Change fatigue is an organizational disorder caused by management-led change initiatives. It could appear when management makes changes too frequently. Staff who experience change fatigue depict ambiguity, apathy, anxiety and anger. The phrase “passive resignation” is typically associated with the consequences of change fatigue.

To deploy changes more efficiently and combat change fatigue better, you need efficient workforce management processes at your company.

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What This Article Covers

• What Is Change Fatigue?
• What Causes It?
• Effects of Change Fatigue
• Why Is It Important To Monitor?
• Keys To Reducing Change Fatigue
• Wrapping It Up

What Is Change Fatigue?

Change fatigue is employees’ lack of resistance or passive dismissal of organizational changes often as a result of frequent, small changes introduced over time.

More frequently than not, we discuss a change in a positive context — as a necessary organizational behavior in a fast-paced, highly competitive environment or the mechanism to achieve the best outcomes. We rarely discuss the not-so-positive side of organizational change, change fatigue, or what many refer to as change saturation.

Most organizations are continuously changing, whether domestically, regionally or globally. However, as humans, we have an innate need for stability, order and regularity — primarily our need to keep our status quo. Changes frequently alter the status quo, resulting in opposition and conflict.

When change is constant, people become exhausted, their adaptation capacity dwindles and feelings of loss of ownership and confusion skyrocket. As a result, people cannot harmonize their ideas and actions when their circumstances constantly change.

What Causes It?

Every change necessitates the expenditure of energy and effort on the part of individuals to transition from the old work practice to the adoption of new ways and routines.

Change fatigue is most commonly caused by one or more of the following mistakes:

Frequent Changes

Large-scale, infrequent changes aren’t likely to cause change fatigue. However, day-to-day changes, such as management, job role and internal process changes, may have a more significant impact on employees.

To avoid change fatigue, you must be conscious of the big and small changes you ask staff to make at around the same time. In addition, make an effort to limit how often you implement minor changes.

Failed Changes

Constant futile changes create employee resistance throughout the organization. Employees become weary of change and have less faith in future change initiatives when past or current ones fail.

Sudden & Unplanned Changes

Organizational changes fail when you do not effectively communicate changes to your employees and when you abandon the planning, which can take a long time. This premature change execution without proper strategy often makes employees anxious and puzzled.

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Effects of Change Fatigue

Employees may become anxious and overloaded due to a large amount of organizational change. Change disrupts the status quo and creates confusion. They may struggle to prioritize their tasks and maintain organization during times of transition if management does not provide clear direction.

Employee morale and efficiency can suffer hugely as a result of change fatigue. It can even drain output and productivity, bringing an organization down in the worst-case scenario. Furthermore, change fatigue makes your staff averse to change, causing them to “tune out” successive change-related proposals.

As change fatigue sets in, your organization will be unable to transform or sustain the adjustments it does make. The greater your organization’s resistance to change, the more challenging it will be to adapt to and accommodate your business environment.

Why Is It Important To Monitor?

Your company can reduce change fatigue by taking a systematic approach to change management. Because organizations often have a restricted capacity for change, you must devise a deliberate strategy for implementing and managing change. Leadership’s function is to effectively communicate the “what,” “why” and “how” of any change and to assist employees in adapting to it.

You must understand where your company and employees stand on the change spectrum and how many bargaining chips you have to make any additional changes. If you are conscious of this, you will pay more attention to frequent change and keep a rational pulse on your company’s individuals.

Keys To Reducing Change Fatigue

The amount of changes undoubtedly contributes to the onset of change fatigue, but it is not the entire picture. How you initiate, lead and innovate changes directly impacts whether or not your employees experience change fatigue. That is why addressing change fatigue necessitates more than simply minimizing the number of changes. It requires a shift in perspective around what changes the organization makes when incorporated and how you deploy them.

These ten actions can assist you in preventing, reducing and overcoming change fatigue.

Consider the Perspective of the Whole Organization

Most organizations (except a few with large-scale initiatives) initiate and handle change as individual activities, often within functional boundaries. However, this isn’t the most effective approach to change. Every change, no matter how minor, impacts other organizational units.

The remedy is to stop approaching change as a series of initiatives. Instead, see change as an interrelated journey your organization is embarking on, and lead and supervise accordingly. When you recognize and plan for pulses, you can avoid change exhaustion, minimize the number of changes your organization must make and improve your staff members’ ability to cope with change.

