In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organisations are constantly faced with the need to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Amidst this backdrop of constant innovation and shifting market dynamics, adaptability is not just a virtue; it is a critical necessity. However, with change comes employee resistance, and many organisations struggle to effectively manage this resistance to change – this is where the intricacies of Change Management come into play.
It is important for Executive leadership to recognise that resistance to change is a natural part of the transformation process. When organisations transform, their culture changes, and this directly impacts the resistance to change for your employees. But by understanding and addressing this resistance, organisations can better navigate through the change process and achieve their desired outcomes.
Organisational resilience is a crucial characteristic of any business but in times of major change disruption, it comes into even sharper focus. Organisations can transform resistance into resilience, by turning Senior Managers or middle Managers into pivotal allies in their change journey. This shift not only enhances the organisation’s adaptability but also empowers them to lead their teams with confidence and agility.
Just as important is the resilience of employees towards change – and increasingly repeated waves of new and disrupted change – so organisational resilience to change in the workplace really matters. Perhaps more now than ever.
What are the reasons for resistance to Change?
Resistance to change is an issue at all levels – from organisational, Executives, Managers, stakeholders, groups, teams, and finally to individuals.
Organisations of all types must always strive to adapt to change. The ability to adapt, plan, and transition due to constant change allows for industries to grow and businesses to evolve. But, when innovative change is necessary to transform an organisation, its culture, and its employees, it is often subject to direct resistance from employees, its existing structures, and processes.
Why? Well, there are several factors, but the necessity to understand the basic principles of employee resistance – the ‘fear of the unknown’ – then, rationalise the process with how to overcome resistance to change in the workplace.
Resistance to change = ‘fear of the unknown’
With facilitating organisation transitions, Managers must first be able to identify the exact reason for resistance. The resistance to change is common in all organisations. But, if any barriers to change exist, it will be difficult for Executives and Managers to successfully implement strategic change.
The following are some common reasons:
- Many people ’fear the unknown’ and the impact on individual employees, in whatever form (insecurity or lack of creativity or will) this may take.
- Change is about taking risks and so this brings about alterations in a person’s duties, responsibilities, and influence.
- People resisting change do not visualise their actions or perceive what they are doing as resistance – they often see it as survival.
- People resist change in response to an action or circumstance and that reaction is typically with the way a change initiative is being led.
- People are biologically wired to look for patterns, predictability, and any uncertainty (even if anticipated or positive) can automatically trigger anxiety.
- Employees are constantly worried about their future in the organisation.
- There is critical risk of increased workload, deadlines, deliverables, and timing– both short-term and the long-term.
As such, employee resistance to change should not be a final barrier to your Change Management strategies. Although strategic change decisions are normally made at the Executive C-Suite level, it is critically important for your employees to “buy-in” to the change. People will only collaborate and move towards a future state when they can visualise (and genuinely believe!) that the risk of the current state is greater than moving towards the future state.
How can organisation’s effectively manage resistance to Change?
Change becomes a springboard to break down resistance, ensure employee commitment, and collective mobilisation towards success.
Contrary to the common belief with Change Management methodology, resistance to change is not inherently bad. In fact, it can be a good perspective (and objective) because your employees resistance to change can help prevent bad ideas from being implemented.
However, organisations and Change Leaders need to first understand the causes of resistance to determine how to address it more effectively. This expected resistance causes Executive Management to reset, debate next steps, and deploy unique strategies for obtaining the type of “buy-in” to change that will get innovative ideas implemented.
In addition, Leaders should appreciate when employees push back against their change initiatives because this forces the following:
- Justify why change is necessary.
- Slow down, reset, and prioritise the most critical change initiatives.
- Involve your employees, listen to concerns, gather feedback, and review their opinions objectively.
- Employ strategic planning, discuss with key stakeholders, and then formulate the change strategy.
- Create and then execute your plans – the Change Management Plan, Change Project Plan and supporting Communication Plan.
Choose your battles carefully!
