Core 15b – Organization Development

Problem: Two departments in your organization – HR and Administrative division has

undergone dramatic clashes in the last 6 months leading to an environment of hostility and
mutual disagreement over matters pertaining of management, executive and compensation.
The HR Department team blames Admin team for not providing them accurate and timely
information about employee attendance, regularity, travel reimbursement details and field
support when employees have to travel on-site for work. On the other hand, Admin team
shows resentment with HR Department, the complaining that the HR team is unrealistic and
does not consider available resources (admin staff, financial constraints of the company and
time required to undertake the task).

Design and OD Intervention

“OD intervention is a sequence of activities actions and events intended to help an

organisation improve its performance and effectiveness”. – Rober Zawacki the an

Identifying the issue: - To begin with I will PERSONALLY talk to each and every employee
from both the departments. HR department and administrative department. 3 main focuses
will be. How to in the if

1. Inward issues: Inward meaning internal issues (in-group), In this I will personally
talk to each and every individual from both the departments and ask them to list
out what they think about themselves as a team, about their own behaviour,
individual problem from their own department, or issues if they have any among
themselves. The employee can also write down their opinions / thoughts or
feelings about what they think their job roles and responsibilities are, the
employee is free to write down or directly speak about, what they think the other
team is asking them to do and how much of efforts they think they are putting up
exactly, in order to meet those demands and expectations of another team. This
will help us get an insight on what an individual team thinks of themselves as a
cohesive unit.
2. Outward issues: - Outward meaning external issues, issues that they have related
to others teams or units (Out-group). To better understand this area, I will
employees to express their thoughts or problems which they are facing because of
the other development. This section will also seek for employee’s suggestion or
 ideas of what they think the other team should do and how much they the other
team is putting up the efforts. Employee can express his/her thoughts, idea,
suggestion, opinions through notes as well.
3. Mental health: - When a company is facing a lot of internal conflicts, within one
organization itself, it can create a lot of stress, anxiety, and mistrust among them.
This will not only affect a worker’s productivity, but will also bring down the
companies’ moral which can led to increase in employee turnover. To get a better
insight on this area, I will talk to each and every employee from both department
and ask them about their honest feelings on this matter or conflict. This will give
us a clear understanding about employees’ mental health status and their stress
level at workplace.

The first two can be performed in groups where the employee can list out the things related to
the issues. But the last one ‘mental health’ should be performed individually with respect to
the employee’s confidentiality.

Formulating an Action Plan: - Now that issues have being identified at all levels, next step is
to formulate an Organizational Development intervention in order to tackle these issues. This
includes team building among both the departments as well as taking into accounts about the
mental health of each and every employee.

Nature of Activity: Intergroup relationship building

Intergroup relationships: When there are issues among two or more groups who are
interdependent among themselves in an organization, the activities to solve these issues of the
groups have to be synchronized and coordinated to gain the organizations dreams and to
eliminate any unhealthy competition between these groups. Getting acquainted, learning
about each other, their expressive and communicative styles, their roles and responsibilities,
discussing about organizations goals and values can be a good start. In situations like these all
these problems and conflicts must be solved in a spirit of trust, goodwill and openness. With
the help of OD intervention, we can achieve the state of mutual trust and openness among the
employees of both the departments.

1. Getting acquainted: In this we can make people from both the groups to play a game
i.e. “Do not laugh”, where one person from both the department will sit face-to-face
and crack or make jokes and the other person is not allowed to laugh, this activity will
lighten up the atmosphere between those employees and will form a sense of
 familiarity among them, and once this has been accomplished, the result will be that
both the employees will try to understand the point of view of each other.

Once we have accomplished this at individual level, we will move to the group level

2. Rotating membership: Now that both the teams are not hostile to each other anymore
we can shift or temporally put members of one group to another. This will reduce the
poor effects of inter-group competition that result from employee allegiance to group
or divisions. As more and more people interact in different groups, greater the
understanding among them results.
3. Group activity: - Once both the groups are acquainted to each-other, both the
departments will perform a group activity together, they will have to discuss about
organizations goals and its values, their future expectations related to the organization
and how they can achieve them, what all things they have to do to achieve those
goals, and how they can achieve those milestones. Now that both the departments
have clear idea of what roles and responsibility the other department have, they can
clearly clarify the roles and responsibilities they think is necessary for better task
accomplishment. Since now that the environment of the organization is clear both the
departments will try to understand one another from a new and clear perspective
where both the departments have clear and open minded towards each other. This way
both the departments can identify a solution which everyone on both the teams agrees.
And now they think of each other a part of the whole organization, this is done in a
hope that both the departments will realize that an organization can only function or
work properly when its employees are working as a cohesive unit instant of thinking
and treating each other as outsiders.

Evaluations: - Evaluating during the course of an intervention allows for the improvement of
the intervention’s effectiveness before it is too late to make some necessary changes in your
OD interventions or in your approach to the problem. However, in context of conflict, it is
not sufficient enough for evaluation to take place only once during the intervention’s life
cycle. That’s why we re-evaluate the intervention after some time, in order to understand if
the organization is able to adapt to its changing work environment and meet those changing
expectations.

The Target population will both the groups. The OD intervention is designed to bring
changes in the conceptual environment of the organization as well as the outlook of
organizations members. The intervention targets on both the departments because it will help
them develop interpersonal competence which includes communications skills, insight related
to others in the organization and insight about themselves as well.

Re-evaluation: - This will be done after some times of implementing the OD intervention,
now then, both the departments have settled down and their conflict has been solved, I should
(as an OD practitioner) re-evaluate the situations aftermath of the conflict as well as the
aftermath of the OD intervention. Most OD interventions necessitate certain number of
changes in the organization and in its people’s behaviour and their way of thinking related to
the organization they are working for, they typically provide broad prescriptions for how
much changes should an organization take in, in order in utilize its recourses more
effectively, it is important to re-evaluate the aftermaths of apply the OD interventions to see
if they organization is able to accept the changes or not. Re-evaluation will also give us a
chance to see if the organization is facing some another issues, which did not occur
immediately after apply OD intervention, or did not came to surface in the evaluation stage.
This will also give us an opportunity to understand the newly formed work environment.

Conclusion: -

Organizational Development (OD) interventions are systematic programmes that are aimed to
fix an issue and help a company accomplish its objectives. These intervention efforts are
intended to improve the functions of the company and to help managers and executives better
manage their teams and organizations cultures. By using this intervention in the given
situations, I believe, employees will start to think of each unit as one big part of an
organization, instant of thinking about each other as rival or enemies. When employees start
to think of each other as the same - they will start considering each other perspective,
opinion’s, suggestion and or even their issues. Once this internal rivalry has been resolved in
the organization the work-related stress of employees, their anxiety, their uneasiness of
working in that organization gets eliminated. This not only solves the issues of employee’s
turnover, but can also boost the morale of the organizations leading it to higher work
productivity and higher work satisfactions of the employees. Thus, applying OD intervention
will improve organizations over all functioning.

Submitted by
Aditi Tripathi_MA2