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A Gartner survey revealed that employees’ willingness to support change within enterprises dropped to 43 percent in 2022 from 74 percent in 2016.

At the same time Gartner found that, in part driven by the pandemic, the average employee experienced ten planned enterprise changes — such as a restructure to achieve efficiencies, a culture transformation to unlock new ways of working or the replacement of a legacy tech system — in 2022, up from two in 2016.

“Fatigue hurts an employee’s performance in many ways, including apathy, burnout and frustration,” said Daniel Sanchez-Reina, VP analyst, Gartner.

Gartner’s four recommendations for CIOs on reducing change fatigue include:

  • Treat Change Fatigue as a Business Issue: Change fatigue should be factored into planning initiatives and discussed with business partners, including the level of effort each initiative requires and how it aligns with day-to-day commitments.
  • Distribute Change Leadership: With overseers and tactical decision-makers dispersed across the organization, closer worker contacts can enable an organization to change directions when fatigue rises.
  • Co-Create Execution and Involve Stakeholders: Involving top executives and lower organizational layers in the decision process about how to execute change can bring “different perspectives” that contribute to the “cohesiveness of the people involved in the change,” said Mr. Sanchez-Reina.
  • Care About the Emotions of Change: “It is critical for CIOs to create a mental track record of as many positives as possible,” said Mr. Sanchez-Reina.

Mollie West Duffy, head of learning and development at Lattice, in an article for Harvard Business Review, said change fatigue is not an individual issue but needs to be addressed at the team or organization level.

“First, pause to acknowledge when a significant change is happening, and the discomfort that comes with it. Second, adopt a learning mindset and model for your team that it’s normal to be continuously evolving, especially in the face of ongoing uncertainty. Third, make plans, but accept that you and your team will likely deviate from them. Lastly, invest in simple rituals that the team can do together to reduce stress,” she wrote.

BrainTrust

“In the battle for talent, change management investment could turn out to be a new competitive differentiator.”

Nicola Kinsella

SVP Global Marketing, Fluent Commerce


“ALL organizations and individuals tend to get stuck in one or more phases. When that happens stress and anxiety skyrockets and succes is almost unreachable.”

Ian Percy

President, The Ian Percy Corporation


“The first thing to be cut in most retail IT engagements is change management. Big mistake, and it’s the reason that many projects fail.”

Ken Morris

Managing Partner Cambridge Retail Advisors

Discussion Questions

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Is change exhaustion an obstacle to technology implementations for retailers? What suggestions would you have about preventing or reducing change fatigue? 

Poll

Has change fatigue become a problem with many technology implementations for retailers?

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19 responses to “How Can Enterprise Change Fatigue Be Reduced?”

  1. Bob Amster Avatar
    Bob Amster

    In introducing change to our clients, we have always considered the ability of an organization to absorb quantities of change and without articulating it, change fatigue has been one of the factors. After every big push, effort, or campaign, there needs to be some let down time to rest, recuperate and give our emotional systems a breather. This can be accomplished with time off, a celebratory party, or a period of lighter assignments.

  2. Peter Charness Avatar
    Peter Charness

    Change exhaustion is preceded by change fear. For the longest time, a good percentage of new technology was paid for by expense reduction aka as layoffs. Further some of the promises of new technology in terms of ease of use, and productivity have not come true, and of course during the deployment period (and sometimes well after) workload goes up not down. Clear, frequent and honest Communications, so expectations can be properly set are important, as are involvement and input from the impacted teams during the course of the project plan.

  3. Ken Morris Avatar
    Ken Morris

    The first thing to be cut in most retail IT engagements is change management. Big mistake, and it’s the reason that many projects fail. The value of change management is that it reduces change fatigue. It’s a key to successful implementations. Projects need to be fun, and it is incumbent upon the team to make it so. A little creativity in people and project management will create a fresh perspective for change. 

    Tech changes lead to better processes, efficiency gains, and more success overall. It’s the road to get there that can be tough. Like a marathon runner focused on the finish line, retailers all experience the pains of change. It’s important to acknowledge the challenges along the way and to use every technique possible to make for a smooth run.

