How to Lead your People through Change

Change, Employee Engagement, Leadership

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, but one thing that’s certain, is change. 

All business, throughout the world, are experiencing seismic change right now – and possibly will be for many more months to come. 

Change and its effect on engagement & wellbeing 

What we at Inpulse have seen, is that drastic change greatly impacts employee engagement & wellbeing – often negatively, if not managed well. 

Amongst the many things we’ve learned during this time, financial security showed up as the greatest of all concerns amongst employees. In most cases, it affected engagement and wellbeing. 

But as soon as leaders understood this to be the leading concern, they were able to take the necessary steps to minimise anxiety, and therefore ‘saved’ engagement and wellbeing. 

In doing this, they also ‘saved’ some of their other pressing issues like low productivity, performance, absenteeism, poor culture and more. 

Download our free engagement and wellbeing guide 

 

Feelings influences behaviour

What many businesses forget, is that when their people feel anxious, worried, insecure, much greater problems can arise. In extreme cases, they may find themselves in legal battles with employees who feel vulnerable and scared; they may even see a rise in microaggression – and many other serious changes in behaviour.

It’s so important to understand that feelings influence behaviour. And it’s really quite simple:

bad feelings = bad/destructive behaviour

good feelings = good/positive behaviour 

Some examples of feeling and behavioural response:

Bad feelings                               Behavioural Response 

Anxiety/Insecurity                       Fight or flight; distracted, less inclined to perform

Underappreciated                        Less inclined to perform, may look for work elsewhere, higher absenteeism

Overworked                                   Higher absenteeism, fatigue, increase in error

 

Good feelings                          Behavioural Response

Engaged                                      Improved performance, productivity, teamwork, less absenteeism, loyalty to role and 

                                                      company, improved work culture (and more)

Appreciated                                Improved performance, productivity, teamwork, less absenteeism, loyalty to role and 

                                                       company (and more)

 

Secure (financially etc)            Engaged, happy, more likely to perform (and more)

How to lead your people through change

Leading your people through change begins with:

  • understanding what your people feel about the changes (this is an ongoing exercise)
  • finding ways to minimise their worry or anxiety (based on their response)
  • exercising leadership skills such as communication, continuous feedback and support  

Our change management survey & emotional analytics 

Inpulse’s change management survey is all you need to uncover what your people feel about current or anticipated change in the workplace. This is because all our surveys focus on emotional analytics. 

We take a holistic approach to people success measurement, meaning we uncover your people’s deep-seated feelings in real-time – you won’t have to make sense of your people’s response and what they feel – the data we uncover is factual, accurate and is delivered almost immediately after the survey closes.  

We save you time, cost, and error. 

While helping you solve and improve your people-related issues

Book a demo

 

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