How to Deal With Change Fatigue from Digital Transformation
What is Change Fatigue?
Change fatigue is a term often used when a business goes through big or many changes in a short time. This “fatigue” happens as employees cling to the old ways of doing things, or fear what the change may bring and cause.
These changes can cause stress, confusion, apathy, or a fear of job security within your employees. And handling the change fatigue can be the thing that causes the success or failure of a digital transformation strategy.
Since digital transformation is a business-wide endeavour, change fatigue is almost certain. In this post we’ll be going through some of the steps you can take to lower change fatigue and increase your chances of success.
Initiate
Digital Transformation can be a big project to undertake (although necessary). And with so many different changes taking place at the same time, it can invite change fatigue quite quickly.
That is why it is important to have a good plan at hand when initiating a digital transformation. It’s best to have a bottom-up approach, including as many people as possible in the change initiatives. By including employees, as well as leaders and managers, can result in a more accepting environment to the changes.
Lead
Having good leadership during big changes is vital to employee morale, and combating change fatigue. You need to have good leaders in place, with the right set of skills, to empower employees to change that are or will be happening.
Leaders must have an open-door policy when digital transformation is imminent. Allowing employees to discuss the changes, and provide feedback, whether good or bad. This allows employees to feel more involved and heard, and leaders can effectively monitor how the changes are doing.
Implement
Once you’ve started implementing your digital transformation, you need to have goals in mind. By having clear goals, communicating them to your teams, and establishing the benefits of the changes, everyone will become more accepting. This also allows you to maintain control over the changes and measure the success or failure of each one.
It is also important to remember that even the smallest of changes in one area of the business, can impact others. The changes you are implementing need to be positive and must interfere with current operations as little as possible. If employees can see and experience the benefits, without the added stress of interruptions, you can mitigate change fatigue effectively.