Making Change Last: How to Get Beyond Change Fatigue

Change is hard, particularly when it occurs rapidly. During the pandemic, companies were forced to  pivot to remote work with zero time to prepare. And while most employees eventually returned to the physical workplace in some capacity, 27% of U.S. employees remain exclusively remote as of May 2024, according to Gallup and 53% are in some flavor of hybrid arrangement. 

So, while the pandemic ushered in a new era of unprecedented workplace transformation, it was just the beginning of an unending cycle of major change. Harvard Business Review recently noted that employees are losing patience with constant change, writing, “In 2022, the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes.” 

This constant flux of changing dynamics from leadership changes to how – and where – people work, coupled with the introduction and integration of new technologies like AI, has given rise to a pervasive issue: change fatigue. 

What is Change Fatigue?

Change fatigue, also known as change exhaustion, is when an employee feels apathetic towards or overwhelmed by too much organizational change in succession. It’s characterized by decreased ability to cope with change, heightened anxiety and stress, and mental exhaustion. Large-scale transformations like re-organizations and leadership transitions combined with smaller personal changes like getting a new manager contribute to this phenomenon. 

As businesses strive to adapt and innovate, understanding and addressing organizational change fatigue will become increasingly important to support employees and avoid the transformation deficit which HBR defines as “the gap between the required change effort and employee change willingness”.

How to Combat Change Fatigue

Combating change fatigue requires an all-in approach to change management.  According to Gartner, change management should be a top priority for HR departments in 2024 along with leader and manager development.  

Managers are struggling with major burnout themselves as employees increasingly rely on them for support in an environment of continuous change, with Gartner noting that “the volume and pace” of change is overwhelming for employees. Changes are now stacked and perpetual, which can harm employee well-being, wear down resilience, and have devastating impacts on key outcomes.

The nature of hybrid and remote work is leaving employees ill-equipped to adapt to change or align and connect to changing company cultures. In Coveo’s 2024 EX Industry Report, 56% of surveyed employees said they struggle to find the information they need to do their work and 34% said they’re experiencing burnout due to inadequate tools. Putting the right technology framework in place to connect employees – and allow them to easily find the information they need no matter where they happen to be working from – is a key part of successfully managing change fatigue. 

Leaders need to focus on:

• Acknowledging change as a valid cause of anxiety, exhaustion, and stress so that workers don’t feel dismissed.
• Treating change as an ongoing evolution of processes, approaches and technology, baked into the company culture, rather than a single endpoint to achieve.
• Planning for new, significant, and future change, which requires you to consider the potential impact of new technologies, leadership, workflows, and infrastructure on your employees. 
• Reviewing past failures when planning any significant change initiative to avoid repeating mistakes.
• Building fatigue management into a flexible plan that you revisit regularly. Be prepared to adjust your approach based on what your organization and your employees need to thrive.

According to Gartner, only about 50% of employees trust their organizations and this has a lot to do with a disconnect around the value of workplace change. Notes Gartner, “There remain opposing viewpoints when it comes to the value and importance of flexibility, productivity anxiety, a transformation deficit and a pervasive sense of mistrust between employees and employers.”  

Proactively mitigating change fatigue provides a needed foundation of psychological safety for overwhelmed employees exhausted by an environment of change saturation. It requires you to look at what changes are necessary and helpful and how best to integrate multiple changes in ways that support and empower employees.

How to Deal with Change Fatigue in Digital Transformation

As organizations grapple with the challenges of change fatigue, digital transformation adds another layer of complexity. The shift to remote and hybrid work models, coupled with the rapid adoption of new technologies, has intensified the need for effective change management strategies. The Coveo 2024 EX Industry Report revealed that employees working remotely (either entirely or hybrid) were more likely to report feeling burned out/overwhelmed when struggling to find information compared to in-office workers.

Addressing digital workplace fatigue — the exhaustion caused by navigating multiple tools, information sources, and communication channels—is critical to combating overall change fatigue.

In the work-from-home world, office culture doesn’t have the draw it once did. But helping all of your workers do their jobs better by addressing fatigue in the digital employee workplace is going to pay dividends in the short and long term.

A good digital workplace experience is shown to provide a return on investment in multiple ways:

• It’s easier to attract talent if employees can work away from the office;
• Employees are more productive when they’re virtually connected;
• Employees are more satisfied with their jobs;
• Employee engagement and retention increase.

As more of the employee experience has become defined by the digital — including new channels like chatbots and video conferencing — the number of technologies and sources of information employees have to contend with have exploded. Employees have to learn and use multiple types of messaging apps (Slack, email, etc.), productivity apps, collaboration apps (wikis, Zoom fatigue), communication apps (portals, intranets, blogs), business applications (ERPs, CRMs, payroll), and more. That’s a hugely increased mental load.

The result of this proliferation of information sources is that workers are being slowed down by the fragmented experience. According to Coveo’s 2023 Workplace Relevance Report, workers now spend approximately 3 hours in an average workday searching for information needed to do their jobs. The report also found that almost half of the information that employees find is irrelevant to their specific roles, further exacerbating the problem of information overload.

