Employees Are Losing Patience with Change: What the Gartner Research Shows

Gartner researchers found that employees’ willingness to support enterprise change fell from 74% in 2016 to 43% in 2022, while planned change rose fivefold. Their answer is less push and more involvement: prioritise change, build in rest, open up planning and make managers resilience builders. For a leader, patience for change is now a resource to manage.

The findings come from Cian O Morain and Peter Aykens’ Harvard Business Review article, “Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives”, published on 9 May 2023. O Morain is a director of research and Aykens chief of research in the Gartner HR practice. HBR’s live page is paywalled; I read the full text in a web archive copy captured on the day of publication.

What did the HBR article find?

It found that the change being asked of employees has outrun their willingness to support it. In 2022 the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes, up from two in 2016, and willingness to support enterprise change “collapsed to just 43% in 2022, compared to 74% in 2016”.

The authors give examples of what counts as a planned enterprise change: a restructure to achieve efficiencies, a culture transformation to unlock new ways of working, or the replacement of a legacy technology system. They define the problem in one line: “We call the gap between the required change effort and employee change willingness the ‘transformation deficit.’”

They argue that the most common mistake is “hitting the accelerator”. A 2022 Gartner survey found 75% of organisations adopting a top-down approach, where leaders set the strategy, write detailed roadmaps and push a high volume of communications, and expect managers to champion every change. That 75% figure also appears in the Quarterly.

Gartner’s alternative rests on two elements: prioritised change and managing fatigue. On prioritisation, HBR makes a point the Quarterly does not spell out: “Many leadership teams already rank the most important organizational projects and initiatives, but that knowledge often isn’t shared beyond leadership team discussions.” Without that guidance, the authors write in both versions, employees “are likely to give 110% for each change, resulting in a blowout”.

HBR also quotes the fatigue guidelines written by IT leaders at Sky Cable, a Filipino telecom, which the Quarterly mentions only in outline. They include “Design solutions to be visually like old solutions” and “During periods of high change, minimize process changes that disrupt employee work.” Both are small design choices that spare a team’s patience for the changes that matter.

The same authors set out this argument at greater length in the Gartner Business Quarterly. I covered that version, with its survey notes, in what Gartner’s Transformation Deficit research means for a CEO. This piece concentrates on what HBR adds about teams and managers.

Why does HBR say 43% when the Gartner Quarterly says 38%?

The two versions print different 2022 figures for willingness to support change, and neither explains why. HBR gives 43%; the First Quarter 2023 Gartner Business Quarterly gives 38%.

A later Gartner statement helps. At its October 2023 ReimagineHR conference, Gartner said that from 2016 to 2022 the percentage of employees willing to change their work behaviours “decreased by 42%”. A fall from 74% to 43% is a drop of about 42%; a fall to 38% would be about 49%. That arithmetic matches the HBR figure.

My practical advice is simple. Quote whichever source you are citing, with its own number, and do not blend them. Either way, willingness to support change fell by more than 40% in six years. That is the point a leadership team needs to absorb.

What makes employees run out of patience with change?

Accumulated cost. The authors argue that navigating the pandemic “asked a lot of employees — and while they delivered, it came at a cost”, and that relentless sprinting leaves many “running on fumes”.

HBR cites the same three Gartner figures that appear in the Quarterly version: 55% of employees took a significant hit to their health, team relationships and work environment; only 36% reported high trust in their organisation; and half struggled to find the information or people they needed. I set out the surveys behind those numbers in the companion piece and will not repeat them here.

HBR adds a figure on hours. It quotes payroll company ADP: in 2022, “workers [were] still effectively giving away the equivalent of more than a working day (8.5 hours) of unpaid overtime each week”. The Quarterly cites an earlier ADP report at over nine hours. Gartner’s view is that more time working does not result in higher performance.

Gartner’s own later surveys show the strain spreading. In a July 2023 survey, among 180 respondents, 77% of HR leaders said their employees were fatigued from all the change and 82% agreed that managers are not equipped to lead change. Gartner said change fatigue can cut intent to stay by as much as 42% and performance by as much as 27%.

How does open-sourcing change rebuild patience?

By treating employees as participants rather than an audience. HBR describes open-source change management as three shifts in thinking, each with its own Gartner figure for change success.

1. Involve employees in decision-making. Not a vote on every change, but bringing the voice of those most affected into planning. Gartner found this step alone can increase change success by 15%.
2. Shift implementation planning to employees. Leaders rarely see daily workflows clearly enough to dictate the approach. When employees own implementation planning, change success increases by 24%.
3. Hold two-way conversations throughout. Gartner found this can increase change success by 32%.

