How To Reduce Employee Resistance To Change Initiatives

Today’s work environment is constantly changing. Leaders of large and small companies are looking for ways to stay relevant as fears of an economic slowdown put greater pressure on maintaining revenue, while also mitigating the risk of inflation. Stakeholders are putting pressure on companies to deliver more value. Employees are looking for more pay, better benefits, and greater flexibility at work. Customers are looking for more customization, new services, faster delivery, and cheaper prices. Investors are looking for consistent returns, better governance, social responsibility, and improved sustainability. All these expectations are creating pressure on leaders to change how businesses operated. To maintain profitability, customer experience, employee morale, and investor satisfaction leaders must make bold and sometimes unpopular changes. As a leader you play a key role in helping employees understand why change is necessary, along with the risk of being stagnant in today’s highly volatile environment. The better you communicate why change is necessary and how it will benefit them, the more likely they will be to embrace the change.

People are resistant to change when it challenges their sense of self or their values, especially when that change is not their choice. Think about a time when a positive change happened at work. Your company gave you an additional holiday or a process changed that solved a problem you were experiencing. You accepted the change quickly, and it might have even energized you because you saw benefit from the change. Your identity and values were unchallenged, and the extra day off or process improvement aligned with your aspirational self. Now think of a time when a change happen that you resisted. You had to take on a new assignment that caused you to work more hours which cut into your personal time, or your company moved away from a work from home policy that you enjoyed. This created negative emotions, distracted you from your purpose and was perceived as being a threat to who you are, and who you want to be. When changes happen to us that we view as a threat to our values or identity we resist.  As a leader looking to help people process a big change, it is important to help employees reframe the change from being a threat, to being an opportunity. When they can see the benefits, and understand how the change aligns with their values, and supports who they want to be, they will be more likely to embrace the change.  

First, leaders must recognize that no matter how small you feel a change is, there is a chance that the change will feel significant to your employees.

The reason for this is related to the differences in your scope of responsibility. As the leader you have a different vantage point in the organization. Your focus is on the entirety of your organization, while your employees are focused on a smaller segment of the business, and potentially just their role. Since the size of their role and responsibility is smaller, any change has a bigger impact on their business. In addition, what may seem like a minor change from your vantage point, may require considerable time and effort to execute as it moves down an organization. For this reason, leaders need to be purposeful about the changes they make. Every time you make an unwanted change in your organization you erode employee comfort, trust and sense of power. This can impact morale and have negative impacts to productivity and engagement. In today’s environment change fatigue is a real risk. Change fatigue occurs when multiple minor changes add up and overwhelm an individual or group. For this reason, it is important to pay attention to both the size and frequency of change initiatives.

Second, leaders must frame the change as a win for employees.

As I stated earlier, processing change is all about perspective. If a change is seen as an opportunity to improve the employee work environment, they are more likely to accept it, even if the change requires a lot of work. In contrast, if changes are perceived by employees as threats to their values or wellbeing, you will meet resistance especially if the changes are viewed to be significant. The key to helping employees reframe the change is to give them perspective. The more you can help your employees to zoom out from their perspective and understand how the change will help them either now or in the future, the more likely they will see it as an opportunity for improvement vs a threat to their status quo.

=Zooming out sometimes requires employees to look beyond the pain of the moment and understand that greater pain that will come if change does not occur. A great analogy for this is the pain associated with road construction. As a driver, it can be painful to sit through the increased traffic created by road closures linked to highways expansions. In the moment, drivers may absolutely hate the impact of the road work and the pain associated with longer commutes. In hindsight, once the project is over, most drivers are extremely grateful to have the increase in lanes especially as they realize the additional traffic issues that would have come from not expanding the highway. When the business case for change is presented, leaders must help employees zoom out beyond the current moment and look at the benefits that will come over time.

Finally, involving your employees early in the change management process shows them that you respect and value their opinion and that you have their best interest in mind as you determine and roll out change initiatives.

By giving your employees visibility to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your business, you help them to understand the business case for change. This can help to motivate employees to support change because they better understand the potential benefits of acting, along with the risk of doing nothing. As you solicit their opinion on potential solutions, you will improve your decision making because you will be more knowledgeable of potential solutions, better understand the risk, drawbacks, and trade-offs of your current thinking. When you share change implementation plan with your employees and solicit feedback, they can help to identify unconsidered obstacles, and design solutions to improve adoption rates. By including employees in the process, you increase trust, which lowers the perceived risk of change initiatives because employees understand why the change is happening, that you thought through alternative solutions and landed on the change that was best for the organization’s future.

Change can be difficult because of the wiring of our brains. When people do the same things repeatedly, thought patterns establish that help to build the construct of who we are as individuals. When you make a change in an employee's work environment, you disrupt their thought patterns. When the ask is mundane, the impact is small, and does not impact an employee's sense of self. When the change is viewed as positive, people are willing participants because they believe the change will bring them closer to being the person they want to be. When employees view change as a threat, they resist because they are asked to move away from being the person they want to be. If you want to have greater success influencing change with your employees, acknowledge that change can impact employees’ perception of self, help them to zoom out and see the bigger picture, and collaborate with them on the identification, ideation, and execution of change initiatives.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

For tips on leadership and professional development follow me:

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Tips for Managing a Hybrid Workplace

Employees loved the work-from-home policies companies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. They gave employees greater flexibility in managing the competing priorities between home and work life. Employees could spend more time with their families, better manage household activities, save money on fuel, and less time in traffic.