Change Management is all about managing employees during organisational change and understanding what underlies their resistance to change. With this critical context, you can begin to address your employees’ biggest concerns because it forces Executive Management and Leaders to choose their battles carefully and consider probable strategies.
Consideration of employee emotions and pushback begs the singular question, “Is this change going to drive significant growth?” In other words, “Is this worth it (and my valuable time)?”
First, this helps ensure your valuable resources are not thrown into change initiatives that do not have a definite Return-On-Investment (ROI) for the organisation. It also determines thorough evaluation of the change initiative, helps identify potential risks or unintended consequences, and the risk mitigation strategy to keep the change moving forward.
Second, it encourages planning and communication. This critical thinking and brainstorming help spark innovation and with reviewing alternative solutions. But more importantly, it forces your Executive Management and Change Leaders to reset, since they must identify where resistance will occur and then execute a “game plan” to prevent it.
Resistance management drives the reinforcement of strategic planning
If resistance to change is determined because the change is not understood, then you must address the question – “Why is the change necessary?”
By creating a real sense of urgency with stakeholders and employees by addressing the simple question – “What’s in it for me?” – and therefore ensures that your Change Leaders fully understand how the change will impact people. The focus turns to increasing or improving your Communication Plan and developing strategic planning with executing your Change Management Plan.
If resistance to change is a result of change fatigue, then this may force your Change Leaders to slow down and prioritise the changes taking place in the workplace. Resistance to change forces your Executive Management or Leaders to listen, gather feedback, and objectively review next steps. Also, it promotes employees to commit (with purpose), collaborate cross-functionally, get involved with the change and foster better solutions.
In hindsight, it enforces the organisation’s ability to develop resistance management and reinforcement plans. It also identifies the techniques and tools that need to be adopted to overcome the resistance to the change. Therefore, when employees adopt a new way of working – “How do we reinforce change so that people don’t revert back to the old ways of working?”
Where does organisational resilience fit into the challenges of Change with navigating adversity?
Building strong organisational resilience begins with the decision-makers in an organisation.
The real value of resilience for organisations lies in the ability to successfully implement business imperatives. It is the ability to not simply fend off disruption with change but to survive and thrive amid adversity. Because a truly resilient organisation has two (2) important capabilities – the foresight and situation awareness to prevent potential crisis from emerging, and the unique ability to turn crisis into a source of strategic opportunity.
So, to meet the myriads of change challenges it takes an organisational approach to developing resilient people – including your Change Leaders – as well as developing new systems and processes to making the organisation more agile and innovative. Most change projects fail because the people involved are just not resilient enough to deal with perpetual change loading. This circumstance eventuates when change initiatives continue to be undertaken without any critical assessment of whether the change capacity exists to deliver them successfully.
Reinforcement of organisational resilience
An organisation sits within an ecological like system and resilience is required at all levels of this system. Organisational resilience can be developed through a set of overlapping, complementary, and reinforcing approaches that encourage resilience. For example, resilient organisations encourage employees to experiment, be willing to fail and acknowledge learning outcomes, to be confident with taking risks, and “think big”.
In contrast with resistance, the qualities of organisational resilience include the following:
Enhanced business continuity
One of the most immediate benefits of organisational resilience is improved business continuity. By being prepared for disruptions and external crisis, your business can minimise downtime, maintain essential operations, and continue to serve your customers.
This helps preserve sales revenue and customer trust. With internal optimisation, this instils a positive effect on your Executive Team’s decision-making process. And, because your organisation is future planning and with executing potential opportunities.
Leadership adaptability
Executive Leaders who have been at the helm of their organisations throughout disrupted market changes, have gained invaluable and first-hand lessons on adaptability, leadership, innovation, and more. Organisational resilience not only instils confidence in the leadership of your enterprise business, but it also instils positive confidence (and trust) in its stakeholders — including customers, vendors, investors, and employees.
