How your employees respond to change: 15 essential factors
Internal elements, such as a sense of self-efficacy and resilience, and external dynamics, including workplace and domestic relationships, play a major role in workers’ ability to adapt without stressing out.
Here are 15 factors that can affect how your employees respond to change:
1. Control
The amount of input and influence the employee has around the change, goals, processes and outcomes.
Research on stress shows that the degree of control a person has in a challenging or unpleasant situation is the No. 1 factor influencing their stress level. In other words, the more control an employee has in any situation, the more change, challenge and uncertainty they can handle without stressing out.
2. Predictability
The degree of clarity around what will happen and when it will happen, and the ability to connect cause and effect.
During difficult times, if employees know what will happen next, it creates what psychologists call “perceived control.” Even if they don’t have any actual control over what happens next, knowing what will happen creates the feeling of control, as opposed to the helplessness of not knowing what is going to happen.
The old saying about “the fear of the unknown” speaks to this phenomenon.
3. Clarity
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