Since so many employees loved working at home, why are so many companies shifting back to requiring employees to come into the office? Companies like General Motors claim that they require employees to return to work to boost productivity (5). These claims tell us more about the company's ability to be productive in a remote work environment than the effectiveness of work-from-home policies. Companies that can master remote and hybrid workplaces will have a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining talent.

Hybrid workplaces give you access to a large talent pool.

Decisions like allowing remote or hybrid work can significantly impact a workforce's demographics. In executive coach David Lancefield's article Stop Wasting People's Time in Meetings, he cites that "64% of GenZ and 63% of Millennials consider their office to be their laptop, headset and wherever they can get a strong internet connection, compared to only 48% of Gen X and 32% of Baby boomers" (3). The decision to require employees to return to work will have less impact on Gen X and Baby Boomers because they put less value on remote working and have spent more of their careers working in an office.

For GenZ especially, the last two years have set their expectation on what work life should be. Many recent college graduates spent 50% of their college years taking remote classes where they developed remote working skills. Younger workers have the skills and desire to work remotely and will gravitate to organizations that give them greater flexibility.

Employees' expectations from employers are changing.

There is a growing trend of GenZ employees not seeing the same value in social relationships with co-workers as previous generations. In a recent survey by Capterra, half of workers between 18 and 25 said they found workplace friendships minimally or unimportant (1). Over the last few decades, people have been searching for work-life balance. Younger workers find that balance by creating clear boundaries between work associates and personal friendships. For this reason, they see less value in working in an office where there is more pressure to engage and interact socially with co-workers.

Adjusting your management approach.

For companies to retain their best talent, they must be willing to change with the times and create cultures that support remote workers. As a multi-unit operations leader, I learned early in my career that I did not have to be physically in front of my team to influence their performance. You can manage performance by implementing these best practices

• Define Key Performance Indicators. Identifying critical metrics for your team and tracking them daily, weekly, and monthly is an effective way to ensure employees accomplish the needed tasks. Instead of focusing on how or when work is completed, focus on and hold people accountable for deliverables.

• Make check-in calls. Periodically call your employees to ask them how they are doing. This replicates the management by walking around practice that most managers execute within an office setting. By doing unscheduled calls, you can get great feedback on what people are working on and how things are going.

• Schedule one on ones. In addition to check-in calls, it is essential to have a routine for meeting with employees and talking about business. This allows you and your employees to prepare for the discussion and bring topics forward that will drive business results for the company and professional development for the employee.

• Hold team meetings. Holding team meetings allows you to bring your employees together so that you can align on expectations, share best practices, celebrate wins, and build a culture of excellence. When holding virtual team meetings, encourage employees to have cameras on, ask questions, and require participation.

Real-world example.

When I was the Manager of Franchise Marketing and Recruiting, we implemented a hybrid work policy that allowed recruiters to work from home two days a week. The shift to hybrid working produced a 30% increase in leads forwarded to our sales team. When we processed the change, many of the recruiters gained 1 to 2 hours back in their day, which was huge because nearly every team member was a working mom who could better balance their life by spending less time commuting to work.

Weekly one-on-ones with employees allowed me to set expectations for productivity, capture best practices from recruiters, and share those best practices with their peers. In addition, we established a cadence of weekly and monthly face-to-face meetings to encourage peer-to-peer interaction and provide a sense of shared purpose. I attribute the productivity boost to the disciplines we put in place around communication and the improved morale that working from home generated with the team.

Summary

Being successful in a hybrid workspace requires leaders to develop new skills. Instead of companies reverting to unpopular work-in-office policies, they should identify new processes and technologies to enable productive work-from-home environments.

James Hunter's book "The most powerful leadership principle "(2002) shares the value of servant leadership and the business benefits of leaders putting the needs of their employees ahead of their personal needs (2). Change is never easy. As the boss, you might be tempted to bend your employees' will to cater to your needs. This may work in the short term but tends to lead to lower productivity, higher levels of turnover, and a constant need to apply pressure to maintain the status quo. An alternative approach is to change with the times, develop new routines, and position your employees to provide as much value as possible.

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Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

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Resources

1. Ellis, L. (2022, August 17). Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-work-friends-more-americans-are-all-business-on-the-job-11660736232

2. Hunter, J. C. (2004). The world's most powerful leadership principle: how to become a servant leader. Waterbrook Press.

