7 Reasons Workplace Change Management Fails

If we had a dime for every time an article starts off with some variation of “after the pandemic” and “fundamentally changed ways of working”, we’d probably be permanently sitting on the beach sipping pina coladas. Unfortunately there’s no automatic dime dispensing process, so instead we’ll start off this article with a more nuanced understanding. Workplace change management used to be limited to specific periods only. But today, change is constant, which effectively makes hybrid work and change management the same thing. 

One can’t succeed while the other fails. So it’s bad news for the success of hybrid work that 70% of change management initiatives fail.

So whether your organization is managing change after the introduction of a new hybrid policy, office layout or technology, the odds are stacked against you. 

Here are seven reasons why. 

1️) No clear Vision

If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t expect people to follow.

One of the biggest reasons any change fails is because no one’s actually defined what the future is supposed to look like. People sense the uncertainty, resulting in some eye rolls and annoyance at best and disengagement and resentment at worst. When employees aren’t confident in the vision behind whatever operating model you’re aiming for, they’re three times more likely to experience burnout according to McKinsey. Not only does that result in change management failure, but more nefarious consequences like declining performance and damaged wellbeing.

2) A rigid approach

Hybrid work is a living, breathing thing. It’s supposed to flex and evolve as organizations find better ways of working and external factors influence organizations. But too many organizations treat hybrid work like a fixed set of rules that you set once and then enforce until the end of time. 

The stickler here is that what sounds good on paper might not land in practice. If your flexible work policy is creating more negative than positive reactions, tweak it. Hybrid work is fluid and dynamic, and survival is the ability to swim in strange waters. 16% of the most productive organizations constantly adjust their ways of working. So even if a rethink seems like overkill, it likely isn’t. 

3️) Lack of trust in leadership

In an organization with a healthy culture, employees trust leadership to make decisions in everyone’s best interests. And when mistakes are made or circumstances change, employees trust that leadership will be transparent and take accountability. 

The problem is that only 20% of employees actually trust leadership. That leaves 80% of employees will be skeptical about how change benefits them and haven’t bought into the plan. Without that trust, you’ll struggle to get people onboard, no matter how polished and inspirational your vision is.

4️) Not enough workplace data (or none at all)

Flying blind is never a good idea, but it’s a feeling most organizations are familiar with since the transition to hybrid work. Workplace data acts as your radar, depicting the workplace in its current state and whether or not change management is successful. 

Leaders make calls without the data to back them up, and as a result, miss the mark. According to Gartner, 96% of workplace teams say they lack the data they need to make informed decisions about their spaces, policies, and people. Without the right insight, change management is guesswork management. 

5) Departmental silos

Managing workplace change used to be mostly HR’s responsibility. These days, however, it’s the responsibility of HR, CRE, Finance, Workplace Experience, Operations, Facilities Management and even more depending on organizational size and structure. 

These teams aren’t used to working together and  deal with very different information. It’s almost as if they all speak different languages. But when they don’t communicate, everything slows down. No one agrees on what success looks like, there’s no shared accountability, and progress stalls. 

Asana defines four types of silos – department, rank, location, and schedule. Unless your organization is finding ways to break them down through process or hierarchical changes, the result may well be change management failure. 

6) Poor communication

Change management is basically communication management. If you can’t explain what’s happening, why it matters, and what’s in it for people, change management fails. Over the last few years we’ve had plenty of examples of how not to communicate change, especially when it’s a change in how frequently people are expected to be in the office. JPMorgan’s expletive-riddled RTO announcement and Dell’s last minute mandate are prime examples.  

And taking into consideration all the different types of roles and working styles, the way changes are communicated becomes even more important. People who already love coming into the office a few times a week will see no problem with a new hybrid work policy, for example, but people who only come in for quarterly all-hands will need the benefits laid out clearly before they want to make any changes. 

7) Neglecting self-regulation

The tricky thing about hybrid is that it only works if people play fair. There’s a huge reliance on self-regulation and personal responsibility, which only happens when people buy into the system. If they don’t see the value, or sense it’s not enforced equally, it quickly turns into a free-for-all. And when that happens, the system breaks itself from the inside out.