General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs

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Table of Contents

Background
Methodology
Resistance
Reference List

Background

GDRFA has been known as the company that provides extensive opportunities for traveling to Dubai, as well as addressing the possible issues that may appear in the process. The organization also addresses an array of immigration issues and the related activities, therefore, making it possible for the people moving to Dubai to accommodate to the new environment and feel comfortable in it. According to the vision and mission statement of the organization, The General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs of Dubai, or GDRFA, has been geared toward creating the environment in which people immigrating to Dubai could feel comfortable (General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs of Dubai 2016).

A closer look at the current state of affairs in the company will show, however, that its members have been struggling significantly with the issues in the current corporate design in order to meet the standards set in the organization. To be more accurate, the fact that the typing agencies that GDRFA has been cooperating with have been defaulting on their tasks, thus, slackening the pace of the firm’s operations, needs to be mentioned. Furthermore, the way in which the information is processed in the identified companies leaves much to be desired, with a range of essential pieces of data being lost or confused in the process.

While the idea of parting ways with the firms in question seems to be the most sensible step to take, the drastic outcomes that it will trigger for the owners and the employees thereof may be viewed as the reason for adopting a different approach (General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs n. d.). At present, it is recommended that GDRFA should give the firms in question an opportunity to meet the standards set by the organization and improve their services, at the same time working on the redesign of the information management framework and the communication strategies adopted at GDRFA (‘Typing centers to address all visa issues under GDRFA’s UAE vision system’ 2016).

Methodology

Since there is a need in quantifying the relationships between the key variables (i.e., the change management plan and the company’s success among the target customers), a combination of a qualitative and a quantitative approach should be used to study the nature of the concepts under analysis. Particularly, a case study should be considered as a possible research design. Semi-structured interviews will be used as a tool for collecting relevant qualitative information, whereas surveys will be used to gather quantitative data.

Change

A massive change in an organization as huge as GDRFA is bound to receive some negative responses from the staff members. Despite the drop in customer satisfaction levels that the firm has been experiencing over the past few years, GDRFA has been surprisingly hesitant about introducing any changes to its current design, although minor changes have been made (‘Typing centers to address all visa issues under GDRFA’s UAE vision system’ 2016). The lack of any responsibility toward the problems in the relationships with the typing agencies can be viewed as a reason for concern. Although GDRFA’s unwillingness to use drastic measures is understandable, there is an urgent need to improve the quality of services and reduce the number of information mismanagement instances so that the customer satisfaction levels could remain high.

When considering the tools that will help implement the change in the environment of the GDRFA organization, a framework that has been designed comparatively recently deserves being considered as a possible medium for change implementation. Created by Thomas Pyzdek, the Six Sigma tool, as well as its recent update, the iSix Sigma concept, implies that a corporate change must be administered on all levels. Thus, the prerequisites for a successful transition may be built. Particularly, the DMAIC framework needs to be viewed as a possible tool. Including five essential phases (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control), the device serves as the foil for not only helping the staff survive the change but also introduce the idea of consistent quality improvement (Jones 2014).

In the context of GDRFA, the application of the DMAIC tool will require that the current approach toward managing human resources, as well as the communication process between the managers and the employees, should be revisited. As a detailed overview of the reasons for the personnel to be unwilling to succumb to the change shows, they fear that they may lose their job. Therefore, there is a tangible threat that the people working of GDRFA may lose their motivation under the impression that their services are of no avail to the firm anymore. The DMAIC tool, in its turn, will help mend the communication system, thus, helping deliver the crucial messages to the staff and convince them that each of them is a valued part of the company (Gitlow, Melnyck & Levine 2015). Furthermore, the identified approach will allow measuring the improvement in quality levels, to which the removal of typing centers from the company’s supply chain will ostensibly lead.

Similarly, the Total Quality Management (TQM) tool can be viewed as the device that will allow retaining the quality standards high at the organization while the change is being made. As soon as the employees realize that they remain valued and appreciated at the organization, they will need to undergo the training that will help them improve their competencies so that the alterations to the company’s design should not affect the quality of the services and, therefore, maintain customer satisfaction levels high.

Although the DMAIC tool is quite self-sustainable, it needs to be coupled with another framework that will help create a breakdown of the essential steps to be taken in order to update GDRFA’s services successfully. Choosing from the current range of change management tools, one should give credit to Kotter’s 8-step change model as one of the most efficient methods of delivering changes in the organizational design. In the context of GDRFA, the use of Kotter’s Model will imply that the process of information management, as well as the principles of customer relationships, in general, needs to be redesigned (see Table 1).

