Change? Again? Employees Have Had Enough

Digital transformation. Right-sizing. Outsourcing. New revenue initiatives. Cultural shifts. The average employee now experiences 10 enterprise changes a year.

The more things change, well, the more they…change again.

Employees have had enough. Gartner’s research shows a major shift in the way employees view change. In 2016, 74% said they were willing to support changes in the workplace. Now, just 43% say they will.

So, next time to roll out your latest initiative, you need to know that less than half of your team will likely support it — even fewer will embrace it enthusiastically.

The Project Management Institute calls this “change fatigue.” Harvard Business Reviews calls this the “transformation deficit.” Regardless of what you call it, it’s a real thing organizations need to manage. Without expert leadership and change management strategies, organizations may struggle mightily. Not only might initiatives fail, but they can undermine employee morale, accelerating disengagement and increasing turnover.

“The irony is that many of the goals of transformation — redesigning teams and structures, automating drudge activities, reengineering corporate culture — seek to ease burnout and fatigue and increase efficiency,” write Cian O Morain and Peter Aykens.

It’s not just line-level workers that are struggling either. A Slack survey shows that nearly half of middle managers report burnout — higher than any other group. Nearly half said they were so burned out that they wanted to quit within the year.

Employees have lost faith in their organization to do the right thing. Maybe it’s yet another round of layoffs or cutbacks. Maybe it’s having to take on the workload from open positions that never seem to get filled. Maybe it’s salaries not keeping up with inflation or something else. Add change on top of this and it’s no wonder that trust has eroded.

There’s a significant trust gap between employers and employees and it’s simply not being recognized. A PwC survey shows that 86% of executives think employee trust levels are high. Ask employees, though, and it’s not the…