Can you stop or slow the change curve?
What actions can help organizations minimise the negative impact of large-scale changes on employee engagement, potentially shortening or avoiding the typical ‘change curve’?
Yesterday, I wrote about the change curve organisations experience when undertaking restructuring and other large-scale change.
This ‘curve’ represents the impact organisational change has on workforce engagement, advocacy and motivation. The research my colleagues at Ipsos Karian and Box undertook shows that the dampening affect of change on employee sentiment can last for up to a couple of years.
However, over the years, I’ve witnessed and advised businesses that have successfully ‘squeezed the curve’ – reducing the time at the bottom of the pit and helping the organisation’s motivation levels bounce back. There have also been cases where businesses avoid the change curve altogether – maintaining or even improving workforce engagement during times of difficult change. Both BT and British Gas come to mind.
Case study of ‘bounce back’ business
The chart below shows the normal change curve (navy line) I used in the original study to construct the change curve. Over time, I’ve used this as a guide and many businesses have followed the broad trend. However, some have bucked it. The orange line represents the experience of a financial services business whose employee engagement (and, specifically for these purposes, employee advocacy) slumped on the announcement of the changes. But then, it bounced back within 3-4 months – a far shorter ‘curve’ than the norm.
So how did this business and others like British Gas and BT succeed in maintaining engagement levels or enabling them to rebound quickly?
In assessing a range of organisational changes implemented over the last few years, I have witnessed specific actions that influenced the depth and length of the change curve.
Factors that influence depth of ‘curve’ relate to the nature of the change itself:
Where relevant, the percentage across the total workforce actually affected by the change. How many will lose their jobs, have their roles offshored, etc? Obviously, the greater the number announced, the greater the fear among the workforce that they will be the ones in the firing line – and the sharper the decline in the change curve.
Again, where relevant, the percentage whose jobs or roles will be placed at risk. This is the pool of employees from whom the substantive job reductions or changes will be made; for example, if a total of 3,000 roles will be affected, but 10,000 people are at risk of being one of those 3,000. The wider the pool of potential impacted individuals, the greater the ripple effect of fear and de-motivation.
The level-based impact of organizational change. How far down changes go? A couple of years ago, one multinational announced savage cuts to its top 3-4 management tiers and central functions. But that only affected one in five of the workforce - with its frontline business operations protected. As such, the change within its management tiers was deep. However, there was NO curve effect among the rest of the workforce – indeed, engagement actually went up as the frontline breathed a sigh of relief.
Would any redundancies planned as part of a change process be voluntary or forced? The larger the latter, the deeper the change curve for the affected populations.
And, of course, the perceived (or actual) long-term impact of change on those to stay matters. For example, if a business is cutting 1 in 10 of its workforce, will the workload for those who stay fall too? Or will they simply have to deliver the same outputs with fewer people? That is the common complaint of many who experience organizational downsizing and so-called ‘simplification’ exercises. The simplification, in the minds of those who stay after change, may actually make their workload more intense and their worklife balance more complicated.
Factors that influence length of curve relate to how the change is implemented:
Whether announcements are phased is a critical factor in whether the change curve is shorter or longer. I have seen some organisations carry out a process of elongated salami-slicing, phasing a restructuring by unit or layer over many months (if not a year). This simply draws out the uncertainty. Even if you are not immediately affected, you know you are potentially next. Or you know your unit is next and you sit in fear of the potential implications on yourself. Or you’ve been through the change process, but you witness the rest of the organization going through the same process and an element of lingering PTSD cannot help but dampen your mood and motivation.
Some organisations make quick, all-encompassing announcements about the planned change. That may give everyone affected greater certainty over ‘what’ and ‘where’ is in scope. However, I have seen some businesses then spend an inordinate length of time implementing the change process. This dictates ‘who’ is specifically affected by the change and ‘how’. One business made a singular change announcement affecting the whole organization. However, it then spent a year going through the process of deciding, country by country, unit by unit, who left and who stayed. This simply elongated the uncertainty and pain – thereby lengthening the charge curve across the whole business.
Leadership communication and engagement during the change process are also critical factors. As many who have read the IOIC Ipsos Karian and Box IC 2023 report can attest to, regular, leader-led dialogue about change and business strategy are key drivers in boosting workforce engagement. I’ve witnessed how businesses who do this succeed in maintaining engagement levels, even in the darkest hours of difficult change. Answering the ‘why’ for change is often fundamental. The frequency of those communications (even when there is little to say) is key. Empathy, genuine listening and responsiveness, together with the provision of facts when you have them, all matter hugely.
And, more than you can imagine, the perceived openness and honesty of the message-carriers and message is key. Both BT and British Gas, when announcing major job losses and offshoring of roles, were able to maintain or improve workforce engagement. Feedback showed that, alongside applying some of the other action outlined earlier, the openness of the communications was seen to be critical. Being open about the reasons why, the honesty with which choices and decisions were seen to be made helped employees come to terms with the changes more quickly. A level of involvement in aspects of the change implementation also helped give people a sense of control at a time when their livelihoods and working life was under threat. And, as a result, employees in both organisations, on the whole, remained engaged during the most difficult periods of the change process.
Once changes have been implemented, the speed at which the organization communicates a refreshed business strategy is critical to intellectually and emotionally re-onboarding those who remain. The faster and more immersive the better – and the more successful the organization is at reducing the length of the change curve. This is coupled with the nature of that strategy engagement. Effective two-way dialogue, helping reinforce the ‘why’ change, is needed in getting people to buy-in to the post-change direction.
Taken together, these actions can be critical to helping design organisational change that minimises the negative impact on both the workforce and the business. Not all will be relevant and each needs to be thought through for its potential application. But each can make the difference between a longer, deeper or shorter, shallower change curve.