Table 1. Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model in the Context of the GDRFA Organization (Kotter 2014)

Objective	Action
Creating a sense of urgency	Increase in staff’s motivation rates with the help of incentives, a change in the relationships between the staff and the managers, and a focus on enhancing the staff’s loyalty
Building a guiding coalition	Promoting the idea of positive change by providing the staff members with extensive opportunities for acquiring new skills in a fast and efficient manner, as well as upgrading the level of their competencies
Forming a strategic vision and initiatives	Changing the current mission and vision of the company so that the needs of the key stakeholders (i.e., the customers and the staff members) could be recognized and met successfully
Enlisting a volunteer team	Promoting the required models of organizational behavior with the help of the transformational leadership approach so that the person could accept the new OB patterns and base their decision-making processes in the context of the company based on the needs of the customers
Enabling action through barriers removal	Managing the issues related to the change in the quality demands toward typing companies by introducing negotiation techniques and offering other options for carrying out a change (e.g., training programs aimed at improving the staff’s competencies); Addressing the staff’s unwillingness to accept the new principles of organizational behavior by promoting a different set of values and using incentives and transformational leadership principles
Generating short-term wins	Accomplishing a successful transition to a new system of values; Redesigning the current information management principles; Introduction of the tools for an increase in the staff’s motivation and expertise rates
Sustaining acceleration	Reinforcing the new principles that the organization is run by so that the process of transferring to the new principles of operations and processes management could be carried out
Instituting change	Promoting the ideas of information sharing as the foundational principle of the company’s operations

As Table 1 shows, there is an urgent need in reinforcing the significance of corporate values and promoting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among the members of the typing centers. Furthermore, the importance of corporate ethics must be stressed so that the employees could base the decision-making processes related to the firm on its current ethical model. As soon as the new principles of organizational behavior are introduced into the target environment, one will have to consider the change of the information management system. Indeed, as the recent reports provided by the members of the entrepreneurship have shown, the lack of coherence in the management of the customers’ data (particularly, the inconsistent arrangement thereof and the inability to locate the relevant data) is the primary reasons for the change. Therefore, the current framework of information management needs reconsideration.

In order to make sure that the required changes should become a success, one will have to focus on enlisting a volunteer team as suggested by Kotter’s Model. Despite the gravity of the effects that the changes are bound to have on the company and the organizations with which it currently cooperates, there are bound to be the supporters of the new approach. Therefore, it is necessary to build a support team using the assistance of the proponents of the new approach.

Furthermore, a careful yet consistent introduction of new, customer-focused values into the environment of the company’s operations will help build the grounds for recruiting new team members. Thus, the core of the further change toward an increase in quality levels and a customer-focused approach can be created. In addition, by convincing the staff members along with the personnel of the typing agencies that the speed and efficacy of data processing, as well as a reduction in waiting time, is bound to have a tremendously positive effect on their career, GDRFA will invest in its human resources.

Resistance

As far as the owners of the typing centers are concerned, providing them with notices can be considered a leeway to simplifying the process of declining their services. However, one must admit that the identified framework of communication is likely to cause a largely negative response in the identified audience. The reasons for their concern are quite understood; without the connection to GDFRA, the typing centers are highly unlikely to survive in the competitive environment of the global economy with the current staff performance rate.

At present, the firm has been using the approach that implies avoiding direct confrontation. Although efficient in preventing conflicts, the identified framework does not actually help solve the problems that GDRFA is facing. Instead, it can be suggested that the organization may consider using conflict management techniques that imply compromising and cooperating. For instance, GDRFA could consider the idea of providing the typing center leaders with a chance to improve the quality of their staff’s work. As stressed above, with the introduction of the new corporate policies, there will be a consistent need for improving the information management processes and maintaining the outcomes of the data processing tasks high. For these purposes, the members of the typing centers could be invited to participate in the company’s projects. Thus, the process of information sharing could be launched in the environment of the organization. Furthermore, GDRFA would be investing in its human resources by promoting their professional growth, which is essential for its further success in the target market (Jex & Britt 2014).

Encouraging the members of the typing agencies to improve the quality of performance can be viewed as one of the primary blocks on GDFRA’s path to success. Because of the specifics of the management framework and the leadership strategy, the lack of control over the performance rates of the personnel becomes a tangible problem, the evaluation of the efficacy of the current quality improvement strategies becomes barely possible. In fact, the supervision of the strategies implementation is not a possibility in this case. Therefore, it will be necessary to make the organizations choose between ceasing their partnership with GDRFA and meeting the corporate standards. The identified approach might seem rather harsh, yet it seems to be the only possible way of maintaining the firm’s quality levels high (Kerzner 2014).

Critical Success Factors

Needless to say, GDRFA is influenced extensively by the specifics of the environment in which it operates. Furthermore, the peculiarities of the organization’s design also matter in determining the success of its innovative solutions and the efficacy of the new approach toward managing the corporate resources, particularly, the typing agencies. Therefore, isolating the elements that affect the efficacy of the change implementation is crucial to further success thereof.

Among the forces that shape GDRFA’s performance to the greatest extent, communication processes need to be mentioned first. The design of an appropriate tool for managing the information available to the members of the company and transferring it efficiently must be at the top of the firm’s priority list at present. For this purpose, assigning the chief executive of the firm as the communication leader must be viewed as a necessity. Unless every single member of the company conforms to a single principle of data management, GDRFA will not be able to attain success in its endeavor at improving the quality of typing services. Indeed, as stressed above, because of the lack of connection between the typing agencies and the organization, there is a need to make sure that every single message is heard and taken into account by each member of the corporation. However, without a coherent communication approach and a leadership strategy, the ideas that stand behind the changes may fall flat, thus, resulting in an even greater drop in motivation rates among the employees.

