ORG 727 Week 7 Implementation Planning Example

From 300 Applicants to 5,800: Planning the Rollout of a Credit Union's Member Conversion Intervention

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

ORG/727: Organizational Diagnosis and Intervention

Week 7 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Saguaro Federal Credit Union, its people, plans and figures are composites written for a model paper.

Week 6 described the design and prototype of a new member conversion process at the credit union. With two conversion specialists and 300 approved loan applicants, conversion rose from 39 to 68 percent and time to funding fell to under a day. The full volume is about 5,800 approved non-member applicants a year. This paper plans the rollout, from incentives and phases to communication, training and the risks that could derail it.

Research on Readiness and Reactions

Armenakis et al. (1993) argued that leaders create readiness by communicating a discrepancy message, why change is needed, and an efficacy message, that the organization can make it, through persuasive communication, active participation and management of internal and external information. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) applied Meyer and Allen's three forms of commitment to change itself. Employees who backed a change because they believed in it, or because they felt they ought to, went further in supporting it than those who went along only because resisting would cost them. Oreg et al. (2011) pulled together sixty years of survey and field studies of how employees respond to change and concluded that responses depend on antecedents such as participation, information, trust in management and the personal impact of the change, and that reactions in turn affected work satisfaction, commitment and intentions to leave.

Stakeholders and Likely Reactions

Lending officers: under current incentives, they receive bonus credit for funded loans; conversion specialists will now fund many loans. Likely reaction: concern about pay. Personal impact is high.

Branch managers: branches will see fewer applicants walk in to complete loans. Likely reaction: concern about relevance and traffic numbers.

Contact center: calls about approvals will be routed to specialists. Likely reaction: neutral to positive, since these calls were frustrating.

Compliance officer: must approve video verification at full volume. Likely reaction: cautious.

Branch and lending staff who became specialists in the prototype: strong supporters.

Members: likely positive, based on prototype feedback scores of 4.6 of 5.

The people who designed the new process are its best advocates; the people whose pay it changes are its most likely critics.

Fixing Systems Before Asking People to Change

Following Oreg et al.'s finding that personal impact shapes reactions, incentives change first. Lending officers will receive shared credit for loans funded through conversion when they originated the dealer relationship, and branch scorecards will count members converted in their area. These changes will be announced before the rollout begins, so that no group is asked to support a change that cuts its pay.

Lessons From the Prototype

The prototype revealed problems that would grow with scale. Video verification failed for about one applicant in ten, which at full volume would mean nearly 50 failed calls a month without the phone-based fallback. Saturday volume overwhelmed two specialists; at eight specialists, scheduling must match the weekly pattern of dealer sales, which peak on weekends. And the prototype's specialists were volunteers who believed in the change. The next specialists may be less enthusiastic, so selection, training and early support matter more as the team grows.

The Branch Question

Branch managers' concern about traffic is legitimate. The conversion process moves account opening away from branches for loan applicants, and branch traffic is already down. The plan does not ignore this. Branch managers will receive credit for conversions in their area, and a separate study, to begin after rollout, will examine what role branches should play as more service moves to phone and digital channels. Telling branch managers this now, rather than after their numbers fall, is part of treating them as partners rather than obstacles.

Phases and Checkpoints

Phase 1, months 1 to 2: four specialists, Tucson-area applicants only, about 40 percent of volume. Checkpoint: conversion at least 60 percent, compliance exceptions under 1 percent, specialist workload under 25 applicants a day.

Phase 2, months 3 to 4: six specialists, all Arizona applicants. Checkpoint: same, plus lending officer survey showing at least neutral views.

Phase 3, months 5 to 6: eight specialists, all applicants, plus digital completion link in the app. Checkpoint: conversion at least 60 percent across the full volume.

If a checkpoint is missed, the phase is extended and causes are examined with the design team before proceeding.

Roles

The member growth manager owns the rollout. The chief lending officer and retail vice president co-sponsor and own incentive changes. The design team continues as an improvement team, meeting weekly. The compliance officer approves each phase's verification volume. The internal consultant facilitates checkpoint reviews.

Communication

Communication follows Armenakis's two messages. The discrepancy message uses records: 3,400 approved applicants a year were never becoming members. The efficacy message uses the prototype: 68 percent conversion and members' comments. Messages come from the leaders each group trusts: lending officers from the chief lending officer, branch staff from their regional managers. Each phase begins with a short session where specialists from the prototype describe what they do.

Training

Specialists receive two weeks of training covering membership, deposits, auto lending, video verification and the dashboard, delivered by prototype specialists. Lending officers and branch staff receive a one-hour session on the new handoff and how to see applicant status.

Building Commitment

To build affective rather than continuance commitment, the plan invites lending and branch staff to suggest improvements through the improvement team, shares monthly results with everyone and recognizes staff whose referrals lead to conversions.

Sustaining the Change

Many changes fade once the project ends. To keep this one in place, conversion rate will become a permanent measure on the executive scorecard, the member growth manager role will be made permanent, the dashboard will remain the shared view for lending and branches and the improvement team will continue to meet monthly for at least a year. Specialists will have a career path into lending or branch management, so the role does not become a dead end.

Resources

The rollout needs six additional specialists, drawn first from volunteers in branches and lending and backfilled where needed, the dashboard and digital link already funded in Week 5 and about 120 hours of the design team's time. The member growth manager will report progress to the executive team every two weeks during the rollout and monthly afterward.

Risks

Specialist burnout as volume grows: workload caps and weekend scheduling.

Fraud through video verification: compliance monitoring, with any suspicious account reviewed within a day.

Branch traffic decline: branches will be repositioned toward advice in Week 8's evaluation.

Loss of momentum after launch: quarterly reviews for the first year and conversion in executives' goals.

Conclusion

Scaling Saguaro's conversion process from a prototype to full volume requires more than a schedule. Research on readiness, commitment and reactions to change points to a plan that fixes incentives first, phases the rollout with checkpoints, uses trusted messengers and the prototype's evidence and builds commitment through participation. Week 8 will evaluate the results.

References

Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Relations, 46(6), 681-703. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600601

Herscovitch, L., & Meyer, J. P. (2002). Commitment to organizational change: Extension of a three-component model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), 474-487. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.474

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886310396550