My doctoral dissertation research revealed the notion of Change FatigueTM to a higher degree than expected. The primary purpose of this study was to research the impact of stressors related to continuous change and persistent change management initiatives, hypothesized as enervative change (Dool 2006), specifically on the organization’s employees’ level of job stress and job satisfaction.
Enervative change refers to the negative shift in the level of job satisfaction of an organization’s employees as a result of continuous change. The impact of ill-conceived or persistent change initiatives was also considered to determine the impact, if any, on an employee’s job satisfaction. It reflects the stage where the energy mobilized by the stress process is beginning to run down and decreased job satisfaction occurs. Enervative change is manifested by a reduction (even slight) in the employee’s output, and attitude (cynicism, burnout, resistance), resulting in a decrease in job satisfaction. Think about the last time in any workplace you have experienced change—did it either positively or negatively affect your productivity? Just like economic externalities, enervative change is akin to negative externalities. And as classic economics has taught us, ignoring externalities as less than important will cause long-term problems to the overall system, or in this case, the output of workers in a given workplace.
It was posited that the effects of enervative change are cumulative and lead inevitably to the manifestations indicated above. Our study expected to see a significant inverse relationship between overall job satisfaction and stress (frequency and severity).
This was fairly intuitive and we were not sure it was worthy of a doctoral study. However, up to that point, there had been only eight studies on a similar set of variables and six of them were in the UK.
We decided to test the intersections using two variables: change stress frequency and change severity. We defined change stress frequency as how often each change stressor occurred in the last 12 months. Change stress severity referred to the perceived severity of specific stressor events compared to a standard stressor.
The Subjects and Study Demographics
We were pleased with the response to our study. We had a net participation of 484 subjects out of 1,243 subjects solicited for this research project. Of the participants, 55 percent (n = 614) provided complete survey responses for a net response rate of 49.4 percent. The subject pool was reduced to 484 when subjects who did not work for U.S. companies, subjects from organizations with less than five employees, and subjects with more than 15 direct reports were excluded.
It also reflected a high degree of diversity in gender, age, education, ethnicity, experience, and organizational size.
In our research, 54.8 percent (n = 265) of the respondents were females and 45.2 percent (n = 219) male.
The subjects’ ages ranged from 18 to 70 years. The mean age was 40.74 years, the median age was 40.00 years with a standard deviation of 11.03 years.
The subjects were a well-educated group, with 37.6 percent (n = 182) having a bachelor’s degree, 21.1 percent (n = 102) with master’s degrees, and 3.7 percent (n = 18) with doctoral degrees. The remaining 37.6 percent (n = 182) of the subjects had completed high school as their highest educational level.
These results show that the subjects were predominately white 87.8 percent (n = 425). The other ethnicity categories were represented by African Americans 6.2 percent (n = 30), Asians/Pacific Islanders 3.7 percent (n = 18), Hispanics/Latinos 2.1 percent (n = 10), and American Indians 0.2 percent (n = 1).
The results indicate that the subjects’ tenure with their current organization ranged from 1 to 38 years. Every subject had been with their current organization at least 1 year and 82.8 percent (n = 401) between 1 and 12 years. The mean number of years worked was 7.27 years with a standard deviation of 7.72 years.
The subjects were employed by organizations of varied sizes, as measured by the number of employees. The number of employees ranged from 5 to 1,000,000, of which 19.6 percent (n = 95) worked for organizations with less than 50 employees and 48.9 percent (n = 237) for organizations that employed more than 1000.
The Subjects’ Experience With Change in Their Current Organizations
The research project’s central focus was the impact of persistent change on employee job satisfaction as influenced by increases in employee stress (enervative change). The subjects were asked if their organizations had launched any “severe” change initiatives in the last 12 months and whether or not they were personally impacted by these change initiatives (“change frequency”). In their responses, 87.2 percent (n = 422) of the subjects indicated that severe change initiatives had been started in their organizations in the last 12 months, and 71.3 percent (n = 345) indicated that they were personally impacted by the change initiatives (change frequency).
