GRA urges staff to adopt change strategy

The Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) first annual conference for change agents has been held, with a call on staff to adopt a change management strategy to deal with challenges and ensure successful reforms in the integration of revenue agencies.

 

The Authority has appointed 350 Change Agents to aid in implementing the change management strategy adopted to coordinate all reforms within the authority. The change management strategy follows integration of the erstwhile revenue agencies into the GRA.

Speaking on the topic ‘Sustaining the GRA Reforms: The Role of Change Agents’ Mr. George Blankson, Commissioner-General of the GRA whose speech was read on his behalf said: “With a spread of both management and staff across the length and breadth of the country, and with the many reforms taking place at the same time, it was inevitable there would be resistance and adoption of negative attitudes by staff as a result of challenges in the continuous communication of these necessary changes to staff -- hence the necessity to adopt a change management strategy to deal with this challenge”. 

He explained that the main objective of the change management programme is to build the capacity of the agents to coordinate all change issues, and also to be used as communication channels for reforms within the Authority.

The main duty of the change agents, he said, is to create awareness of the change processes and ensure their implementation and acceptance by colleagues - adding it is the intention of management to build their capacity through the steering committee to develop mechanisms for resolving conflicts that may arise.

He indicated that the team of change agents is expected to be well-informed, willing and committed to embracing the change process arising out of modernisation and integration.

According to Mr. Blankson, the main duty is to create awareness, desire and knowledge of the change process to ensure buy-in and acceptance from their peers in the office. This requires systematic, continuous and sustained communication on change issues.

“It is the intention of management to build the capacity of change agents to coordinate all change management issues within GRA; and through the Steering Committee develop mechanisms for resolving any conflicts that may arise.”

This, he said, can be effectively implemented by a governance structure for change management. “To ensure effective implementation, a governance structure for change management has been recommended in the Change Management Strategy document. This comprises a Steering Group, Change Management Working Group and a Project Management Group, each with specific responsibilities,” he said.

He indicated that though much has been achieved in the sixth year of the reform process: “I must concede that a lot remains to be to be done in terms of processes, procedures, attitudes and behaviour, and evolving the desired organisational culture”.