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The year 2020 has taught businesses many lessons. The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by drastic changes to the economy have forced companies to alter the size of their workforces, restructure work environments and revise sales models \u2014 just to name a few challenges. And what this has all meant for employees is change<\/em>.<\/p>\n Even before this year\u2019s public health crisis, many businesses were looking into and setting forth policies regarding change management. In short, this is a formalized approach to providing employees the information, training and ongoing coaching needed to successfully adapt to any modification to their day-to-day jobs.<\/p>\n There\u2019s little doubt that one of the enduring lessons of 2020 is that businesses must be able to shepherd employees through difficult transitions, even (or especially) when the company itself didn\u2019t bring about the change in question.<\/p>\n Why change is hard<\/strong><\/p>\n Most employees resist change for many reasons. There\u2019s often a perceived loss of, or threat to, job security or status. Inconvenience and unfamiliarity provoke apprehension. In some cases, perhaps because of misinformation, employees may distrust their employers\u2019 motives for a change. And some workers will always simply believe the \u201cold way is better.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s worse, some changes might make employees\u2019 jobs more difficult. For example, moving to a new location might enhance an organization\u2019s image or provide safer or more productive facilities. But doing so also may increase some employees\u2019 commuting times or put employees in a drastically different working environment. When their daily lives are affected in such ways, employees tend to question the decision and experience high levels of anxiety.<\/p>\n What you shouldn\u2019t do<\/strong><\/p>\n Often, when employees resist change, a company\u2019s decision-makers can\u2019t understand how ideas they\u2019ve spent weeks, months or years deliberating could be so quickly rejected. (Of course, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, tough choices had to be made in a matter of days.) Some leadership teams forget that employees haven\u2019t had time to adjust to a new idea. Instead of working to ease employee fears, executives or supervisors may double down on the change, more strictly enforcing new rules and showing little patience for disagreements or concerns.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s here the implementation effort can break down and start costing the business real dollars and cents. Employees may resist change in many destructive ways, from taking very slow learning curves to calling in sick to filing formal complaints or lawsuits. Some might even quit.<\/p>\n The bottom line: by not engaging in some form of change management, you\u2019re more likely to experience reduced productivity, bad morale and increased turnover.<\/p>\n How to cope<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cLife comes at ya fast,\u201d goes the popular saying. Given the events of this year, it\u2019s safe to say that most business owners would agree. Identify ways you\u2019ve been able to help employees deal with this year\u2019s changes and document them so they can be of use to your company in the future. Contact us for help cost-effectively managing your business.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2020<\/em><\/p>\n <\/body> The year 2020 has taught businesses many lessons. The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by drastic changes to the economy have forced companies to alter the size of their workforces, restructure work environments and revise sales models \u2014 just to name a few challenges. And what this has all meant for employees is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14,10],"tags":[8,11,12],"class_list":["post-15163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-business","category-news","tag-articles","tag-news","tag-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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