When stakeholders perceive that the enterprise is well-prepared to manage disruptions, they are more likely to trust and support the organisation, which has a positive effect on employee morale, during challenging times as well.
Long-term sustainability
Resilient organisations are open to change, encouraging exploration of innovative ideas, planning, and operating models . To assist enterprises in reimagining more resilient capabilities and future readiness with their products and services, Change Management professionals must lead change with a new set of principles. These include improving decision-making, addressing vulnerabilities in technology and systems, and ensuring human strength and values (with commitment), and adaptability to pioneer new change practices.
New learnings and relevance
Resilient organisations invest in training and development, enabling employees to develop their skills and knowledge to help them navigate cultural, market, competition, technological, and environmental changes. They can also evolve their unique strategies and business models to remain relevant with the ability to tangibly plan into the future. This helps employees with being able to innovate and adapt in often ambiguous circumstances.
Risk Management and scenario planning
Organisational resilience involves initiative-taking Risk Management and scenario planning. This means performing scenario planning analysis and developing change playbooks for various potential strategic disruptions. While doing this, Change Management professionals should design change initiatives with sufficient responses and to allow them to pivot around predictions.
By identifying and mitigating risks before they become critical, your organisation can avoid or minimise the impact of adverse events. This can lead to cost savings, increased business efficiency, and protection of the organisation’s reputation.
Strategic agility and competitive advantage
Future-focused strategies help initiative-taking organisations with anticipating change disruptions before they happen, enacting preventative measures to limit the impact of change (if they do occur). By being resilient through managing change, everyone takes notice — from customers to suppliers. That is why resilient businesses are better positioned to seize opportunities and gain a competitive advantage, because they can adapt to changing market conditions, innovate more effectively, and capitalise on emerging trends.
Turning Change Resistance into ‘Change Resilience’
Organisational resilience is a mindset that embodies all aspects across the enterprise business. It represents the ability to adapt and with building a flexible, agile, and responsive organisation. These important characteristics help prepare an organisation to weather change disruptions, develop new strategies, and mitigate risk by recovering quickly from any adverse events.
The resilience of an organisation is related to the resilience of the other organisations on which it depends – customers, suppliers, regulators, and even competitors. An organisation is also dependent on and contributes to the individual resilience of its employees, but being better equipped to:
- Respond to changing economic and market conditions
- Manage and mitigate risks
- Adapt to modern technology and data insights
- Be “Change ready”
To adopt organisational resilience, all levels of an organisation must be involved and willing to adopt a culture of change for the long-term success of a business. With higher levels of employee engagement, this translates into increased productivity, innovation, and problem-solving. It is not about overcoming resistance to change, but rather channelling the urgent response with defence mechanisms and to help reshape the organisation’s culture for growth and innovation.
Summary
Organisations must support their employees through change, with contextual guidance and assistance.
Organisational change is not merely about implementing new processes or technologies, it is a journey of transformation that impacts every facet of the organisation and internal structures. In the face of new adversity, this ability to adapt to change helps organisations to thrive in an uncertain and ever-changing business environment. Leaders can successfully navigate these turbulent waters of transition by addressing the barriers to change with empathy, insight, and strategic foresight.
Change is difficult to navigate for both employees and Leaders. Resistance to change is a normal response, especially when employees ignore the change or being in denial of the change. But resistance to change is less likely to occur in an organisation that has – a trusting culture, unwavering leadership support, strategic planning, transparent communication, a great extent of employee involvement and engagement, and a high rate of interpersonal relationships – the compass that helps guide everyone towards a brighter, more resilient future.
Building organisational resilience is vital for organisations with embracing change as an opportunity for growth and improvement. When Leaders strengthen resilience in these areas, their organisation emerges stronger, more resourceful, and capable of meeting current and future challenges. But this collective resilience also strengthens individual resilience, signalling to each employee the critical importance of incorporating practices that keep them engaged and motivated, and capable of giving maximum effort at work and beyond.
Need some guidance on your next steps? Let’s start a conversation…
