Prepaid phones: features, benefits, and market analysis

Pre-Paid Phones

Please give an example from your own experience that demonstrates planned organizational change. Describe how the change was implemented, as well as subsequent management of same. Use Lewin's phases to illustrate the process.

The psychologist Kurt Lewin identified three stages that all human beings and all organizations proceed through when experiencing change. First, employees must enter the unfreezing stage. When working for a small, prepaid phone company, I have had the ability to witness this unfreezing phenomenon in the relatively small pool of 23 workers in the office. During the unfreezing stage, employees drag their feet and try to show the benefits of things remaining the same, not because there are real benefits to the old standard operating procedures, but because change makes them uncomfortable.

When switching to a new computer system at work to keep track of inventory and track customer buying patterns, rather than dive into learning about the process with eager and open arms, employees tried to justify the previous way of accounting for inventory. According to Lewin, talking about the future or job training "is seldom enough to move employees from this 'frozen' state and significant effort may be required to 'unfreeze' them and get them moving," in short, employees must be pushed to unfreeze ("Lewin's Three Stages," 2007, Changing Minds).

Discussing the difficulties they experienced with the new session during the training session, and understanding that management was sympathetic to their concerns, but the change was necessary, seemed to be a helpful psychological technique to render them more 'change ready' or unfrozen. The next stage, transitioning thus required time, but a sympathetic management attitude about delays during this phase was helpful in making that change seem more acceptable. Of course, transitioning always requires toleration of a few 'glitches' or bumps, on the part of management and employees, especially a form of transitioning that requires accumulating additional knowledge and putting forth a greater mental effort. However, today now that we are 'refrozen,' but better, more efficient, and stronger, using our current computer inventory system, no one can believe that we ever used such an antique system in the past. Time and many headaches have been saved, but the same process will surely occur again, when once again we have to switch to an upgraded system

Question

Describe the role of money as a motivator and then list, in order of importance, the specific motivators you believe are vital in creating a motivating work place.

Money, of course is the reason that most people come to work -- employees have to pay the bills. But other motivating factors come into play in terms of why specific employees go the extra mile every day at their place of employment. First of all, there are many prepaid phone companies such as the one I work for -- employees have a great deal of choice to move from one establishment to another. However, not all of these companies boast the level of engagement and motivation seen in our employees. Because employees feel a sense of friendship with one another, they are more dedicated to going the extra mile to help customers, and to spend the extra hour at work to make sure that everything gets done -- no one wants to let a fellow employee down.

No one would think of going to another phone company, even for a few extra dollars an hour. Of course, a substantial salary raise, or a promotion that reflected a different company's esteem for the individual's record might draw someone away. But employee retention can never be secured through financial compensation alone, or even by giving new titles to the individual. Instead, the employee must receive an elevated sense of life quality from working in the establishment. As all workers spend more and more time at work, this is important in all businesses, in customer service and other forms of enterprise, at all levels of an organization.