Flanking Measures for Successful Change Management in an Irish Tourism Company

An Irish Tourism Company with headquarters in Dublin and a branch in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, has been so severely affected by the ongoing Covid crisis that the management has decided to radically change its business purpose. As more and more Irish people want to make holidays in their own country and they are also open to alternative forms of holiday, the company now wants to specialise in the distribution of backpacks and tents. The company currently employs 25 staff at its headquarters, who are mainly responsible for its own administration and for co-operating with hotels, restaurants, coach companies and the managers of tourist attractions in Ireland. A further 40 staff are employed in Kenmare. They have so far mainly worked as tour guides.

On paper, the change project has already been completed. The company's existing structures and business processes should be comprehensively restructured. The task of the headquarters should continue to be the company administration. These activities are limited to the selection of suitable suppliers of backpacks and tents and the negotiations with these suppliers. The management assumes that all tasks can be performed at the headquarters with a staff of 15 persons. The employees at the Kenmare site will also be given new tasks. They will be responsible for the distribution of the backpacks and tents in Ireland. It can be assumed that the workforce will also be reduced here. A precise number of redundancies has not yet been communicated, however.

The employees at the Kenmare site have so far worked exclusively in the field tourism – many of them from a personal conviction. But now they will become pure salespeople. This is leading to great resentment and prejudice among some employees who like that idea. Other employees, however, see this as an opportunity to participate in really important changes and make a difference.

Since the management is aware that such a major change process not only requires a great deal of time and money, but also a lot of resistance on the part of the employees, they would like to support the change process from the very beginning with suitable measures to avoid dissatisfaction and declining performance among the employees.

In the course of the planned phase-out of the Tourism sector, the management has formulated a new corporate mission statement and drawn up a 100-day plan to make the goals and next steps of the changes transparent, highlight their importance and thus relieve employees of uncertainty. Both papers are publicly available, but few employees have read them, as they are still too busy processing the changes personally.

As a consultant of “Movement Consulting Ltd.” you will be commissioned to accompany the change process of the Irish company. You are asked to prepare a report. The focus of your task will be on the planning and implementation of flanking measures to actively support the change process so that the employees are able to support and assist the changes.

Key objectives and/or questions when preparing your report:

• What elementary structural and behavioural problems could arise during change process?
• What characteristics of the management of the company can you describe? What psychological processes could take place among the employees in Dublin and in Kenmare?
• What phase after Levin is the process in? What characterizes this phase? How can you tell from the case described?
• What specific flanking measures do you recommend for the individual phases of the change process? What is the time frame for each phase? Describe the conception and implementation of 2-3 process accompanying measures in more detail.
• What measures would you suggest for monitoring success? In which time frame should they be implemented?