes and their effects to people, and gain their support.

Finally, implementing and evaluating changes:

1. Present details of implementation plans to all concerned – make sure that you brief everyone involved in or affected by the changes, and the possible impact on their area.
2. Encourage people to seek clarification – check on their understanding of their role and encourage them to ask questions.
3. Use resources in the most effective way – plan carefully so that you meet the new requirements as cost-effectively as possible.
4. Maintain quality of work – ensure that work is maintained to a satisfactory standard during the period of change.
5. Monitor the changes – check to see that the changes have been implemented according to plan and that they result in the improvements anticipated.
6. Modify implementation plans and activities in the light of experience – you may need to modify the way you implement changes to cope with unforeseen problems.
7. Evaluate the benefits of the changes – compare the new way of working with the old: are the benefits as expected?
8. Review the change process – review the whole process of identifying, assessing, negotiating, agreeing, implementing and evaluating change; note ways of doing it better next time and make appropriate recommendations to senior managers, colleagues and specialists.




H.N.

The Lost Land ... and People

The Lost Land ... (and people)


By Hoda Nassef

This is not a religious article depicting biblical or Islamic facts…but a recent history of the Nubians, whose lands were inundated and submerged by unnatural forces; i.e. the human hand.

This first happened in Nubia in 1933, when the Aswan Dam was elevated for the second time and all the villages of Nubia were submerged. At that time, the Egyptian government had allotted the relatively trivial sum of L.E. 750,000 as an indemnity to the Nubians for the 35,000 houses which were to be destroyed. Finally, the Nubians accepted the government’s offer with reluctance and started building just one year before their houses were submerged. No two houses were the same and each was more beautiful than the last; each village created its own character. Construction in the villages went ahead unimpeded. All were built at the same time because the Nubians, being remotely situated and living in isolated villages, had always depended on their own resources in building their houses. They had no contractors, engineers or architects, to help them.

The Nubians natural talent for aesthetical rural housing constructions inherited from their ancestors, became a study for masters in architecture, such as the renowned Architect Hassan Fathy and his followers. Fathy stated that the Nubians managed construction from scratch, mainly because they retained a roofing technique in mud brick, using vaults and domes, which had been passed down to them from their forefathers.

The earliest example of this technique was found by Garstang, in his excavations at Bayt Khalaf, in Minia. The buildings dated back to the 3rd dynasty. Later examples are the Necropolis of Giza and in the granaries of Ramesseum at Luxor, dating from the 6th and 19th dynasties respectively. In the Ptolemaic necropolis of Hermopolis at Tuna El-Gabal, such vaults were used to carry staircases, and in the early Christian period, there is a compound of 250 shrines, built in mud and roofed in vaults and domes – all in the same material. Most shrines built in this fashion at Bagawat in the Kharga Oasis around the 4th century, are still standing.

From the Islamic period, we have examples in which the same technique is applied in a most elaborate and sophisticated way, as the tombs found in the Fatimid Necropolis at Aswan, dating from the 10rh century.

Unfortunately, the Egyptian peasant abandoned this technique, except in Nubia, where it has prevailed. If it were not for this technique, which allowed Nubians to use mud brick for roofing their houses in 1934, it would have been impossible for them to rebuild so cheaply and in such a short time. Moreover, the Nubians’ roofing technique allowed them to display their artistic and architectural capabilities, in designing their houses.

Nubian vernacular (local traditional) architecture continued to be ignored by the rest of the world, until 1963 when the region was to be flooded for the third time. (The first was after the British built the original dam at Aswan in 1898, known then as the “khazan”. The second time was when the dam was elevated in 1933, and the third time was the construction of the High Dam itself in 1964.)

As the antiquities in Nubia were to be submerged, the world tried to save them, particularly the temple of Abu Simbel. The acting Minister of Culture, Dr. Tharwat Okasha, invited 20 artists and architects to visit the region before it disappeared. The Nile steamer “Dakka” was put at their disposal for that purpose, but the guests chose to visit the villages rather than the antiquities. Consequently, this visit was merely one of reconnaissance – too limited to make any proper record of Nubian vernacular architecture. It needed a more comprehensive survey in which measured drawings would be made of the architectural styles of the different regions of Nubia, namely the Kanuz, the Arab (Mahas) and the Nubi.

Architect Hassan Fathy was then commissioned by the Ministry of Culture to design the Higher Institute of Social Anthropology, which was to include an open-air museum and in which the architecture of the different regions of the country was to be represented. Nubia, he quoted, was given priority due to it being on the verge of disappearance. “We now had the opportunity of recording its architecture in a thorough and comprehensive way. But, this was all that was done officially to record Nubia’s peculiarly beautiful architecture,” he said.

Two of Hassan Fathy’s students and followers, literally followed ‘the master’ but without the allotted steamer. Instead, they took the journey (in 1963) without realizing that they were travelling the same way as the ancestors of the Nubians: a 300kms trek on foot from Aswan to Abu Simbel upstream, then they hand-built a raft which floated them downstream! In ancient Egyptian murals, boats sailing upstream from Abydos to Thebes, are shown to have sails, using the prevailing northerly winds. But boats going downstream from Thebes to Abydos, are depicted with oars and no sails, to show that they were going against the current. Together with Architect Hassan Fathy, the group comprised of only two social anthropologists and three architects. The big steamer could have accommodated 20 more passengers, if they wanted.

Dr. Omar El-Hakim was one of the students and followers. He said that the Nubian relocation should be an example for future rural redevelopment and settlement procedures, highlighting the significance of vernacular architecture in resettlement projects. “The people must be consulted about and included in the process of building their own environment.”

The ‘Nubian experience’ with its inherited techniques should continue to prevail, as it is an architectural style appropriate to Egypt’s habitat, environment and the needs of the communities they serve, as well as a less costly yet more realistic alternative to contracting for mass-produced housing with its expensive new technology.

Nubia is gone, for the progress of Egypt, but the Nubians still exist! They are scattered around Egypt, mainly neglected and living in slum areas. It is not their fault that their land was taken away from them. They deserve to earn a decent living, but the majority find jobs only as porters.

H.N.