Frontline Child Welfare Workers' Perception of Communicative Strategies for Implementing a Planned Organizational Change: Implication for Managers and Leaders
This study systematically identified strategies for communicating planned organizational changes to front-line child welfare workers. Internal communication is crucial in bringing about organizational change in child welfare. Complex organizational structure and the nature of practice that involves offsite field work or family visits make it challenging to communicate strategic change internally to frontline workers(McCraeet al., 2014). Though managers and leaders steer change efforts, frontline employees actually implement the change. Success often depends on caseworkers’ motivation for and perceived acceptability of planned change (Aarons & Palinkas, 2007). Therefore, it is critical to engage line employees in change efforts. The aim of this study is to explore strategies for communicating and engaging workers in a planned organizational change. We apply two broad conceptual categories for communicating change within organizations: programmatic (top-down) and participatory strategies (Russ, 2008).
Methods
Five, 90-minute focus groups were conducted with child welfare workers (n=50) from a public child welfare agency. Participants were purposefully selected based on experience and to ensure that group composition reflected variation in work function and unit. A semi-structured interview guide elicited discussion on ways workers prefer to be engaged in implementation. Focus groups were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Two researchers reviewed transcripts, identified themes, and generated a codebook. Both coders independently analyzed each transcript using an iterative review and revision process, with a third coder as an independent reviewer (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Results
Workers described a combination of programmatic and participatory strategies for communicating change. Workers discussed feelings of empowerment and sense of “ownership of the agency” when focus group and surveys were used to solicit their opinions on planning and implementing change, consistent with participatory approaches. These strategies built workers’ trust in leadership. However, lack of follow-up, and information about how their input is used aggravated workers’ sense of uncertainty about change. Workers also want information about how changes benefit children and families and bring about positive outcomes. Finally, workers discussed the importance of administrators demonstrating ease of use of the tools, and benefits of change on their day-to-day activities consistent with programmatic communication strategies.
Implications
Results suggest that participatory communicative strategies emphasizing employee engagement might be useful when used in combination with programmatic approaches that communicate targeted messages about the change. Thus, leaders should consider adopting both types of communicative approaches to engage workers in planned organizational change. Moreover, leaders could build more worker buy-in for planned change by communicating the link between client outcomes and change efforts. This study highlights the importance of engaging workers in the entire change process, from planning to implementation and dissemination of outcomes.