CIPD Learner Blog Part 3

In fact according to my fellow colleagues who I’m currently studying alongside for my CIPD qualification, change has become such a driving force behind companies HR departments that those who are in more senior roles now require ‘Organisational Design and Development’ as part of their CIPD Level 7 module choice.

With this in mind I was looking forward to taking part in my latest workshop, which focussed on assessing the reasons behind change and how people manage the emotional and practical aspects of change.

Before I started studying for my CIPD qualification, when I thought of change in an organisation I always thought of redundancies and dramatic emotional changes.  I now know that there are a wide range of changes, large and small, that take place within a company to make them commercially viable, and change can be positive. I mentioned in my previous blog positive change can include recruiting new team members or the launch of a new product or service.

In the workshop we covered aspects of change management which I found quite intriguing, looking at things such as defining the expectations of HR service users, examining HR definitions of good practice service delivery, and identifying key areas for improvement

For me, the workshop gave me the opportunity to review the other learners’ companies, to see which aspects of change their HR department managed, and how it was managed, and I realised that all companies go through similar changes. While aspects of the change may be different, some may be planned while others are reactive to a situation, fundamentally all companies have similar changes taking place. The main difference, and the one I found the most interesting, was how each company had a different way of handling this change.

I’ve now looked at Organisational Structure, Culture and now Change during my studies, and these have helped me focus which direction my career path will take.  I will be looking closely at career progression roles into Change Management as I find it really interesting to review and look at how to manage both the emotional and practical changes within an organisation.

The workshop also got me thinking about My Project Plan and what change would I like to make in my organisation and how it would make an impact.

Having thought about the work we have covered and the various stages of change, I feel that when I manage change myself, be it in a work environment or at home, there is a very practical way of approaching it and this in turn will help me to understand different ways of approach different people.