A revolutionary change carried out in an evolutional way

Figure 7: Possible benefits of AGV implementation

3.5.1 Change management in STH implementation project

Tamilarasu (2012) defines Change Management as: “A structured approach to shift-ing/transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from current state to a desired future state”. This indicates that the transfer from the original state to the future state is controlled and includes individual and/or larger groups of people. Therefore, because of the presence an involvement of people, there is uncertainty involved.

Tamilarasu (2012) points out the possible and common reluctancy towards change among people. People can have tendency to prefer the current state against change, which is the result of a large number of factors, including i.e., unawareness of the change project or its intended outcomes, lack of participation in the change process, uncertainty about the success of the change project or the lack of trust to the company’s resources and capability to execute the change. Communications stand out before, during and af-ter the change; when people do not have a proper knowledge and understanding about the change project, they appear to be more likely to resist it.

The attitude towards change can also be positive, however. Tamilarasu (2012) lists vari-ous situations, when people can see the change as something positive. The list includes scenarios such as when people expect to benefit personally from the change, feel that the change is a reasonable action to be taken in the current state, they were able to contribute to the change and in a situation where they have respect towards the person responsible for the change. Here, too, having enough knowledge about the change, the reasons behind it, the expected consequences, timelines, and people responsible will be crucial in terms of positive attitude of the employees towards the change. Therefore, communications overall are important when creating positive attitude about the change.

Rousseau and ten Have (2022) list actions with which an organization can better succeed when going through a change project. The list includes setting proper goals regarding

the change, acting in a fair way in all circumstances, implementing the needed tempo-rary structures to give the project the needed capacity, having proper feedback and re-design practices and loops in place, and finally, ensuring proper learning throughout and after the project. By utilizing these guidelines, the organization can not only increase the likelihood of success of the change project, but also ensure the changes implemented will be kept in place in the future. They can also help the organization to improve during the project by getting feedback and improvement ideas from the participants of the pro-ject. The list also highlights the fact, that change projects need proper resources to be implemented in the most effective way possible.

Rousseau and ten Have (2022) also give eight recommendations of actions that can be taken in the change project. These actions include gathering facts about the current sit-uation and defining the problem, estimating the readiness of the organization to imple-ment the change, developing possible solutions, establishing proper leadership in the organization, creating the vision of what the organization wants to be in the future state, utilizing the possibilities of social networks, utilizing the knowledge of the lower-level employees of the organization, and finally, ensuring the changed ways-of-working will be kept in place. These actions can first help the organization thoroughly understand the scale and need for the change, assess if the organization can carry out the change, how the organization will look like after the change and how to avoid sliding back to the old ways.

3.5.2 Change resistance anticipated and experienced in the AGV-project

In situations of change, resistance is one of the natural reactions of people involved in and affected by it. Tucker (2017) lists change resistance as one of the top issues when it comes to employee engagement and people challenges. Therefore, managers should in-clude and let the employees know about the change. Tucker (2017) also mentions, that it can be an instinctive first reaction for people to resist a change. Tamilarasu (2012) shares the opinion and adds, that the managers and leaders can expect at least some

level of change resistance to occur whenever implementing changes in a company. The level and appearance of the change is likely to vary among individual people.

In the current world, change can be considered to take place constantly, as technologies related to Industry 4.0 are utilized at an accelerating speed. According to Ouedraogo et.al. (2021), the ongoing change and the fourth industrial revolution will probably have an effect on every industry. They point out, that each person experiences the change differently and an important aspect appears to be the reason behind the change taking place. Also the frequency of changes in a company have an effect on the way employees experience change; employees working in a company with frequent changes are more likely to experience a larger amount of change fatigue, which can, through change cyni-cism, have a negative effect on the result of the change project.

Ouedraogo et.al. (2021) highlight, that employees experiencing change in the company they work for, are likely to feel more positive about the change, if they are explained the reasons for the change closely enough. They mention that the company should make the expected improvements and results clear to the employees. This way of thinking is called the Logic of consequences, which is likely to reduce change fatigue, thus increasing the likelihood of the success of the change. Therefore, it is valuable for the managers and change initiators to utilize this logic as much as possible.

Tucker (2017) encourages managers to prepare employees for a change and to be trans-parent about it. Managers should properly clarify the situation for the employees and answer to various basic questions about the change, such as “What needs to change and why?” and “When will the change take place and what are the requirements concerning the change?”. The purpose of the questions is to offer visibility for the people affected by the change and thus reduce the change resistance. It also helps the employees to gain more understanding of the change, which reduces the number of assumptions while in-creasing the amount of information and facts.

Employees affected by the change can be highly interested in how they will benefit from the change. A valuable act for managers to take is to include the employees in the change as early as possible. Tucker (2017) mentions that the change resistant employees might discover obstacles for the change, which in itself is of high value for the organization, because solving problems and removing obstacles proactively is more beneficial than afterwards fixing the problems.

Change resistance was also detected during the AGV implementation project in the STH-facility. The resistance towards the change was expected, because the change in the op-erations was significant. Most of the resistance and negative reactions by the employees was solved by direct and open communications between the project team and the em-ployees themselves: when assumptions were replaced with facts, the attitude towards the change seemingly improved. The resistance changed into curiosity and ideas, that were extremely valuable for the project. The employees could at all times express their concerns towards the change and the project team had the responsibility to provide the answers.