The philosophical and behavioral commitments that a successful and efficient leader may encourage in their staff members should also be listed among the essential elements of successful management of changes. In other words, it is not enough for the leader of GDRFA to be persuasive; apart from that, it is necessary to be empathetic with the participants of the communication process to convince the members of the organization to accept new values and beliefs, using them as the foundation for the decision-making process. In other words, communication must be viewed as an essential part of the company’s routine. It is important that the communication process should be carried out in person; otherwise, the staff members will not feel the connection between them and the company’s leaders.

In the case in point, the company managers must assume the role of active listeners and make sure that the needs of the people in the typing agencies are heard. Particularly, it is important to find out why the employees lack motivation, and why they are unwilling to engage in active learning to increase their proficiency levels. While face-to-face communication is crucial to the successful resolution of the corporate conflicts and addressing the emerging issues, it will also be crucial to introduce the tools such a surveys and questionnaires, which will allow receiving the necessary feedback from the staff members within a relatively short amount of time. Informative and concise, the responses to the surveys will serve as the foundation for the further course of managing the relationships between the staff members and the managers of the company.

Another important constituent of the change management process at GDRFA concerns delivering bad news. While admittedly unpleasant, the need to tell the staff members about the issues that are going to affect both the organization and the people that are dependent on it is a crucial step toward promoting clarity and transparency on all levels of the company’s management. Therefore, it will be the responsibility of GDRFAs’ leader, as well as its numerous managers, to emphasize that the firm is experiencing a crisis that will require either a tremendous redesign of the relationships with its partners, particularly, the work of the typing agencies, or the dismissal of the identified partners in business.

Although it is recommended that the news should be told in a mild manner so that the employees should not experience stress caused by the fear of losing their jobs, it is also necessary to make the target audience feel the gravity of the situation. Unless the owners of the typing services recognize the fact that they will have to conform to the standards set by GDRFA, little progress will occur. Therefore, it is crucial that a constructive dialogue should be established with the owners of the typing businesses. It will be reasonable to set specific time constraints. For instance, it can be suggested that the leaders of the typing companies should improve the quality of their services within the next six months; otherwise, the cooperation will be terminated. The firms that will be able to meet the deadline and the requirements set can be considered eligible for the further partnership (Topolosky 2014).

Furthermore, the tools for a timely and analytical discussion of the changes that the organizational and the people that work for it are going through needs to be regularly discussed, Thus, the employees and the firm’s partners will feel secure about the way in which the company sees them. It is, therefore, shed light on not only the details of the changes that the company is undergoing but also the reasons behind these alterations. For instance, the leaders of the typing companies in question may underestimate the significance of CSR and the tools for raising staff motivation at first.

However, after consistent communication and numerous discussions, the partners are likely to accept the concept of competency improvement as the foil for the further progress and the expansion into the global economy realm. Therefore, the current principles of information transfer, processing, and further use in the design of the appropriate HRM strategies need to be reconsidered. Furthermore, the branding approach will have to be reconsidered along with the brand image of the company. As stressed above, the firm will have to focus on the needs of its key stakeholders, primarily, its customers, employees, and partners, which must be reflected in the way in which the firm brands itself (Podnar 2014).

Apart from the identified issues, there is an obvious need for the organization to update its image and use the assistance of visionary in order to change the way in which customers see it. Indeed, unless GDRFA makes it evident that it has redesigned its operations and corporate principles completely, the chances that the changes to the company’s design and operations will be noticed and recognized globally are not very high. In other words, it is necessary to redesign the current corporate brand and make it more appealing to the target audiences. As a result, the alterations are likely to be noticed fast, and that the organization will be able to attract new customers.

Reference List

General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs n. d., Lecture on leadership, Web.

General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs of Dubai 2016, FAQ, Web.

Gitlow, HS, Melnyck, RJ & Levine, DM 2015, A guide to Six Sigma and process improvement for practitioners and students: foundations, DMAIC, tools, cases, and certification, FT Press, New York, NY.

Jex, SM, & Britt, TW 2014, Organizational psychology: a scientist-practitioner approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Jones, E 2014, Quality management for organizations using Lean Six Sigma techniques, CRC Press, Chicago, IL.

Kerzner, H 2014, Project management 2.0: leveraging tools, distributed collaboration, and metrics for project success, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Kotter, JP 2014, Accelerate: building strategic agility for a faster-moving world, Harvard Business Review Press, Harvard, MA.

Podnar, K 2014, Corporate communication: a marketing viewpoint, Routledge, New York, NY.

Topolosky, PS 2014, Linking employee satisfaction to business results, Routledge, New York, NY.

‘Typing centres to address all visa issues under GDRFA’s UAE vision system’ 2016, The Gulf Today, Web.

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