Building Resilience in Change Management: Insights for CHROs

Overcome change fatigue and achieve sustainable performance.

Ongoing change management burdens managers and impacts team performance

In any change management initiative, managers bear the responsibility to transform culture, carry out plans and keep a finger on the pulse of employee well-being. This burden intensifies during times of heavy disruption when change fatigue can be rampant. 

To achieve their transformation goals, organizations need a change-ready workforce. A shift in change management strategy can make the difference.

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    Strengthen change management initiatives

    Strategic communication is essential for successful change management—and it starts with the CHRO. Effective communication empowers HR leaders and managers to address the daily challenges of change fatigue and bolster organizational resilience.

    CHRO's need to optimize change communications

    According to the 2025 Gartner HR Priorities Survey, change management is a top priority for CHROs. Effective change communication is crucial, yet 54% of CHROs report that current methods fail to engage employees. To address this, CHROs should collaborate with executives to enhance communication strategies by ensuring messages are consumable, collaborative, and conversational.

    Improve change management success by empowering managers to build resilient teams

    As CHROs work to optimize communication, it's equally important to empower managers who face the day-to-day challenges of implementing change. Organizational change has become the rule, not the exception, and managers often lack the capacity to serve as sole change champions. Expecting them to sell the change, model new behaviors, and provide safe spaces can lead to change fatigue. 

    By shifting focus from merely implementing change to building resilient teams, organizations can achieve sustainable success and strengthen their employee value proposition (EVP).

    Curb change fatigue and boost your EVP

    Change fatigue tops the list of HR leaders’ change management concerns. Only 41% of managers are willing to change their work behaviors to support organizational change — and 90% of HR leaders don’t feel that their managers are helping employees who struggle with change fatigue. 

    Successful organizations ease the burden on managers by shifting the change management focus from championing change to building resilience. Resilience-building increases team capacity and reduces change fatigue, enabling organizations to achieve sustainable performance and improve their EVP.

    Foster transparency to build change awareness

    Most organizations try to sell change simply by putting a positive spin on it, but glossing over the details tends to result in unaddressed concerns from employees. Instead, you should empower managers to discuss the details of a change openly with their teams. 

    Creating high change awareness isn’t just about checking a box and keeping people informed. Effective change management requires thoughtful dialogue that allows employees to share and resolve concerns with their manager. It also involves preparing employees for upcoming transitions and their potential impact on individual capacity and team dynamics.

    Foster this dialogue by creating forums where employees can share their reactions to change, and managers or HR leaders can address their concerns. Giving employees the time and space to identify their fears and assumptions about change helps them find solutions and make necessary behavior shifts. These discussions can raise team capacity and reduce change fatigue, increasing sustainable performance by up to 16%.

    Transfer change ownership from managers to employees

    Managers reporting low change fatigue are eight times more likely to be competent at change management than managers reporting high change fatigue. Building employee self-efficacy eases pressure on managers and significantly increases change adoption. To promote self-efficacy in your organization, build the following experiences into your change management strategy:

    • Mastery experiences. Give managers resources to help teams identify and develop the skills they need to align with the desired shift. By empowering employees to personally master change ownership, you can increase high change adoption by 9%.

    • Vicarious experiences. Employees’ willingness to adopt change is based on their risk appetite and change readiness. Guide managers to identify and appoint the most change-ready employees to serve as change champions for their teams. Other employees will witness the champions’ experiences of success, which can increase high change adoption by 10%.

    Embed psychological safety as a team norm

    Managers who create a psychologically safe environment for employees can drive up to a 54% reduction in change fatigue. Show managers how to build feelings of safety in stages, over time, in the following ways: 

    • Inclusion safety boosts confidence, resilience and acceptance by meeting employees’ need to feel accepted without fear of rejection, embarrassment or punishment. 

    • Learner safety fulfills employees' need to feel safe while asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, experimenting, and making mistakes. 

    • Contributor safety empowers employees to make a difference by using their skills and abilities to take part in the value-creation process. 

    • Challenger safety enables employees to feel comfortable suggesting improvements and challenging the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging their personal standing or reputation.

    Change Management FAQs

    How can we reduce change fatigue among managers and employees?

    To reduce change fatigue, shift the focus of change management from championing change to building resilience. Empower managers to foster transparency and open dialogue, allowing employees to share and resolve concerns. Additionally, you can transfer change ownership to employees by promoting self-efficacy and embedding psychological safety as a team norm.

    What strategies can help build a change-ready workforce?

    Building a change-ready workforce involves empowering managers to engage in transparent discussions about change, creating forums for employees to voice their concerns, and promoting resilience-building activities.Mastery and vicarious experiences can also help employees develop the necessary skills and confidence to embrace change.

    How can psychological safety improve change management outcomes?

    Psychological safety can significantly reduce change fatigue and improve change adoption. Managers can create a psychologically safe environment by fostering inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety and challenger safety. This approach encourages employees to participate actively in the change process without fear of negative consequences, leading to higher engagement and sustainable performance.

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