Executive Challenge: Managing Employee Resistance to Change

Every digital transformation program will require change, and change is hard. Seventy percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support [1]. As leaders, we have direct control of management support, but employee resistance is made up of a number of factors outside the direct control of leaders, as it is linked to human nature.

A few of the reasons a transformations encounter resistance are:

1)      Lack of Awareness:  Even when a transformation program is well communicated, it may blend into the noise of other communications.  

2)      Past experience:  The human brain is powerful and looks to the past to evaluate current situations and decisions.

3) Missing Details: Each person will want a different level of depth and details. Program communications tend to be high-level and not actionable by themselves.

4) Workload: Any change in workload can create anxiety for individuals; some fear their job will disappear, and others are concerned they will be asked to do more.

This list highlights the challenge with change.  Change is both individual and will vary person by person.   To compound the human nature at the personal level, we also have group behavior. A survey found that among 25,000 people in senior professional and core management levels, 25% supported change, 25% did not support it, and around 50% were "sitting on the fence” [2].  This 50% is waiting to see who they should follow, the early adopters or the resistors. 

By recognizing that change management is a human behavior challenge, executives in transformation programs can take a structured approach to engaging individuals and teams in managing the change process.  Organizations that actively engage and listen to their employees during change initiatives see a 30% higher adoption rate [3]. This is because employees feel more involved and valued, leading to greater buy-in.

Listening is not an afterthought; it must be planned, and a transformation program should dedicate the needed time and resources to manage it.  The act of asking questions is a good starting point, but capturing the response, making it visible, and then addressing it through the transformation drastically reduces resistance.

A customer journey map canvas can be a great listening tool. By capturing individual user stories for ideas/concerns or complaints in the canvas, a transformation team can easily tag the story with the individuals who provided it. The development team can then engage these individuals as stakeholders, even owners, of a user story. The result of this closed-loop engagement is much higher commitment and adoption rates.

[1] Changing change management | McKinsey

[2] Rate of Adoption of Change by Types of People

[3] Employee Engagement Statistics 2025: What Leaders Need to Know