  4. Jeff Sward Avatar
    Jeff Sward

    Celebrate success! Recognize progress and celebrate in an appropriate manner. Then recognize frustrations and failures…and learn. Either way, the whole point is to learn and evolve. Setting the right expectations at the beginning of a venture is key.

  5. Nicola Kinsella Avatar
    Nicola Kinsella

    Change is business as usual. But traditionally most organizations have not invested enough in change management. Change tended to be directed top down, without enough input from the field, and with no where near enough communication planning over long periods. That might have been ok when big changes were rolled out less often, but not any more.

    Organizations should treat change management almost like a ‘buyer journey’, where first you have to build awareness and make an emotional connection, then people ask a lot of questions and get answers so they feel comfortable, in order to ‘win the customer’. In the battle for talent, change management investment could turn out to be a new competitive differentiator.

    1. David Naumann Avatar
      David Naumann

      Well said Nicola! Changes are a consistent part of businesses and those of us that have been in the corporate world for many years have come to expect it. The pace of change is probably more difficult for younger employees. Successful change management programs are imperative to help employees embrace the changes and make them more comfortable.

  6. Keith Anderson Avatar
    Keith Anderson

    The last three years brought such abrupt and dramatic change, I’m not surprised there’s a degree of fatigue.

    Unfortunately, much of the change on the horizon is inevitable, and accelerating.

    Retailers can prevent and reduce change fatigue by starting small and early; engaging employees across the organization to streamline alignment; simplifying where possible by eliminating obsolete or wasteful processes; and focusing on the benefits and upside of evolving and adapting.

    1. Gene Detroyer Avatar
      Gene Detroyer

      Exactly! The rate of change and the magnitude of change is accelerating exponentially. People better be prepared.

      1. Ryan Mathews Avatar
        Ryan Mathews

        Gene,

        That’s what Alvin Toffler predicted in “Future Shock” way back in 1970. As you probably remember Toffler said the problem wasn’t change so much as it was change in the rate of change. “Future Shock” came out over half a century ago and it seems we still haven’t learned to hear what Toffler was trying to tell us.

    2. Ian Percy Avatar
      Ian Percy

      These comments reminds me of the Henry Ford quote: “No one is apathetic except those in pursuit of someone elses objective.”

  7. Ryan Mathews Avatar
    Ryan Mathews

    People don’t fear change, they fear the uncertainty associated with it. All of us aspire to and welcome certain kinds of change – making more money, finding true love, loosing a couple of pounds, developing new hobbies, learning new skills, traveling to new places, etc., etc., because we assume that – as a result of that change – our lives will be better. The problem with change in a work environment is that it is almost always accompanied with the maximum amount of uncertainty and hardly ever “sold” as a specific benefit to specific employees. “We’re doing this for the good of the company and our shareholders,” usually means job cuts, wage freezes, benefit reduction, and so on. This is especially true for technological change which, more often than not, results in current employees taking some kind of hit. Minimize the uncertainty, let people know a specific benefit to them arising from a change and all of a sudden people will start (guardedly) looking forward to change rather than resisting it with every fiber of their being.

  8. Brian Cluster Avatar
    Brian Cluster

    The challenge with technological change is that the IT department can roll out technological changes at a pace where employees can’t keep up and adopt the new tech. Years ago there were a few technology platforms that helped run a retailer, now those significant technologies have been broken into many different services. So companies have dozens or over 100 different types of technology and employees face constant changes all around them, which can be stressful.

    A change management program for any technology change is a must. These technology changes should be rolled out with a sensitivity toward the business. Perhaps not allowing any updates on Monday or focusing on a specific day each week to do a majority of the changes. Communication before, during, and post-change, is important to help the associates adapt and adopt the new approach/technology.

  9. Ian Percy Avatar
    Ian Percy

    This is one of those psychological issues that after eons of time we still don’t understand. Some key principles as I see them:

    1. People do NOT resist change, they resist being changed.

    2. The old adage that you have to make people ‘think’ it’s their idea is one of the most insulting and ignorant concepts ever perpretated in management school. “Involve stakeholders” is largely a ‘smoke and mirrors’ technique to reduce resistance to a change that’s been pre-determined.

