Principles for organizational change in human service agencies

Human service agencies are facing profound changes as a result of variations in current societal political, social and environmental forces. This paper provides a review of the literature on organizational change in an effort to determine which strategies are most successful in facilitating this process and achieving desired results within agencies. Models, methods and approaches are discussed. Five principles to increase success in organizational change are proposed: (1) develop a system for continuous discussion and feedback for entities likely to be impacted by the change including those within the organization and ones at the outside constituency levels: (2) prepare the organization for change; (3) ensure that there are methods, processes and resources available to provide education and training regarding new technologies, policy changes and the change process itself; (4) using employee participation, develop a system to recognize and reward employees for achieving targeted results and organizational goals; and (5) use the organizational change effort to build into the agency a continuous process for change.