CSR 610 Module 9 Milestone Three Example

Culture Change Plan

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

CSR 610: Business Ethics and Culture

Milestone Three

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Culture Change Plan

Introduction

The Milestone One assessment found that the company's culture puts output first: supervisors are paid on units shipped, quality reports to production, people fear raising concerns and leaders praise speed. Milestone Two set four commitments to stakeholders, and the Module Eight program redesigned compliance. This milestone plans how to change the culture so that those commitments are kept. It focuses on the levers leaders control, sequences the changes over eighteen months, plans for resistance and sets measures.

The Culture Wanted

The desired culture can be stated simply: output done right. In practice that means records completed when the work is done, any failed test investigated before a retest counts, anyone free to stop a line for a quality or safety concern without blame, and leaders who ask how a number was achieved as often as whether it was achieved. Kish-Gephart et al. (2010) found that the organizational environment shapes unethical choices alongside individual traits, so the plan aims at the environment rather than at finding better people.

The Levers

Schein (2010) identifies the main ways leaders embed culture: what they regularly pay attention to, measure and control; how they react to critical incidents; how they allocate resources; what they deliberately model and teach; how they allocate rewards and status; and how they recruit, promote and remove people. The plan uses each.

Culture change levers and actions

Phasing

In the first six months, the changes that leaders control directly take effect: the morning meeting agenda, the weekly floor walks, the two new analysts and the new bonus formula from the next quarter. The early win is designed to be visible. When the first supervisor or technician stops a line under the new rules, the plant manager will thank that person at the next shift meeting and the chief executive will mention it at the town hall. Kotter (2012) argues that short-term wins give a change effort credibility and momentum, and a public thank-you for stopping the line will be talked about across both shifts.

In months seven to twelve, promotion criteria change, the role-based training from the compliance program reaches all supervisors and analysts, and the town halls begin each time with a story of someone who did the right thing. In months thirteen to eighteen, the culture survey is repeated, the results are shared openly with employees, and adjustments are made where the survey shows little change.

Supporting Supervisors

The twenty-two shift supervisors carry the change on the floor, and most of them were promoted because they hit output numbers under the old rules. Asking them to slow a line or report a failed test without giving them help would set them up to fail. Before any bonus depends on record audits, each supervisor will get a two-day workshop on the new batch record system, a quality analyst assigned as a partner for the first quarter and a weekly fifteen-minute review with the plant manager focused on obstacles rather than blame. Supervisors will also be asked what gets in their way. Early interviews suggest the answer will include the paper forms that slow recording and the staffing gaps on the night shift, and fixing even one of those quickly will show that leaders are listening.

Communication

Employees have heard values talk before, and the survey suggests they discount it. The plan therefore keeps announcements short and lets actions carry the message. The chief executive will explain the changes once, at a town hall on both shifts, and then report each quarter on what has actually happened, including setbacks. Posters and slogans are left out on purpose. Schein (2010) notes that when what leaders say conflicts with what they do, people believe the behavior, so the plan spends its effort on making behavior and words line up.

Resistance

Shift supervisors stand to give up the most at first: their bonuses will depend partly on record audits they currently fail, and their status came from hitting output targets. The plan addresses this by phasing the bonus change from the next quarter, giving supervisors time and support to clean up records, and by involving two respected supervisors in designing the audit. The private equity owner may worry that slower lines will reduce growth before a planned sale. The case to the owner is financial: the retailer's paused orders, worth $14 million, showed that the old culture was already costing growth, and a buyer will value clean audits. Some long-serving employees may doubt that anything will change; the early win and the floor walks are aimed at them.

Measures

Progress will be measured by behavior rather than activity. Every quarter the plan tracks how often the lab reruns a sample, what fraction of out-of-specification results get a finished investigation, how each shift scores on record audits, the number of line stops for quality or safety, reports raised through any channel and time to resolve them. The culture survey from Milestone One will be repeated at twelve and eighteen months, with targets of reducing the share of employees afraid to raise a concern from 38 percent to under 20 percent and raising agreement that supervisors care how results are achieved above 60 percent.

Conclusion

The plan changes what leaders look at first, how they respond when someone stops a line, where they put money, whom they promote and what stories they tell. Phased over eighteen months, anchored by a visible early win and measured by behavior, it aims to make output done right the company's real culture rather than a phrase in the handbook.

References

Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017103

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.