Dive Brief:
- An accumulation of workplace changes that got pushed through without being explained or finished has created “change debt” and has been driving change fatigue, according to new research from Wiley Workplace Intelligence.
- Wiley found that although many companies “assume change fatigue comes from doing too much too fast,” the real problem lies in a build-up of unresolved upheavals that continue to clog workflows “long after the next change arrives,” according to a blog post. This pattern can lead to employee overwhelm and burnout, create a lack of leadership trust and eventually become a retention problem.
- Although transformation is critical to forward momentum, recent studies have shown that many employees don’t believe their companies effectively manage change. As a result, workers report more stress and increased workloads and also say that they are often not given enough time to adapt to workplace shifts.
Dive Insight:
Wiley surveyed more than 1,400 employees and found that some of the biggest factors leading to change debt were restructuring and new leadership. These disruptions didn’t even need to be new to affect employees; more than half of respondents said that the biggest changes at their company happened seven to 12 months earlier.
Nonetheless, most employees said they weren’t opposed to change but rather unhappy with how their organizations dealt with change.
“The problem isn’t simply that people can’t handle change,” the post said. “In fact, people appear remarkably capable of adapting when they understand what is happening and have a chance to move through it. The problem is what happens when change doesn’t get resolved.”
The research found that the amount of change a team endures accounted for only a 4% variance in burnout. However, “whether past changes were actually explained and brought to a close predicts burnout five times more than volume does.”
Unresolved problems and lingering issues held over from a previous change weighed three times heavier on people than being unsure about the rationale behind a current shift.
“In other words, an employee who isn’t fully sold on this quarter’s new workflow is in better shape than an employee who’s still carrying the unfinished reorg from eighteen months ago,” the post said.
Wiley recommended that leaders address previous situations that may be held over before trying to sell employees on a current change. When employees feel overwhelmed by their change debt, it can affect engagement and eventually make them question whether they want to remain with an organization, the post said.
“If an organization repeatedly announces changes without closing the loop on what came before, employees will eventually experience that pattern as a lack of credibility, regardless of how well an individual manager delivers the latest message,” the post said.