Executive Summary: Managing Hybrid Marketing Systems and Stihl Incorporated

Description: The organization moved from having assigned offices for employees to a hoteling system where employees have to make reservations to reserve workspace and may not necessarily work out of the same work space every day.

Organization background: Organization is a Federal contractor and initially had most of its employees work from its own offices until recently when most contracts are requiring employees on client-site. This has resulted in additional office space and the organization is working towards reducing and consolidating office space to reduce costs.

Using the 5 P's to evaluate this shift in organizational process:

Pain: The organization moved in this direction as it has unused office space that was resulting in additional real estate costs and impacting the overall profitability.

Employees were previously commuting for longer distances to work out of their "base" office now have the flexibility to work out of the office closest to their homes. Thus employees were receptive for the change as it reduced commute times

Process: The organization followed a streamlined process where it analyzed the business problem and determined possible solutions. It held town hall meetings to get employee buy-in on the proposed solution. A pilot was held to demonstrate the solution and its capabilities.

The organization consistently communicated about the upcoming changes. A schedule and timeline were clearly communicated via multiple channels, including intranet, emails and communications from employee management.

Politics: Politics were not a major concern in this change as the change was being driven by the executive leadership at the CEO level. With the strong communication strategy, all employees were informed about the reasons for the change and the organization strategy to manage this change.

Payoff: In terms of pay-off, organization benefited from reduced real estate costs and efficiencies. The employees benefitted for shorter commute times, lower commuting costs. This resulted in increased satisfaction for the employees as they now had the flexibility to work from multiple locations as needed.

Persistence: As the organization rolled out the new process, it did face some resistance from employees who were not used to the new process. The complaints and issues that were raised up were resolved. Changes were made as needed to account for new requirements as the feedback from the pilot was received.

Conclusion and Lessons Learnt: The organization had a well thought out plan and a complete change management strategy thus it was successful it processing this change across the organization with minimal impacts. The key factors for success were the consistent communications and highlighting the benefits for the employees.