Combatting change fatigue: How to manage your organisation through change

Employees are growing more resistant to change

Change fatigue is defined as a general sense of weariness, indifference, or resistance toward organisational changes.

Gartner reports that ‘Employees are growing more resistant to change — in 2016, the Gartner Workforce Change Survey showed 74% of employees were willing to change work behaviors to support organizational changes, but that number dropped to 38% in 2022.’

When transformation programmes can promise such exciting new ways to work, why are we seeing this increasing resistance? The sheer pace of change of technology can be exhausting, but more often, the resistance comes from a concern that change projects will fail to deliver their stated objectives. And that cynicism might not be misplaced. Research by Boston Consulting Group has found that 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives.

Organisations can be guilty of poor communication about why change is happening; many employees are asked to change their behaviour or take on additional responsibilities, without understanding why.

It doesn’t have to be an uphill struggle though. 

We asked Wayne Morris, a Senior Executive in the Banking Sector since 2012 to share his thoughts on best practice for guiding organisations through change. Wayne has been a Head of Transformation, Accountable Executive for a large Change Squad, and Delivery Leader & Programme Director for Risk, Credit Risk and Economic Crime at Nationwide.

Here's what he had to say.

Mitigating the impact on those affected by the change

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying ‘change is the only constant in life.’ This saying has also been translated to ‘the only constant (in life) is change.’ However, implementing change is complex – not least as it often involves people, as well as departments including finance, IT, risk and HR. Investment and design approvals can take a long time depending on risk appetite and design guardrails, while risk, compliance and HR reinforce employment, company or legal requirements that need to be met.

Why timelines become elongated

Regardless of how we should always perhaps expect change, people often are resistant to it. As a result, change can take time to deliver. Sometimes, the benefit and value intended from the change is only realised post-implementation, so the perceived time taken to recognise and receive what was needed is even longer.

Change requests are often presented to the programme board or team so the path of delivery and its plan is rarely linear. Each change request takes time to understand, and to then impact assess, which can distract the team from the job of delivering the change already in scope and in flight.

In many instances, change requests prompt broader uncertainties over current solution designs, requirements, priorities and budgets. It is rare for changes that are added ‘while the bonnet is up’ not to lead to negative consequences. Without careful consideration and some re-planning, time, cost or quality can be affected. Changes in sponsor can also cause disruption as their perception and priorities may differ from their predecessor.

How people are affected

What this means is that people can get tired, anxious and angry about how long things take. Whether you’re to be impacted by the change, with the ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over you in the meantime, you’re the frustrated sponsor who needs this delivered to meet their KPIs or cost reduction target, or you’re working on the programme itself, fatigue and demoralisation frequently creeps in.

Delivering value sooner, safer, cheaper or faster

So how can organisations combat this?