Change In The Workplace by Michael Law

Michael Law is a Project Management Apprentice the Business Development Manager for Social Care at Hammersmith and Fulham Council, writing for the Community Blogging Team.

Having run operational services in Social Care, such as Careline and Reablement, my role now is to look at new ways of working digitally, improving services with technology, and increasing independent living and wellbeing with assistive technology. I want to write about the challenges in facilitating change at work.

Many years ago, I’m talking about sometime in the last century, I was given a change task. I was to make the office I worked in paperless. It seemed a simple task to me, files and paperwork could be photocopied and uploaded to the new-fangled computers, the paper could be binned, and the filing cabinets removed. No-one ever looked at the files anyway, they just collected dust until the person died and then someone had to find the file and destroy it. But I soon discovered that would be the easy bit, the hard task was persuading the people in the office it was a good idea. Change! It’s a bit of a cliché but it is said that people don’t like change. I’m not sure about that. In fact I love change. But I do know that some people can be resistant to change in the workplace. Another cliché is change is the new constant, especially at work. Sometimes this feels true, as if we are living through a permanent revolution in technological change.

Despite popular opinion, organisations don’t change for changes sake. Change can be disruptive and expensive. So there is usually a good reason for change. Depending on the organisation change comes to increase productivity, make efficiencies, gain competitiveness, meet changing political or legal requirements, or even to change image. What is critical is the organisation’s ability to manage itself, its workforce, its product, or its purpose successfully through that change. Most important is how leaders manage their people through that change and the challenge of getting people to adopt new ideas or new ways of doing things. To do this they need to understand the human factor, how people react to change in the workplace and why.

If you’ve ever taken a class or course on Change you would have heard about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of change. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a brilliant woman who saw a lot of death from an early age, trained to be a doctor, then studied death and grief academically, becoming a psychiatrist on the way. She wrote a couple of books and came up with a theory on how people react to their oncoming death - the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Kübler-Ross went on, in the 1970’s, to get involved in a religious sex cult whose guru claimed he could channel the spirits of the departed, well who didn’t in the 1970’s. By the 80’s she was back doing fantastic work with dying children and then with AIDS patients, not everyone did in the 80’s. By the time she was dying herself she was so well known that Oprah Winfrey flew to Arizonna to interview her to find out if she was herself experiencing the five stages! I like to hope she was at the Angry stage. Kübler-Ross later noted that the stages are not a linear and predictable progression and that she regretted writing them in a way that was misunderstood.

But of course by then it was too late. Some bright spark in the Business Studies world had co-opted it as a linear theory of change in the workplace. It’s not the first time that the business world has done this, taking an academic theory from science or medicine, changing some of the key words, adding some pertinent business language, then presenting it as a diagram in a paper, book, or lecture. It will soon become the default business tool. And who knows, maybe that works, you decide. A recent version I have seen has seven stages:

Shock. People hear there will be change and immediately wonder how this will affect them, their working relationships, their career prospects and this uncertainty leads to disengagement.

Denial & Frustration. People start to think that this change isn't possible or necessary and will not accept the new reality. As anxiety increases and turns to frustration and anger as the inevitability of change becomes apparent. This means they start to blame others or display negative behaviours.

Depression & Acceptance. People begin to give up the old ways of doing things but this leads to a lack of motivation. Anxiety increases as there is self doubt about their own ability to cope with the change.

Experiment. Leaders start to engage people and increase motivation and interest in new ways of working. Dialogue leads to an increased enthusiasm for the benefits of the change. People start to experiment with the new model with purpose and motivation.

Support. People are supported with training, process change, and logistics to make the change successful.

Recognition and Encouragement. People are congratulated for their effort to adapt to the change. This builds motivation as confidence grows.

Integration. People feel more comfortable and confident about the new way of working and there is positivity and engagement. Leaders keep encouraging, supporting, and celebrating success.

Now as a model this seems to be very different from the Kübler-Ross one. Half way through it seems to become a management roadmap. The leader turns up in Act 4 in the guise of a hero, doling out the praise. But mate, you are too late! The first three stages only seem to have happened because no-one knew. If there is an ongoing conversation about change, continuous discussions of how to improve, and engagement as business as usual then people will not be so fearful. People will only get depressed if there is a lack of information, involvement, and choice. And let’s face it, shock is a strong word. Hearing you have six months to live is a shock, but being told we are switching to a different CRM, not so much. Most staff know what the problems are in their operation, most will be happy to change things, many will have ideas about how to do that. Praise and recognition are great but the biggest reward for most people is being involved because that makes them feel respected.

The other issue I have with this model, and many others, is that, as Kübler-Ross pointed out concerning her original model, it’s not a linear process. People can show cognitive dissonance. Once a decision or a change is made people can fluctuate between acceptance and rejection, seeing its good points then the next day the bad. This happens if the case for change hasn’t been made well, it hasn’t been explained and concerns not listened to. People need to know there is a plan and they are part of it.

A few years ago my organisation went through massive changes. I work for a London local authority and for a while we worked in collaboration with two other London boroughs in the imaginatively named agreement called the Tri-Borough. However this arrangement was coming to an end. This would mean the separation of teams and resources and of course relocation. At the same time plans to completely renovate the town hall and surrounding area were finally coming to fruition. Furthermore we were about to dump our servers, go on the cloud, and change all our pc’s to laptops, take out the phone system and give everyone a mobile phone. Big change indeed. Included with the change to laptops was the introduction of Windows 10 and the suite of 0365 apps.

As I said I love change so I got involved as an Ambassador, it’s like a champion but with a more important sounding title. There were plenty of good comms going out, there was a great project plan, there was much discussion around hybrid working. In the future we were told people could work from anywhere. Training was offered in the new 0356 apps and I duly attended, getting quite excited about the way these apps could change the way we work. However not everyone else was so excited. I was usually one of maybe three people in any training session. The idea of hot desking did not appeal to many. The photos and fluffy toys would have to come down and people would no longer have ‘their’ desk. Managers were not keen on staff not coming into the office. They asked me how would they know what people were doing?

But slowly the change happened. The laptops were rolled out with Windows 10 and the 0365 apps. People reluctantly let go of their hardwire phone sets. I tried to contact people on Teams but many didn't answer. I asked one of my reports and she said that no, she hadn’t worked out how to use it, she preferred email. I was asked to provide a locker for people to store their laptops. When I said they were supposed to take them with them they said they were too heavy. There was resistance.

Then, of course, came Covid! Offices were closed, people were working from home, thank god we had the technology in place. Suddenly everyone wanted to know how to use Teams, how to connect their laptop at home, how to use their mobile phone to access files. Sometimes change happens because it has to. Some people embrace change, some don’t like it. No matter how much you tell people change is going to happen, some people will be surprised by it. No matter how much you plan for change sometimes you will come unstuck. I’ve been through a lot of change in my working life and I’m still trying to understand it!

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