Build Trust Among Employees

The degree to which employees trust the company’s crucial stakeholders — supervisors, managers, colleagues and HR members — tells a lot about the workplace environment. You, being the manager, must have their best interests at heart for your employees and follow through on your promises. Professionals who reveal high faith in their managers have a greater capacity for change than those who share low faith. Build that faith among your employees.

Ensure Team Cohesion

Teammates who experience a sense of belonging and association are more devoted to and responsible for team goals. Individuals with high team cohesion have a higher ability to adapt to changes than those with low team cohesion.

Luckily, you have more than one reason to enhance team cohesion because having a cohesive work environment enables employees to collaborate well and perceive they are contributing to the team’s overall achievement. When employees work in a coherent workplace, they are inspired by the team’s efforts rather than their accomplishments.

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Introduce Training for Leaders & Employees

Big companies spend significant money and effort on change tools and methodologies but still struggle with change. What is often missing is training. You must have specific skills and expertise to lead change. Often, employees lack the training and knowledge base to cope with any new change that comes their way, so it’s up to you to prepare them for success.

Incorporate Into General Operations

When you separate implementing and facilitating change from general operations, it is possible to neglect the impact and reaction that your day-to-day workforce has to changes. Neglecting the impact of changes in how you handle and supervise your daily operations will hinder the employees’ capacity to adapt to any change. Sadly, this is far too common, raising the threat of change fatigue.

You must understand which leadership and managerial exercises improve the organization’s capacity to deal with change and which do not. Then you can accomplish more things that boost employees’ potential and discard activities that reduce it. One method for determining a change’s shortcomings and strengths is undertaking an organizational change assessment for employees.

You can lessen the likelihood of change fatigue by incorporating the critical components of change management into an organization’s general managerial and supervision activities.

Involve Change Recipients

You must increase the active engagement of change recipients (i.e., employees) across the areas and levels impacted by the new change. Involving change recipients in the strategizing and facilitation of a change process assists them in acclimating.

Employees are less likely to experience change fatigue if they are involved in the decision and implementation processes for changes from the start.

Allocate Enough Time for Affected Employees

People require time to become acquainted with the changes and to handle whitespace. Whitespace is the extra room between the point when you declare a change in a workplace and the point where you accomplish its intended objective.

To avoid change fatigue, you must plan the time required for employees to transition and adopt changes. Then, you also need to monitor the progress of employees regularly.

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Design an Organizational Change Architecture

If you are incorporating multiple changes throughout the organization, you must understand how they resonate together, the present state and how employees react.

A change architecture is required for any organization trying to implement multiple changes simultaneously or within a short period. The first step for any organization experiencing change fatigue is developing a change map or blueprint. It is also the initial step in developing your company’s change architecture.

The change architecture includes basic steps for controlling, evaluating, incorporating and communicating changes and project planning proposals. The architecture functions as a chart of the change process and provides orientation stability. The architecture includes:

• Significant community events
• Training with the change team
• Input rounds with employees
• Supervision of specific functional areas

Invest in Employee Resiliency

Businesses will continue to be impacted by constant change. Managers that want to make successful change while ensuring healthy employees should analyze their organization’s readiness for change. Combining a change inspection with an objective review of change fatigue can assist you in choosing the most appropriate next step forward.

Employee resilience is built through planning changes, questioning, listening closely, receiving feedback, implementing reasonable goals, monitoring expected results post a change and authentically recognizing and rewarding employee endeavors. It’s a people experience technique that keeps repeating itself in a never-ending loop.

Address Employee Feedback

Executives who listen to their staff members regarding change initiatives give them a voice, fostering awareness, trust and a greater acceptance of change. So, it would help to collect employee feedback to stay informed of how your workforce feels about a particular organizational change. This way, you can avoid potential change fatigue more constructively and demonstrate to your employees that you paid close attention to their inputs.

When you consider employees’ input seriously, they feel more valued and are more inclined to embrace change.

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Wrapping It Up

Change fatigue will persist unless you shift your mindset and methodology to organizational change.

Constant changes often adversely affect organizations, creating change fatigue. Businesses that learn to navigate change while ensuring a contained workforce first ascertain their workforce’s adaptability to change. In today’s time, you can also use modern workforce management software to incorporate changes more strategically.

What has your experience with change fatigue been like? Let us know in the comments below!