The third shift contains the line I would hand to every executive team: “Instead of focusing on how you’ll sell the change to employees, think of communications as a way to surface employee reactions.”

The Quarterly version summarises open-source change with different, aggregate figures, including 1.5 times more change willingness and a 29% reduction in change fatigue. Gartner repeated those two at its October 2023 conference, adding that fewer than one in two employees agree their manager creates an environment comfortable for raising concerns.

This fits older work on resistance. In Harvard Business Review, Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford argue for seeing resistance as feedback and propose five responses, including “change the change” and “complete the past” by acknowledging earlier failed initiatives. I have read the publisher’s summary of that article, not the full text.

Why should managers become resilience builders rather than champions?

Because most managers have no spare capacity to champion every change. HBR reports that only 57% of managers say they have enough capacity in their day-to-day work to support their teams through change.

The authors suggest leaders stop asking managers to role-model each change and instead “challenge their managers to act as resilience builders”. Managers who build their teams’ ability to self-navigate through change can increase employee sustainable performance by 29%, and protect their own performance at the same time. That 29% figure also appears in the Quarterly.

What HBR adds is how those managers behave. They accept they do not always have the time or skills to demonstrate the change, so “they ensure their teams learn by doing”. They identify each person’s strengths and motivations and connect them with colleagues who have the relevant experience.

That is a shift from manager as broadcaster to manager as connector. It also takes pressure off the leadership team’s most stretched layer.

How does a leader stop a team sliding into discouragement?

Protect energy before it runs out, and make progress visible. HBR’s answer is proactive rest; older research on small wins explains why visible progress matters as much.

HBR sets out three qualities of proactive rest. It must be available, with options such as no-meeting days, defined working hours, planned “down time” within projects or all-company days off. It must be accessible, so people are encouraged to rest “guilt-free”. And it must be appropriate to individual needs.

Gartner links rest with all three qualities to a 26% increase in employee performance and a tenfold reduction in the number of employees experiencing burnout. Both figures also appear in the Quarterly version.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s diary research adds the other half. In the publisher’s summary of their Harvard Business Review article on the power of small wins, they report that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life than making progress in meaningful work, and that small setbacks can have an extremely negative effect. A team carrying ten changes is collecting setbacks on ten fronts.

What is Linus Murphy’s take?

My take is that lost patience is a culture signal, not a character flaw. When willingness falls by more than 40% in six years, the problem is the load leaders put on teams and the way they run change, not the people.

The research sits in the “Set direction” cluster of my Executive Coaching Methodology. The three open-source shifts are the practical core of how I handle resistance by surfacing it early and co-designing the fix. Employee-owned implementation planning belongs in a roadmap for creating change that sticks, and prioritising the backlog is a direct way to cut the momentum breakers that pile up when initiatives stack.

The rest findings also reach into the “Know yourself first” cluster. A pattern I see often is a leader who reads tired teams as unwilling ones. The guide on how to deal with discouragement before it spirals makes the point that the company copies how its leaders recover. If you only rest after the launch, so will they.

In my seven-step coaching process, step two, Awareness, uses a confidential Trusted Feedback Loop™ to show how others actually experience your leadership; that is where a leader learns whether the two-way conversation is real. Step four, Influence, is where we practise catalytic rather than directive leadership, which is what Gartner is asking of managers.

This is also why I often work with the whole table in executive team coaching. Managers cannot become resilience builders if the executives above them still behave as broadcasters. Without psychological safety at the executive table, the two-way conversation never starts at the top.

What should a leadership team do first?

Ask the people carrying the change before you add the next one. Then change who plans it and what you ask of managers.

A short sequence I would use:

• Run a change census. Ask each team how many changes it is absorbing. The answer is usually higher than the executive list.
• Pick one live initiative to open-source. Bring the affected people into the decision, hand them the implementation plan and hold a two-way review at each milestone.
• Rewrite the manager brief. Replace “champion this change” with “build your team’s ability to navigate it”.
• Schedule rest before the launch. Put no-meeting days or project down time in the plan, and make it clear that using them is expected.
• Show progress weekly. Small, visible wins are the counterweight to accumulated setbacks.

None of these steps needs a new programme. Each one changes how an existing initiative is run, which is why I prefer them to another round of change communications.

Patience for change is not unlimited, and Gartner’s figures show how fast it runs down. The leaders who keep it are the ones who spend it deliberately, on fewer changes, planned with the people who will carry them.