    3. On the issue of fatigue…the gestalt concept of change follows these phases: AWARENESS (seeing a new possibility); EXCITEMENT (getting energized about it); ACTION (implementing the idea); COMPLETION (reaching the desired end-state); and REST (taking time to enjoy the accomplishment). Then the process starts over. This cycle can take a nano-second like suddently swerving to miss hitting something or it can take eternity like the government doing anything useful.

    ALL organizations and individuals tend to get stuck in one or more phases. When that happens stress and anxiety skyrockets and succes is almost unreachable. My favorite ‘getting stuck’ places are Awareness and Excitement. Sadly, I’m pathetic at acting on and completing my exciting ideas and I don’t rest. You?

  10. Doug Garnett Avatar
    Doug Garnett

    I suspect the fatigue is not with change — but with change that produces no significant result. Teachers in public schools tell me that they administrators foist major programs of change onto them every five years – changes which do nothing for students yet help administrators build their careers. Companies do the same – rolling out every change with massive over promises.

    Retailers will do well to adopt a long term and rational program of change. In particular, avoid the shiny baubles sold by tech. Todays AI is the latest version of those baubles – shiny, attractive, and generally empty of significant value. Change must make a difference – otherwise we are merely rearranging deck chairs and there’s a lot of that in the retail world.

    1. Scott Norris Avatar
      Scott Norris

      Agree strongly – it’s like living through two years of road construction on the way to work, once completed enjoying the ride for a few months, then seeing orange cones and jackhammers yet again. If the planning process is wrong, or the implementation is messed up, then the effort and frustration grows exponentially, and work is done to fix previous work, instead of getting on with business. Evolution happens and can be anticipated, but leadership’s incompetence is what damages teams.

  11. Mark Price Avatar
    Mark Price

    Molly Duffy’s recommendations are spot on. The problem occurs when we describe change as a one-time event, which gets repeated over and over again. In this business environment, change is a constant, and we need to work with our teams on building emotional resilience as a core skill for business success.

  12. Trevor Sumner Avatar
    Trevor Sumner

    As an industry, retail has already been slow to adopt change. Covid forced greater agility but in the process stressed systems, processes and people most of all, both personally and professionally. Exhaustion is real. Those organizations that embrace the new rate of change and make it a shared cultural value will see their people increasingly lean into the future rather than resist it.

  13. Mohammad Ahsen Avatar
    Mohammad Ahsen

    Frequent change fatigue leads to burn out, and burned-out employees won’t contribute to the organization. Few suggestions to reduce the change fatigue are-
    1)Have a planned outcome in mind-Every change, regardless of its size, needs to begin with an intended outcome. The change be understood and meaningful to the people affected.
    2)Build team leaders who are implementation masters -Change leaders need specific knowledge and skills. The change management is a role or task that is different from general operations.
    3) Enroll people in the process -Involving the change-recipients in the planning and facilitation helps them become change fit. It also reduces the risk of change fatigue.

  14. Ashish Chaturvedi Avatar
    Ashish Chaturvedi

    Continuous change initiatives are inevitable to survive in today’s competitive environment. It’s going to remain a continuously evolving goal. Enterprise leaders must understand that employee experience (EX) is as critical as their final goal while taking these initiatives. The employees should not get a feeling that the change initiative will put more burden on their shoulders. Most change projects fail because of cultural conflicts and not bringing the employee on board while defining the modalities of the change project. The forward-looking and futuristic retailers have been able to do this much better.

19 Comments
oldest
newest
Bob Amster
Bob Amster
2 months ago

In introducing change to our clients, we have always considered the ability of an organization to absorb quantities of change and without articulating it, change fatigue has been one of the factors. After every big push, effort, or campaign, there needs to be some let down time to rest, recuperate and give our emotional systems a breather. This can be accomplished with time off, a celebratory party, or a period of lighter assignments.

Peter Charness
Peter Charness
2 months ago

Change exhaustion is preceded by change fear. For the longest time, a good percentage of new technology was paid for by expense reduction aka as layoffs. Further some of the promises of new technology in terms of ease of use, and productivity have not come true, and of course during the deployment period (and sometimes well after) workload goes up not down. Clear, frequent and honest Communications, so expectations can be properly set are important, as are involvement and input from the impacted teams during the course of the project plan.

