Change Management And Resistance

Recently, a client was talking to me about how hard it is to implement change. Without crises employees don’t want to make changes and it can seem impossible to get people to be supportive. The topic of change and transition management* is vast, and there are many thoughts and theories on what works. When change is not working, a common oversight may be to blame–the employer doesn’t understand how employees (peer groups) influence each other and/or hasn’t planned how to deal with organization resistance.  While most companies put effort into analyzing their customers to determine how to influence them, they don’t put the same effort into employees.   While process, systems, task changes are generally planned and monitored very closely – employees are left on their own to determine their support positions by listening to and aligning with influential co-workers.  If you are in midst of change (and who isn’t in today’s economy?), or have announced a change – try this activity:

• Consider employee behaviors and reactions. Who appears to be supportive, who isn’t? (Note, it is often helpful to have a third party conduct interviews or focus groups with your employees to uncover this)
• Who is actively supportive or non-supportive? (Hint – non-supportive people don’t always argue and complain, sometimes they just take a “wait and see” attitude)
• Consider the informal relationships – which employees talked to, socialize with, go to lunch with whom?  The more people a person talks to, the higher the “influence”
• Create a matrix with one axis being “influence” and the other being “supportive”.  Plot your employees.  Once this matrix is created, it should be reviewed and updated as frequently as you would your other project management tools!
• Look at the people who have high influence and are either supportive or non-supportive – these are the initial groups to focus on to either bolster their support, or to win them over – plan for both.

Most employers want to surround themselves with only the highly supportive and overlook whether the individual has peer group influence or not, or they want to eliminate the highly non-supportive, again disregarding influence factors.  Ignoring influence means you are overlooking the informal systems that keep your organization running. Companies that focus on these two groups of employees will find that others begin to accept change, which leads to success.  There are many ways to help individuals to accept change – participatory roles, one-on-one coaching, and assigning responsibility are a few – and when resources are tight, focusing in on people who can sway the opinions of others may make more sense than ignoring the resistance altogether.

*Transition Management is the process recognizing and managing employee reactions to change. Employees have definite behaviors stages they will go through when faced with organizational change – employers who plan and manage the behaviors are generally more successful with change.

Copper Rise Consulting is a full service organizational development practice that specializes in team and leadership development, facilitation and training programs.  We have helped many organizations plan and facilitate employee transitions during change.  We also provide human resource program development services and can help you with compensation, employment, performance management, handbooks and policies/procedures..  If you wish to learn more about employees and change or transition management, please contact Sandy Barnes.

We help organizations with the people issues that impact productivity and success.