Addressing resistance

Just as resistance can take on a spectrum of overt and covert forms, change agents have a wide assortment of strategies for dealing with employee resistance to change. Early research in organizational change established participation and autonomy as standard approaches for dealing with resistance.

Using participation to drive change

Observing that people who participated in implementing a new procedure in a garment factory had record productivity, while those who did not participate lost productivity, Coch and French (1948) laid the foundation for the common practice of using participation as a means to reduce resistance to change. Trist and Bamforth (1951) found that attempts to specialize coal-mining jobs like a manufacturing line created reduced cooperation among employees, increased distrust of management, and caused disruptive behaviors that reduced productivity and increased absences.

Leaders reversed the trend by adjusting the work processes to return a sense of autonomy and satisfaction. In addition to demonstrating participation and autonomy as effective methods for handling resistance, Trist and Bamforth’s research also starts to expose an important element of resistance that researchers are just starting to notice: worker resistance can serve as a catalyst for rich and lasting change. Imposing a mechanical process on autonomous employees threatened the satisfaction and productivity of workers. In contrast, engaging the workers in the process served as a catalyst for increasing productivity, satisfaction, and organizational flexibility.

Unfreezing status quo

Understanding the status quo as the result of a quasi-stationary equilibrium helps to illuminate how increasing force changes the level of the process. As Lewin (1947) argued, “social habit” implies social process will not change because intrinsic resistance strengthens habit. Reducing resistance requires applying force sufficient to break the habit, a process called “unfreeze” the custom (p. 281). Social habits tend to be anchored in the relationship between the individual and the social group. If individual behavior deviates from the accepted group behavior, the individual faces social pressures to comply with group standards, as long as the individual values membership in the group. If individual resistance happens because of the member’s group membership, reducing individual resistance would mean diminishing the value of the group for the individual. Contrary to expectations that face-to-face encounters might be more effective at changing individuals, research is showing that individual behavior is easier to change when individuals are formed into groups than when they are separated from groups.

Spectrums of change strategy

Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) offered a spectrum of strategies for dealing with different kinds of change.

• An Education and Communication strategy is used when people have inadequate information. This approach can foster a willingness to participate in the change but can be time-consuming. A Participation and Involvement strategy can be used when other people have important information or the power to resist. This approach adds information to change planning and builds commitment to the change but can be time-consuming.
• A Facilitation and Support strategy can be used when resource or adjustment problems cause resistance. This approach can help to satisfy specific resource and adjustment needs but can be time-consuming and expensive.
• A Negotiation and Agreement strategy can be used when people will lose something due to the change. This approach can help to avoid major resistance but can be expensive while laying precedence for others to seek similar arrangements.
• A Manipulation and Cooptation strategy can be used when other methods do not work or are too expensive. This can be a quick and inexpensive path to change but can create problems when people feel they are being manipulated. An Explicit and Implicit Coercion strategy can be used when speed is important and the leader has power. This approach can quickly overpower resistance but risks creating resentment and anger.

Regardless of the approach the change agent uses, Shermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn (2007) argue that leaders can take action to achieve a better fit among the context, strategy, and people. This requires that leaders continuously create and adjust to feedback loops throughout the change management process.

Vocabulary of change

Woodman and Dewett (2004) offer changeability, depth, and time as vocabulary for helping leaders to understand and deal with resistance. According to Woodman and Dewett’s model, the least changeable characteristics will likely cause the strongest resistance and take the longest time to change. Understanding organizational influence on individual change can provide a richer understanding for dealing with resistance and facilitate positive change throughout the system.

Case: Reducing apprehension with engagement

High levels of communication throughout the change process can reduce apprehension (Jex, 2002; Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2007; Kotter, 1996). Explaining the reasons, benefits, and methods can help employees to understand the process. Also important here is to center communications on how changes affect the employee, not just about how the changes affect the company.

For example in developing the communications plan for outsourcing manufacturing jobs, the VP of HR for a security systems company [undisclosed name due to non-disclosure agreement] crafted a letter to the employees that began with a lengthy-expression of regret management had for making the difficult decision to outsource 300 manufacturing jobs. The plan was to announce the layoffs by distributing the letter directly to all employees in the company. Fortunately, the chief executive officer asked for some counsel from outside the executive chambers, which led to an entirely different communications strategy. Buried under two pages of management lamenting and justification was how the decision would affect the employees. Under counsel, the leaders shifted the company focus of the communications strategy to an employee focus, emphasizing the generous transition packages the company had arranged for the employees.

Because the company needed the employees to remain productive and loyal during a transition process that required parallel processes for phasing out the old while phasing in the new, the company offered employees two month’s severance pay in addition to their standard severance packages if they would help the company through the transition. More important, rather than outsourcing manufacturing to an overseas contractor, the company had negotiated a contract with a local contract-manufacturing firm, awarding the bid based on a commitment to hiring up to 90% of the company’s existing manufacturing staff.

Rather than distributing the letter, management decided to hold two simultaneous meetings, one with the manufacturing staff, the other with all the other employees whose jobs were not directly affected by the transition. The CEO and other key executives met with the manufacturing staff to lay out the program, emphasizing the benefits and detailing the steps to a successful transition. By focusing on how the layoff affected the employees and by developing parallel processes that engaged the existing employees in its transition, the company streamlined its operations with minimal negative disruption and almost full support from the employees who would be laid off.