No amount of free food in the break room or video game consoles can make employees forget that, when they’re trying to do their job, they’re hampered by a poor digital workplace experience. Day after day of frustrating, irrelevant experiences are wearing on your employees, whether they’re in the office or working from home. 

Per the Workplace Relevance Report, when employees can’t find the information they need, 88% report negative feelings. Specifically, 34% say it makes them feel frustrated or burnt out, while 30% feel less confident about the quality or speed of their work. Additionally, 30% feel less confident about sharing information externally. In the most extreme cases, 7% of employees say that not having the right tools to be successful in their role makes them want to leave their company.

Transforming the digital workplace experience starts with removing the barriers that hold your workers back from doing what they need to do.

How AI Search Can Help Address Information Overload

Artificial intelligence (AI) and tools like AI-powered search can significantly reduce information overload by helping employees get the information they need in digital environments. It can also make monumental changes like mergers and rebranding initiatives easier on all employees. Take Coveo client Comcast, for example. 

Comcast, a leading telecom and entertainment provider, faced challenges with their legacy intranet in 2020. In July 2023, they completely redesigned their intranet, aiming to address issues like inefficient content publishing, limited personalization, and difficulty in finding information across multiple smaller intranets and SharePoint sites. Comcast implemented Coveo’s AI-driven search technology to create a unified search experience across multiple data sources. AI-powered relevance and personalization made it possible to connect and streamline information access for over a hundred thousand employees and contractors. 

The results: 

• 93% monthly adoption rate to Comcast’s new AI-powered employee experience 
• 80% success rate after migration
• 92% content sharing rate
• Comcast saved its base of 80,000 employees 10 million clicks just from two integrations 

Saving employees time with enhanced functionality for search and equipping them with the right information is the key takeaway from Comcast’s experience. 

AI search can support any change effort you implement and help relieve change fatigue by:

Unifying Company Information 

AI search platforms like Coveo create a unified index across multiple data sources, including intranets, cloud storage, and collaboration tools. Instead of spending hours a day searching through multiple sites and pages for the right information, employees only need to do a single search to retrieve results from all connected systems. Advanced ranking models ensure the most relevant information appears for the searcher, saving them time, stress, and employee fatigue. 

Adapting to New Change 

As the Comcast experience illustrates, significant change is much easier to manage using tools like AI search. Connecting information sources and using AI to curate experiences can streamline change and help workers adapt. During mergers or rebranding, AI search helps employees navigate new terminologies and structures. For example, if a product name changes, the AI can understand both old and new terms, ensuring employees find what they need regardless of the search terms used.

Enabling Personalized Experiences

AI learns from user behavior to deliver personalized search results and recommendations, so an IT director and a marketing manager searching for the same term might see different results tailored to their roles and past interactions. With AI search, your employees start their search from a much more intuitive place (e.g., the unified index). The content they surface is much more relevant and tuned to what they need based on context. Plus, AI search can be integrated into various platforms, including:

• Intranets for company-wide knowledge sharing
• Product interfaces for in-app support (IPX)
• Dedicated portals for specific departments or projects

By presenting relevant information within the employee’s workflow, AI search reduces context switching and improves productivity.

Reducing Change Fatigue

AI search can reduce change fatigue by becoming a central resource for your employees. Any change initiative or digital transformation strategy can be supported by establishing a Search Center of Excellence (COE). This involves creating a cross-functional team that develops a unified search strategy across the enterprise. 

A Search COE ensures that AI search capabilities are seamlessly integrated into tools employees already use, like Slack or the company intranet. This approach unifies information access without requiring employees to learn new systems, effectively reducing change fatigue by minimizing disruptions to established workflows.

Unifying the Digital Workplace For Change Fatigue Prevention

By focusing on preventing change fatigue before it becomes a problem, companies can improve the employee experience while ensuring that a given change or change initiative remains effective.

AI search supports ongoing change in several ways — it saves workers time, reduces frustration, and puts remote and on-site workers on the same page in terms of employee experience. Employees get more time to work on what they need to do, instead of spending time looking for answers. With AI-powered search providing only the most relevant content based on the individual employee, they’re not getting bogged down by content for other departments or systems.

Removing knowledge barriers makes it easier for employees to stay engaged and reduces their stress level. With deep insights from usage analytics, it’s easier than ever to see where the gaps are in the employee experience and to fine-tune the areas that are leading to frustration and, potentially, change exhaustion.

When you consider all these benefits, you have a powerful tool to help combat worker burnout. Not only are you helping employees work more efficiently — so they’re not spending over a quarter of their day not doing their job while looking for information — but you’re helping to bring the employee closer to the rest of the organization, no matter where they’re working from.

Dig Deeper

Create a world-class digital workplace experience with the help of Coveo and see how you can create the best experience for all of your employees. Whether the future for your organization is working from home, heading back to the office, or somewhere in-between, a relevant and unified digital workplace will help support it all.