Ken Morris
Ken Morris
2 months ago

The first thing to be cut in most retail IT engagements is change management. Big mistake, and it’s the reason that many projects fail. The value of change management is that it reduces change fatigue. It’s a key to successful implementations. Projects need to be fun, and it is incumbent upon the team to make it so. A little creativity in people and project management will create a fresh perspective for change. 

Tech changes lead to better processes, efficiency gains, and more success overall. It’s the road to get there that can be tough. Like a marathon runner focused on the finish line, retailers all experience the pains of change. It’s important to acknowledge the challenges along the way and to use every technique possible to make for a smooth run.

Jeff Sward
Jeff Sward
2 months ago

Celebrate success! Recognize progress and celebrate in an appropriate manner. Then recognize frustrations and failures…and learn. Either way, the whole point is to learn and evolve. Setting the right expectations at the beginning of a venture is key.

Nicola Kinsella
Nicola Kinsella
2 months ago

Change is business as usual. But traditionally most organizations have not invested enough in change management. Change tended to be directed top down, without enough input from the field, and with no where near enough communication planning over long periods. That might have been ok when big changes were rolled out less often, but not any more.

Organizations should treat change management almost like a ‘buyer journey’, where first you have to build awareness and make an emotional connection, then people ask a lot of questions and get answers so they feel comfortable, in order to ‘win the customer’. In the battle for talent, change management investment could turn out to be a new competitive differentiator.

David Naumann
David Naumann
  Nicola Kinsella
2 months ago

Well said Nicola! Changes are a consistent part of businesses and those of us that have been in the corporate world for many years have come to expect it. The pace of change is probably more difficult for younger employees. Successful change management programs are imperative to help employees embrace the changes and make them more comfortable.

Keith Anderson
Keith Anderson
2 months ago

The last three years brought such abrupt and dramatic change, I’m not surprised there’s a degree of fatigue.

Unfortunately, much of the change on the horizon is inevitable, and accelerating.

Retailers can prevent and reduce change fatigue by starting small and early; engaging employees across the organization to streamline alignment; simplifying where possible by eliminating obsolete or wasteful processes; and focusing on the benefits and upside of evolving and adapting.

Gene Detroyer
Gene Detroyer
  Keith Anderson
2 months ago

Exactly! The rate of change and the magnitude of change is accelerating exponentially. People better be prepared.

Ryan Mathews
Ryan Mathews
  Gene Detroyer
2 months ago

Gene,

That’s what Alvin Toffler predicted in “Future Shock” way back in 1970. As you probably remember Toffler said the problem wasn’t change so much as it was change in the rate of change. “Future Shock” came out over half a century ago and it seems we still haven’t learned to hear what Toffler was trying to tell us.

Ian Percy
Ian Percy
  Keith Anderson
2 months ago

These comments reminds me of the Henry Ford quote: “No one is apathetic except those in pursuit of someone elses objective.”

Ryan Mathews
Ryan Mathews
2 months ago

People don’t fear change, they fear the uncertainty associated with it. All of us aspire to and welcome certain kinds of change – making more money, finding true love, loosing a couple of pounds, developing new hobbies, learning new skills, traveling to new places, etc., etc., because we assume that – as a result of that change – our lives will be better. The problem with change in a work environment is that it is almost always accompanied with the maximum amount of uncertainty and hardly ever “sold” as a specific benefit to specific employees. “We’re doing this for the good of the company and our shareholders,” usually means job cuts, wage freezes, benefit reduction, and so on. This is especially true for technological change which, more often than not, results in current employees taking some kind of hit. Minimize the uncertainty, let people know a specific benefit to them arising from a change and all of a sudden people will start (guardedly) looking forward to change rather than resisting it with every fiber of their being.

Brian Cluster
Brian Cluster
2 months ago

The challenge with technological change is that the IT department can roll out technological changes at a pace where employees can’t keep up and adopt the new tech. Years ago there were a few technology platforms that helped run a retailer, now those significant technologies have been broken into many different services. So companies have dozens or over 100 different types of technology and employees face constant changes all around them, which can be stressful.

