Have you noticed too many project changes beginning to take a physical and emotional toll on your people?
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Change saturation occurs when disruptive changes exceed your people's capacity to adopt them.
Turmoil becomes the norm, projects can't be prioritised easily, bottlenecks begin to slow progress, and project outcomes begin to suffer.
When your business suffers from change saturation, employees begin to suffer too.
Research by Prosci shows that certain staff in functional areas experience more change saturation than others.
This includes people in operations, customer service, sales, human resources and the change management office.
Middle managers and front-line employees experience the greatest levels of change saturation.
That's because middle managers often implement changes.
As changes cascade through organisations from the top down, front-line employees bear the cumulative effects of constant change.
How will you know when your people are fatigued?
Prosci's ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement) Model shows that individuals react to change in predictable ways, including how they exhibit fatigue from change saturation.
Here's the seven signs of fatigue to look for.
- Noise. More frequent and louder complaints about changes.
- Apathy. Growing indifference about project changes, with some staff completely disengaging. They stop asking questions.
- Burnout. Employees are visibly tired.
- Stress. People seem anxious about changes.
- Resistance. There's more push back on change by some while others don't resist at all
- Negativity. Cynicism prevails.
- Skepticism. People express doubt about the likely success of change.
When your people exhibit these signs, your business will suffer.
Change-fatigued employees tend to produce less, take more time off, and quit their jobs more frequently. Morale begins to erode and employees lose focus on business basics.
If your people are showing signs of change fatigue, what can you do?
Ideally, you will be actively working to avoid change saturation through change management planning.
Some saturation may be inevitable, at least until you can develop a more mature capability to manage the increasing pace and volume of change.
- When you can't avoid fatigue, catching it early helps avoid the long-term negative impacts.
- Gather feedback from employees and managers on how they're perceiving the level of change.
- Ask staff about the amount of change they're experiencing and how they're reacting to it.
- Actively manage project resource allocation and scheduling and use tools to gauge employee fatigue.
- Use assessments to measure the amount of change and the impact it is having on staff and teams.
- Evaluate the type and number of change efforts underway to understand potential impacts. Teams can include this information in reports.
- Assess the amount of time available to handle change at the employee level.
- Conduct comparative observations in different parts of the business.