The subjects were also queried on the number of severe change initiatives started in the last 12 months. Of the respondents, 64.5 percent (n = 312) reported that their firms had launched between 1 and 5 severe change initiatives in the last 12 months, 15.5 percent (n = 110) of the organizations had started between 6 and 10 change initiatives, and 7.2 percent (n = 35) reported their organizations had started more than 10 change initiatives.
The subjects were asked to identify the severe change initiatives that their firms had started in the last 12 months. The subjects were asked to select from a list of 12 sample organizational change initiatives (severe) or to select “other” and provide specific examples from their firms. They were asked to check all that apply. The range of “severe” change initiatives included macro-level changes such as new systems, changes in operations (leadership, processes, strategy), or reorganizations (mergers or acquisitions) as well as micro-level changes (change frequency; e.g., changes in duties). Reorganizations led the change initiatives started in the last 12 months at 39.7 percent (n = 192), followed by new hardware or software systems at 38.8 percent (n = 188), changes in leadership at 34.1 percent (n = 165), or staff reductions at 32.9 percent (n = 159).
It was alarming when we first saw these results. It defied logic; we did not think any leader or organization would launch more than one or two of these “severe” change initiatives in the same year. We thought we had a serious flaw in our methodology and study data.
When we analyzed the data, we realized that we were actually seeing Change FatigueTM in action. What was happening is that leaders under pressure or impatient for results were launching iterations to the change initiatives they had launched if positive impacts were not experienced quick enough. In our data, the subjects were listing each iteration as a new change initiative, which led to the high reporting of severe changes in the prior 12 months.
Findings
The underlying assumption of this research was that organizational change increased employee stress and subsequently had a negative impact on employee job satisfaction. Testing of the research hypotheses uncovered several noteworthy findings.
Change was analyzed using a two-by-two matrix to identify change groups. The matrix represents four potential states of an organization (business as usual, reactive, adaptive, and enervative) related to their change profile and levels of job stress (stress frequency and stress severity). Change profile refers to the nature of change in the specific state (quadrant).
Business as Usual (I)—in this mode, the individual and organization go about their work as expected. Stress is of a low frequency, low severity nature and therefore, the individual does not feel an unusual level of stress and adjusts as needed to conditions as they arise. The changes in this quadrant are small in number and are considered part of the normal operations of the firm and therefore do not require abnormal reactions.
Reactive (II)—in this mode, the individual and organization must react or immediately respond to a change in conditions (threat or opportunity). Stress is of a low frequency, high severity nature and must be dealt with in a timely manner. Exogenous shocks (threats or crises) often arise unexpectedly and must be addressed as a priority over normal operations. Stress may increase substantially in reaction to these “shocks.” The changes in this quadrant are a result of “reactive responses” and generally require abnormal reactions.
Adaptive (III)—in this mode, the individual or organization continuously adapt to changes in the environment (internally or externally). Stress is of a high frequency, low severity nature. Changes become part of the normal activities of the individual or firm. The ability to adjust to the changing conditions becomes part of the organizational fabric and is seen less as change and more as seamless, natural adaptation. Change becomes continuous and often takes place unintentionally as people go about doing their jobs. This is the ideal state in an environment of continuous change due to constant fluctuations in the macro-environment. In this state, stress is present but it is at a manageable level.
Enervative (IV)—in this mode, the individual experiences a state in which the energy necessary to mobilize the effort to persist, starts to run down and decreased job satisfaction occurs. Stress is of a high frequency, high severity nature. The changes initiated by the firm overwhelms the natural adaptation capabilities of the individual. Employees in this mode display symptoms of increased stress and reduced job satisfaction.
Total job satisfaction demonstrated significant inverse relationships with job stress frequency and job stress severity. The relationship between job satisfaction and job stress frequency was stronger than the relationship between job satisfaction and stress severity. These results indicate that as stress frequency and/or severity increase, job satisfaction decreases.
