Resilience: A New Metric for Measuring Change Management Success

Recently, I presented to a group on the topic of how to leverage Apogy's change management models to monitor and measure the success of their change processes and outcomes. When it comes to organizational change, success is typically defined as being when end users accept, adopt, and sustain the required new behaviors and ways of working. When this happens, the business benefits – the reasons why the organization invested in the change in the first place – can be achieved.

Change that isn’t sustained isn’t valuable to an organization. Often, employee resistance takes the rap as the reason changes don't stick. However, after more than a decade of exploring behavior change in a variety of settings, I find it's not resistance, but a lack of resilience, at the individual and organizational level that can be blamed. 

Resilience, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress”, such as health issues, relationship problems, and workplace stress. 

For many people, work is cited as the most stressful thing in their lives. Feeling stressed out is common - so common that in 2019 the World Health Organization classified "chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed" as burnout which, according to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, more than 75% of respondents have experienced at their current job. 

Stress has a direct impact on employee resilience, as well as their capacity and capability for change. Diminished resilience manifests in the workplace as difficulty learning and developing new skills, a negative outlook, and a lack of motivation to change – all of which have been confused with resistance. 

Because change leaders play such a significant role in shaping the employee experience, developing, and measuring resilience must be viewed as a core responsibility and key lever for lasting organizational change. 

Integrating resilience into implementation strategies and plans requires a different approach to change management - one that’s rooted in caring for the human side of change. Caring for the human side of change means caring about the whole person and their well-being. It means making different choices about the interventions and resources used to support change adoption and can even impact timelines and prioritization.

When individual well-being is an organizational priority, employees can adapt more quickly and respond better to continual change. When employees respond better to continual change, strategic execution improves. When strategic execution improves, organizations reduce the amount of value loss that occurs whenever changes are implemented. (Check out this recent post from Apogy to learn about five simple strategies to build more resilient people and teams).

Measuring resilience also requires a different approach and for many, a whole new way of thinking about how to create value from change investments.

Resilience is one of the five key performance indicators included in Apogy's SUPER measurement framework, which also includes Satisfaction, Utilization, Proficiency, and Engagement. Resilience is the best predictor for future change success. Confidence rating, level of commitment, and trust in leadership are solid starting points for change leaders who are new to measuring resilience pre and post change.  

There's a saying that goes, "what gets measured, gets managed". In the context of resilience, we like to think of it as "what gets measured, gets valued". Organizations that value resilience tend to perform better, adapt more quickly, and realize better ROI from change investments. More importantly, organizations that value resilience tend to have happier, healthier, change-ready employees.

Is resilience on your radar? If not, consider adding this measure of success to your performance tracking plans. 

To learn more about Apogy’s human-centered approach to change management, go to www.apogy.biz.