3. Lancefield, D. (2022, March 14). Stop Wasting People's Time with Meetings. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/03/stop-wasting-peoples-time-with-bad-meetings

4. Shepardson, D. (2022, October 24). GM launching return to work plan for salaried workers in January. Reuters.

3 Ways to Make a More Inclusive Workplace

As workforces continue to get more diverse, leaders must be increasingly purposeful in designing fair and equitable workplaces. Research shows that leaders are more likely to hire individuals that they identify as being like them (1). In addition, leaders are more likely to give raises and promotions to individuals of their same gender (1). This is a factor in the underpaying of women, and the lack of diversity at the top of most organizations. Cultures influenced by similarity biases based on gender, race, age, sexual preference, ethnicity, or religion leave minority groups feeling like they must work twice as hard to get a head. This can lead to burnout, employee turnover and employee disengagement. For companies to get more out of their work force, they must put energy against reducing similarity bias that create barriers for the advancement of minority groups. Minority members of organizations would contribute more value to organizations if they received similar levels of recognition, rewards, and development as their majority member counterparts. The act of improving inclusion creates the opportunity for all employees to have equal access to resources, information, and personal development. This positions companies to benefit from more employees being engage in value creation. Building a more inclusive workplace starts with leaders being aware of their biases and taking purposeful action to be fair and consistent in their interactions with employees.

The first step to building a more inclusive workplace is to evaluate how you are spending your time.

Time is our scarcest resources, and often our biases impact who we spend time with. During my time leading teams, I would periodically audit the amount of time I spent interacting with my direct reports. By reviewing the amount of time, I spent with employees, along with the frequency of phone calls, text messages and emails, I was able to get a good picture of who I was interacting with the most. With this information, I could identify any biases in my behavior, and take purpose action to shift how I was spending my time.

The second step to building a more inclusive workplace is to be curious.

When you take the time to connect with people on a personal level, you build empathy. Empathy is the glue the keeps people together. You can fight the impact of race, age, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, and religion similarity biases by being curious about people. When you take the time to learn about people’s values, dreams, character, and passions you will find that you have a lot in common with those you work with, even if they are physically different from you or come from different background. By being curious, and asking people questions, you communicate to others that you care about who they are and that you see them. By going deeper, and really getting to know people, you build the foundation for trust and inclusion.

The final suggestion for building a more inclusive workplace is to solicit feedback.

Your perception does not define another person’s reality. The best way to identify if you are creating an inclusive workplace is to ask those that you work with how you are doing at making everyone feel like a valued member of the team. To get candor, it is critical that you take action to let people know that you genuinely care about creating an inclusive work environment. You accomplish this by following the first two steps of allocating your time fairly and being curious. These actions set the stage for you to build trust which is a prerequisite for candor. Once you establish trust, those you work with will be more likely to be candid with you. When you ask your team their impression of inclusion in your workplace, you must listen and suspend judgement. Everyone’s experience is different and the purpose of you asking is not to influence their opinion, but to seek their perspective. Once you get feedback, it is critical that you take steps to help the individual feel more included.

I remember a conversation with a direct report that shared with me that she felt that I gave preferential treatment to her male co-workers that I occasionally went to happy hour with. As a mother she prioritized going home after work to spend time with her family, over meeting at a local spot and talking business with her peers and her boss. Prior to talking with her, I was unconscious of the unlevel playing field I was creating. Her peers had an extra 2 to 4 hours a month interacting with me which did influence my awareness of their work, along with providing them with the opportunity to receive incremental coaching from me. Her point was 100% valid. By me meeting with a portion of my team and without her being included, I was eroding trust and providing special treatment. She was the only one courageous enough to say anything, but her opinion was shared by other members of the team that also prioritized other non-work-related activities over happy hour. To address her concerns, I significantly reduced the frequency of these outings, along with the duration of time I spent in after hour activities with direct reports. As I matured as a leader, and gained more sensitivity around inclusion, I eventually eliminated most non-work-related socializing with direct reports to create a more level playing field.

The fact is that changing behaviors and norms within a company takes time and resources which raises the business question of whether companies should invest in building more inclusive workforces. There was a time when the leaders perceived the workforce to be so homogenous that companies had little reason to allocate time on inclusion efforts. The culture of organizations was so strong, that they could pressure individuals to conform. In addition, during that time periods employees’ perception of work were different. Previous generations expected to work for one company their entire life which made them more willing to go along to get along. As the workforce grows in diversity, and employees’ expectations around work change, companies risk losing talent if they do not focus on being inclusive. Employees today are more willing to leave their place of employment if they feel like they do not fit in, do not see equity in their treatment or feel that they are not getting a fair opportunity to advance their careers. As more females, people of color, English as a second language and LGBTQIA workers enter the American workforce, organizations must evolve, and leaders must work to connect with individuals that on the surface might look, speak, or act different from them. We are all human beings and share more in common than we differ. Leaders must take the time to get to know the people they work with and be purposeful in being inclusive.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

For tips on leadership and professional development follow me:

• LinkedIn

• Facebook

If you are interested in working with me as a coach, contact me at

• Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

• Phone: 804-220-5771

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Resources

1. Grant, G. (August 7th, 2018). Similar-To-Me Bias: How Gender Affects Workplace Recognition. Forbes. Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/georginagrant/2018/08/07/similar-to-me-bias-how-gender-affects-workplace-recognition/?sh=51e35f8e540a