Change saturation, caused by uncoordinated simultaneous changes, can lead to poor adoption, fatigue, and turnover, emphasizing the need for strategic management to prevent negative impacts on workplace culture and performance.
Change saturation occurs when multiple change initiatives are implemented within an organization without leadership considering all of them. This occurs when leaders are disorganized and allow all the changes to happen simultaneously. The result is often poor adoption of changes, change fatigue, or increased employee turnover.
According to Prosci research, 54% of employees who are feeling change fatigue look for a new role, 48% find themselves more tired and stressed at work, and 37% trust their employer less. The effects of change saturation can alter the fabric of workplace culture and cause negative consequences to performance and productivity.
Prosci’s Change Saturation Model breaks down change saturation into: Change Capacity and Change Disruption, Change capacity is influenced by culture, history, and your employees’ ability to adapt to change. while change disruption refers to the collective impact of multiple simultaneous changes, from minor procedural updates to major strategic shifts. As each change demands resources and attention from your project team, it may affect your team's ability to adapt to more critical changes. Every organization experiences change saturation differently depending on how well it can handle new changes.
Change saturation can also harm your organization by causing fatigue and unmotivated employees, which leads to missed targets, poor performance, and ultimately reduced profit.
How to Measure Change Saturation
By identifying potential overload points early, your organization can avoid the stress of too many simultaneous changes. Similarly, organizing the sequence of changes in your current projects using Prosci’s risk matrix helps you identify which projects are launching simultaneously and then determine the impact of high-risk projects on specific groups of people.
This foresight allows you to introduce new initiatives at a manageable pace and ensure the well-being of your project team.
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