“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” - John F. Kennedy
Modern organizations face a critical challenge with change management, only 30-40% of changes succeed while companies simultaneously struggle with change overload, leading to organizational instability and employee burnout. Osbert-Pociecha (2021) recommends shifting from traditional cascade models to more agile approaches and implementing portfolio management strategies that can better handle multiple simultaneous changes. Success requires integrating both project management ("hard") and change management ("soft") aspects while maintaining organizational balance between regular operations and change initiatives.
Often change management addresses training employees and teams to develop skills that achieve organizational goals. As Osbert-Pociecha (2021) points out, employee overload and exhaustion are common results of constant challenge. In the flurry of preparation and adaptation of change, training rarely focuses on employee intellectual and emotional preparedness, retaining learned information, and confident application to implement change.
Workplace training programs to handle change equally deserves attention, here are things executives and leaders should consider before and during change implementation:
Employee intellectual and emotional preparedness
Employees are constantly learning regardless of their tenure in the organization such as learning about the organization and culture, learning for individual growth to advance one’s career, and seasoned employees tend to focus on work/life balance and changing social roles. Therefore, it is important to understand employee's current intellectual and emotional capacity to learn a new skill for the organization.
Once you understand your employees’ readiness for an upcoming organizational change, you will know how to support your employees during the phases of change. The goal is to limit emotional exhaustion which is commonly experienced in change management.
Employee information retention
Organizational change is stressful. Employees experience increased stress during change because of unknown outcomes and fatigue from frequent change initiatives. Also, learning new skills and systems at a fast pace adds to individual stress. Learning comprehension is the beginning phase of learning and ensures the next phase - information retention.
The goal is to ensure organizational change training is strategically crafted to provide foundational information through nurturing critical thinking. The key is to not only focus on skills that directly and immediately connect to change implementation.
Employees confidence to implement change
Employees in organizations that frequently undergo change have decreased trust and increased frustration because there was not an opportunity for them to apply learned skills. Another part of employee confidence is determining if employees gained the knowledge and skills needed for change implementation.
Confidence during organizational change requires trust. Establishing a culture and change management experience that is reliable will increase team level confidence. Individual confidence relies on individual mental capacity and comprehension of change information.
As organizations navigate the evolving landscape of change management, Kennedy's wisdom about embracing the future becomes increasingly relevant. The research shows that successful transformation requires a delicate balance: implementing agile methodologies while remaining acutely aware of human limitations and needs. Organizations must move beyond viewing change management as merely a set of operational procedures and recognize it as a holistic process that encompasses both strategic objectives and human dynamics. Success lies in creating an environment where employees feel intellectually prepared, emotionally supported, and confident in their ability to implement change, while maintaining the trust necessary for sustainable transformation. By focusing on these human elements alongside strategic initiatives, organizations can build the resilience needed to thrive in an increasingly dynamic future.
Osbert-Pociecha Grażyna: New Challenges in Change Management, In:Vision 2025: Education Excellence and Management of Innovations throughSustainable Economic Competitive Advantage. Proceedings of the 34thInternational Business Information Management Association Conference(IBIMA) / Soliman Khalid S. (eds.), 2021, International BusinessInformation Management Association, ISBN 9780999855133, pp. 12060-12068
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