Poor organisational change management
Practical step by step ideas, tips and suggestions to help employers of different sizes prevent mental injury and create a safe and mentally healthy workplace. Use tools, templates and resources to focus on work-related factors that impact mental health and learn good practice. Check out the full range of topics on the Toolkit.
Step 1: Learn about poor organisational change management
What is poor organisational change management?
Poor organisational change management refers to organisational changes that are poorly planned, communicated, managed, or supported.
Change within an organisation or business happens every day.
Some examples of changes in the workplace include:
- Changes to someone's working conditions – e.g. a change of role, change of shift roster or the introduction of new technology or software, policy and procedure updates.
- Changes to the team or the broader business - e.g. mergers, acquisitions, restructures or downsizing.
How does poor organisational change management affect your business?
Managing and communicating change well can reduce the likelihood of an employee's stress response. If change isn’t managed well, this may lead to a decrease in productivity, reduced morale, increased absences and even mental injury claims.
Planning and consulting with the right people from the beginning to the end will set your workplace up for success. In doing so, you create opportunities to reduce stress, conflict and staff turnover. Identify and work closely with employees at all levels, and from all areas of your organisation that could be impacted by change.
What are your rights and responsibilities at work?
Employers must provide and maintain a workplace that is safe and free from risks to health, including psychological health, so far as is reasonably practicable.
Employees have a responsibility to take reasonable care of their own health and safety in the workplace, and the health and safety of others. They must also cooperate with employers to create a safe environment.
Follow the risk management process below to manage risks associated with poor organisational change management.
Step 2: Consult your employees
Consultation can be done in a number of ways. Depending on your workplace, it can be as simple as casually walking around your workplace having a conversation, or as formal as setting up a health and safety committee.
Good consultation has lots of benefits – it leads to better decision making and greater cooperation and trust between employers and employees, who get a better understanding of each other's views.
Consultation isn't just good practice though, it's actually a legal requirement for employers. Employers must consult with employees including health and safety representatives (if any), about matters that directly affect, or are likely to directly affect, their health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable. This includes identifying whether poor organisational change management may be a hazard at the workplace, and working out how to eliminate or reduce the risk of it occurring. At a minimum, consultation must involve sharing information about any health and safety issues, giving employees reasonable opportunity to share their views on those issues, and taking those views into consideration.
Learn about your rights and responsibilities, as well as how best to consult
Step 3: Identify hazards and risks
A 'hazard' is anything that has the potential to cause harm to a person. Think of hazards like 'situations' or 'things' in the workplace that can hurt someone, either physically or mentally, and risk is the potential of the harm actually happening.
For example, a cable on the floor is a physical hazard. The risk is being physically injured from tripping on that cable. The same applies to hazards that affect our mental health – these are known as psychosocial hazards.
Poor organisational change management is an example of a psychosocial hazard. Exposure to poor organisational change management can increase the risk to psychological health. When risks associated with poor organisational change management are not effectively managed, this may lead to or exacerbate psychological injuries.
Examples of poor organisational change management:
- change is poorly planned – e.g. there is no clear goal and planning is disorganised
- key information about the change is poorly communicated to workers
- there is not enough practical or emotional support for those affected by change – e.g. training to ensure worker is able to perform new task
- there is insufficient consultation – e.g. affected parties aren't consulted on changes
Often multiple hazards can be present at the same time and can combine to increase the risk of harm occurring. For example, poor organisational change management, high job demands, and poor support from colleagues or supervisors can combine to increase the risk of harm.
Step 4: Assess the risks
Assess the risk of poor organisational change management occurring
A risk assessment will help you understand the risks to your employees' health and safety, and how to prioritise your efforts to manage them.
It is good practice to identify hazards, both individually and together, that are creating risks to health and safety. Once you have identified the hazards, you can assess the risk of them occurring.
Risk assessment tips
- Consider if hazards are occurring in isolation or together
Poor organisational change management may co-occur with other hazards (for example, high job demands, low job control, and poor support from colleagues or supervisors) and combine to increase the risk of harm.
- Consider who are likely to be affected
Poor organisational change management can affect individuals, certain teams, or specific work groups.
- Consider the seriousness of the risk
Consider how often and for how long employees are exposed to poor organisational change management. Think about the potential impacts on psychological and physical health if the risk is not managed.
Step 5: Control the risks
A 'control' is simply a term that means 'ways to manage an issue'. These are things that you can put in place to eliminate and reduce risks. The list could be endless, but it's really just about taking action, so far as is reasonably practicable, to manage the risks associated with poor organisational change management.
Risk control measures should address communication before and during a change process, ensuring effective consultation and participation take place and ensuring job roles are revised should any changes occur. Feedback is critical.
Here are some ways that employers can take action (or 'implement a control') to create a safe workplace.
- Seek affected employees' participation in the change process and communicate about the change to them
- Consulting with employees and health and safety representatives about proposed changes that may affect their health and safety.
- Provide opportunities for employees to take part in the change process to encourage acceptance, increase motivation, and promote ownership of the process and outcomes.
- It is important that affected employees are aware of upcoming change and kept up to date with clear information about the change. Explain to employees what the change is, why it is happening, how this is going to affect them, and the expected outcomes and timeframes.
- Providing employees with enough time to consider and respond to proposals.
- Advising employees of the final decision, including reasons for that decision, both verbally and in writing within a reasonable timeframe.
- Provide support and training to affected employees
If the change requires employees to change from one way of working to another, or to another software platform, make sure training and/or practical support is put in place for employees to learn how to use the new platform or perform new tasks.
Employees may also need additional emotional support during times of organisational change.
Good support can also include strategies for maintaining motivation and engagement, celebrating achievements and also providing emotional support.
Where possible, promote the availability of EAP services and other support mechanism, including confidential report of incidences of poor organisational change management.
- Ensure employees continue to understand what is required of them
A change in the structure of an organisation or work unit can affect role clarity, therefore it is important to review employees' roles to ensure employees continue to understand what is required of them. For example:
- Review team and individual work plans after the change to ensure roles, objectives and accountabilities are clear.
- Change job descriptions to match the new duties and tasks of the role to prevent uncertainty and role conflict (employees should participate in the review process where possible).
- Ensuring employees feel confident doing their job tasks and making sure they receive enough training to be competent in their roles.
- Provide re-training if required.
Remember to measure the effectiveness of existing controls to see if they’re working and look for new ways to control the risks.
Step 6: Share, review and improve
A safe and mentally healthy workplace needs ongoing commitment and engagement. To improve your change management processes look back at how change was managed in the past, and reflect on the experience.
You want to check whether the controls you've implemented are still relevant and effective. By sharing the outcomes of these reviews, as well as suggestions and recommendations for improvements, you can keep the conversation going. This will continue to build trust and cooperation between you and your employees. Consultation must be undertaken before making any changes to the workplace, things used at the workplace, or the conduct of work at the workplace, and these changes should be communicated to your employees.
More information
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