A change management program for any technology change is a must. These technology changes should be rolled out with a sensitivity toward the business. Perhaps not allowing any updates on Monday or focusing on a specific day each week to do a majority of the changes. Communication before, during, and post-change, is important to help the associates adapt and adopt the new approach/technology.

Ian Percy
Ian Percy
2 months ago

This is one of those psychological issues that after eons of time we still don’t understand. Some key principles as I see them:

1. People do NOT resist change, they resist being changed.

2. The old adage that you have to make people ‘think’ it’s their idea is one of the most insulting and ignorant concepts ever perpretated in management school. “Involve stakeholders” is largely a ‘smoke and mirrors’ technique to reduce resistance to a change that’s been pre-determined.

3. On the issue of fatigue…the gestalt concept of change follows these phases: AWARENESS (seeing a new possibility); EXCITEMENT (getting energized about it); ACTION (implementing the idea); COMPLETION (reaching the desired end-state); and REST (taking time to enjoy the accomplishment). Then the process starts over. This cycle can take a nano-second like suddently swerving to miss hitting something or it can take eternity like the government doing anything useful.

ALL organizations and individuals tend to get stuck in one or more phases. When that happens stress and anxiety skyrockets and succes is almost unreachable. My favorite ‘getting stuck’ places are Awareness and Excitement. Sadly, I’m pathetic at acting on and completing my exciting ideas and I don’t rest. You?

Doug Garnett
Doug Garnett
2 months ago

I suspect the fatigue is not with change — but with change that produces no significant result. Teachers in public schools tell me that they administrators foist major programs of change onto them every five years – changes which do nothing for students yet help administrators build their careers. Companies do the same – rolling out every change with massive over promises.

Retailers will do well to adopt a long term and rational program of change. In particular, avoid the shiny baubles sold by tech. Todays AI is the latest version of those baubles – shiny, attractive, and generally empty of significant value. Change must make a difference – otherwise we are merely rearranging deck chairs and there’s a lot of that in the retail world.

Scott Norris
Scott Norris
  Doug Garnett
2 months ago

Agree strongly – it’s like living through two years of road construction on the way to work, once completed enjoying the ride for a few months, then seeing orange cones and jackhammers yet again. If the planning process is wrong, or the implementation is messed up, then the effort and frustration grows exponentially, and work is done to fix previous work, instead of getting on with business. Evolution happens and can be anticipated, but leadership’s incompetence is what damages teams.

Mark Price
Mark Price
2 months ago

Molly Duffy’s recommendations are spot on. The problem occurs when we describe change as a one-time event, which gets repeated over and over again. In this business environment, change is a constant, and we need to work with our teams on building emotional resilience as a core skill for business success.

Trevor Sumner
Trevor Sumner
2 months ago

As an industry, retail has already been slow to adopt change. Covid forced greater agility but in the process stressed systems, processes and people most of all, both personally and professionally. Exhaustion is real. Those organizations that embrace the new rate of change and make it a shared cultural value will see their people increasingly lean into the future rather than resist it.

Mohammad Ahsen
Mohammad Ahsen
2 months ago

Frequent change fatigue leads to burn out, and burned-out employees won’t contribute to the organization. Few suggestions to reduce the change fatigue are-
1)Have a planned outcome in mind-Every change, regardless of its size, needs to begin with an intended outcome. The change be understood and meaningful to the people affected.
2)Build team leaders who are implementation masters -Change leaders need specific knowledge and skills. The change management is a role or task that is different from general operations.
3) Enroll people in the process -Involving the change-recipients in the planning and facilitation helps them become change fit. It also reduces the risk of change fatigue.

Ashish Chaturvedi
Ashish Chaturvedi
2 months ago

Continuous change initiatives are inevitable to survive in today’s competitive environment. It’s going to remain a continuously evolving goal. Enterprise leaders must understand that employee experience (EX) is as critical as their final goal while taking these initiatives. The employees should not get a feeling that the change initiative will put more burden on their shoulders. Most change projects fail because of cultural conflicts and not bringing the employee on board while defining the modalities of the change project. The forward-looking and futuristic retailers have been able to do this much better.