We compared the change groups (business as usual, adaptive, reactive, and enervative) on multiple variables. The enervative group (high stress severity and high stress intensity) showed the lowest level of job satisfaction, while the business as usual group (low stress frequency and severity) had the highest level of job satisfaction.
The enervative group had the most number of changes implemented in the past 12 months. Comparing the number of changes organizations started in the last 12 months (1 to 5, 6 to 10, and more than 10) further validated the change matrix model. Subjects reporting 6 to 10 changes indicated more personal impact than subjects with 1 to 5 changes. Subjects with 1 to 5 changes indicated more job satisfaction than subjects with 6 to 10 changes. Subjects with more than 10 changes and subjects with 6 to 10 changes indicated more job stress severity than subjects with 1 to 5 changes. Subjects with more than 10 changes and subjects with 6 to 10 changes indicated more job stress frequency than subjects with 1 to 5 changes.
The research tests validated the underlying assumption that organizational change increases job stress and increased job stress has a negative impact on employee job satisfaction.
Conclusions
This research project has shown that both job stress severity and job stress frequency negatively impact employee job satisfaction. We found that change stress frequency was significantly related to total job satisfaction, the number of change initiatives started, and being personally impacted by the changes. Also, the change group comparisons indicated that subjects who reported more change also reported more personal impact, less job satisfaction, and more stress severity and frequency.
The concept of enervative change was sustained by the research results. The enervative group reported the highest levels of change initiatives started in the last 12 months, the highest level of personal impact by the change initiatives and the lowest level of job satisfaction among the change groups.
There was clear evidence that there is a significant inverse relationship between employee total job satisfaction and the individual elements of total job stress (change stress frequency and change stress severity). Surprisingly, the results indicated that change stress frequency had a more negative impact on employee job satisfaction than change stress severity. This is inconsistent with much of the literature on change management, which tends to focus more on the macro change events such as corporate downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, and reorganizations. It was also inconsistent with the sense of the 10 subject matter experts with whom we reviewed the study results. I (Dool) had been a CEO for 10 years when this study was launched and I also had assumed that change severity would have a larger negative impact on employee stress.
We concluded in our study at the time that the presence of enervative change in the workplace should not go unaddressed by management. Persistent change initiatives have been shown to increase employee job stress. Increased job stress leads to reduced job satisfaction, which is often manifested in absenteeism, tardiness, and turnover. The costs to the firm of reduced job satisfaction are very high, especially given the increases in competition and the demanding nature of its customers. Given the presence of ineffective change models and the subsequent high failure rate of change initiatives, it is clear that organizations must consider alternative means to managing change.
The literature since our study (2006) indicates that many firms are still launching persistent (serial or overlapping) change initiatives. Clearly, one way to reduce the negative effects of enervative change is to reduce the number of change initiatives launched by the organization. If recent history is a guide, this seems unlikely. The systemic impatience between organizational leaders and their stakeholders as well as the volatility in the environment indicates depending on a reduction in change initiatives is not a reasonable position. It would certainly help and should be encouraged but another approach will also need to be pursued.
An alternative to reducing the number of change initiatives is to reframe the notion of “change” and to create a change management framework that encourages a more adaptive organization.
Change management programs seem to be most effective when they are firm-specific. One of the challenges to the traditional change models is that they assume a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This is unrealistic. Change may have many common characteristics, but in practice, change is a situational and a specific experience for employees. Therefore, we offered a new “framework,” not a specific model. It is meant as a means to “frame” organizational strategies, processes, and tactics, in order to improve the organization’s flexibility, agility, and to reduce the stress related to change.
In our original study, we suggested a new change management framework, the “C5” framework, be deployed as a means to moderate the stress related to organizational change.
Since the study, we conducted more research and tested our proposed framework in two cases. This experience led us to revisit Change FatigueTM for this text and to amend our framework to an updated version, the “C6” framework.