Organization in change - employees experience of change management and work-wellbeing after a process of system upgrade

Changes are part of today’s business. Organizations are constantly going through processes where things are developed, renewed and changed. Changes can be anything from lay-offs to IT-system upgrades or implementing new sales models. In any case, these development projects are always change situations for someone or some group of people. Since we react and experience things in a different way, change situations require leading skills that guide people towards new routines and new way of thinking. This thesis is a commissioned research for company X, that is a leading retail company operating also in Finland. The objective of this thesis is to find out how employees of com-pany X experience change management and how changes have an impact on their work-wellbeing. Research focuses on employees’ experience and point of view to offer a possibility to give feedback and share their ideas related to change processes and managerial work. Theoretical framework of this thesis consists of three topics: organizational change, communication and work-wellbeing. These topics are related to the wide concept of change management and are covered to create a base for a survey research for company X. Goal is to create a clear thesis work, where presented topics are connected to each other and finally put into practice by providing new information. Employees experience of change management and the impacts of changes were re-searched using an internet survey that was conducted in December 2020. Survey was open from 18.12.20-1.1.21 and the total number of received answers was 89. Likert’s scale was used to scale responses, since this survey measured respondent’s opinions and attitudes. Results were analysed in percent and averages by presenting them in bar chart form to create a clear picture of received data. Cross tabulation was used to compare re-sults between employees in different working departments, to see if there were any significant differences. Results show that employees’ readiness for change is on good level and they see changes as being part of today’s business. However, employees experience is that executed sys-tem upgrade failed on communication, trainings, scheduling and managing workload. Change process affected their comfort and energy levels at work negatively. Employees are pleased to their supervisors and team members work, but wish to have more feedback and open communication from their supervisors