When organisations have pushed continuous change too far, they may observe certain signals from employees. Responses to change may be less passionate, replaced instead with indifference, apathy and disengagement. Whereas before a workplace change may have incited debate from those for and those against, if you're seeing only weariness, complaints, cynicism and lethargy you may be at saturation point.
Change saturation can be potentially very damaging to organisations. It can present as automatic resistance to changes, regardless of how exciting or beneficial they may be. Business operations can suffer, as key staff are drawn into special projects, and there's no energy left for running standard workflows or dealing with quality. In the worst cases, employees start to see a lot of work going on and nothing being delivered. They may respond with absenteeism, attrition and turnover, or simply ignoring the change and hoping it goes away.
For change projects, saturation can be difficult to deal with. Less enthusiasm results in fewer resources being allocated, impacting project delivery timelines and quality. Schedule delays impact governance and support which may start to result in leaders providing little direction. Projects may then start to compete with each other for their share of the scarce air-time still available. The 'cramming the funnel' effect starts occurring as backlogs for shared services become crowded with urgent cases.
Less order results in less being done.
Should a saturated organisation stop changing?
Yes and no.
Creating a change portfolio
Firstly, there are proactive steps that organisations can take to monitor saturation and shed light on the opportunities to remediate the situation.
Gain direct feedback from employees and managers on the perceived levels of change
Add questions about the amount of change to regular staff pulse checks
Run small focus group sessions for insights into specific areas of concern
Actively manage and review resource allocation to projects
Conduct detailed change impact assessments
Developing a portfolio view of changes may help, as long as this can be done without further aggravating existing levels of overwhelm. Start by monitoring the number of change initiatives underway, implementing project team reporting and creating aggregated views of employee time available to handle changes. Then establish these as regular metrics to provide insight into improving or worsening change saturation.
Organising the changes
After putting in place proactive monitoring, organisations can consider mitigation tactics.
Establish and communicate priorities. Setting project priorities can alleviate the funnel-cramming effect, allowing senior leaders to be the parties to decide what work goes ahead, rather than a stretched project resource taking that decision. Once priorities are agreed, this needs be communicated broadly so everyone's aware of how to focus efforts when faced with competing project needs.
Know the big picture, and share it. Each of the prioritised changes should serve the organisation's vision, and the various communication channels need to be aligned on the contribution each project makes. This messaging needs to remain frequent, consistent and focussed on how the change is helping the organisation to reach its strategic goals.
Recognise the wins. During times of saturation, its extremely important to acknowledge goals scored, wins achieved and milestones completed. This helps to take some of the cognitive load off employees worried about when its all going to end. Celebrations of success help to punctuate difficult times with a positive focus.
Demonstrate why the changes are needed. A clear and compelling case is essential to help explain the reasons for all the changes. Not understanding the reasons will further drive employees towards resentment and resistance.
Redefining expectations. Business now requires constant change so it needs to be built into the standard expectations of employees. Redefining the expectation that change will be constant may help employees to shift their thinking and align to change being a normal part of the business. Mapping out the high volume of changes may create an appreciation of how much is going on, and provide for a better understanding of the specifics. A roadmap like this helps to reduce uncertainty, contributing to a greater sense that the change is being managed.
Involving employees early. If change management had only one job, it would be this. Involving employees in early conversations, design phases, discussions of customer experience and workshopping the impacts will create the sense of buy-in that helps employees deal with feelings of change saturation. By being able to contribute to the change, employees move from being on the outside of it, and move towards a sense of ownership.
Empathise. Managers and leaders do well to acknowledge the amount of change that's occurring and that this is challenging for the organisation. This shows employees that changes are happening by design, creating a greater sense of security, and helping them feel a valued part of the future state. Showing genuine empathy for employees may turn them from self-made solutions like absenteeism, to structured solutions like counselling, stress leave or other more constructive possibilities.
Getting strategic
Its important for organisations to understand their change projects, and to ensure good governance of the change portfolio.
If there are changes drawing upon resources and cramming the backlogs that are not strategically aligned, these need to be reviewed. Cutting the clutter, or removing the projects that don't contribute to the strategic vision will free up resource, time, budget and share-of-attention so that efforts can be focussed more productively.
Portfolio governance should consider how to let the highest priority changes through first. This may mean staggering, sequencing or delaying other projects, breaking changes up into phases, or consolidating small changes into more strategic work streams. In addition, increasing control of new project initiations and disciplined project scope management can create greater collaboration and coordination between projects, and reduce the competition for resources.
The number of changes underway may be strategically imperative for your organisation, meaning that the pace of change may not be able to stop - even at near-saturation. But with a portfolio approach to changes, by organising the chaos, and an emphasis on strategic alignment, organisations can help employees to know their priorities and feel supported through the change fatigue.
For more change governance support, Agencia Change offers an advisory service for Project Boards and Steering Committees.
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