The Impact of Poor Organisational Change Management on Employees

Poor organisational change management means poorly planned, communicated, supported or managed changes. Change management becomes a hazard when it is handled very poorly, drawn out or happens like clockwork every three to six months.

Poor organisational change can be manifested in psychosocial hazards that could cause either or both psychological and physical harm to workers. Stress generated by workers going through organisational change that is happening frequently or is ongoing can result in harm to the workers. Stress can cause physical injuries to workers like musculoskeletal, chronic fatigue or substance abuse and psychological injuries to workers like anxiety, depression, insomnia, mood swings or Post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).

Psychosocial hazards can interact or combine with other hazards, increasing the risk of harm and the likelihood of adverse outcomes. For example addition of either overtime or a night shift when the workload increases can result in fatigue, stress or anxiety which increases the risk of a severe injury occurring.

Causes of Poor Organisational Change Management

Drilling down further into what can cause poor organisation change, we can see:

• Lack of consultation with workers on planned changes and consideration of their views on the changes
• The impact of the changes on workers and the WHS risk of the changes or workers’ productivity e.g. A new process put in place with insufficient or no training provided
• The changes are poorly executed e.g. no set project plan, timeline or objectives set.
• Poor communication of changes – little or no information provided to managers and workers about the changes and why the changes are needed
• Inadequate support provided to workers e.g. lack of documentation or training on new systems or tools/equipment

Ways of Assessing the Risk of Poor Organisational Change Management in the Workplace 

• Consulting with Stakeholders
  • Different stakeholders may see hazards in different ways or forms e.g. Physical Risk, the process or equipment use risk, implementation
• Use of organisational or Worker Impact survey’s either before or after the changes are to be implemented
• Observing task and worker behaviours e.g. are task completion times taking longer to complete than estimated or increase in worker gossip around the changes; more errors or downtime due to worker confusion about how to close out the processes
• Run reports on organisation data and look for trends. For example, are there changes to overtime hours or Sick Leave, injuries, incidents, hazards and Lost time Injuries or Claims. 
• Look at the frequency of workers’ hours or headcount against the hazards e.g. increase or decrease in hazards being reported against the risk assessment outcomes and likelihood.