For employees, change is everywhere, all the time

Still, around half of them also feel there’s too much change happening at once, and many are understandably nervous about their job security or unsure why they have to adjust the way they work. And that apprehension isn’t just stemming from broad changes sweeping across an industry; it’s rooted in what’s happening in the workplace day to day—bigger workloads, new tech to learn, new teams to navigate:

Executives and management teams aren’t oblivious to these concerns, yet they’re managing enormous change themselves, up to and including full-scale business model reinvention. Amid all these pressures, it’s important to keep in mind that the bigger the changes buffeting your company, the more crucial it is to get your people on board, and to understand what’s helping and hindering them in their job. To do that, focus on three key areas: 

• First and foremost, embrace transparency. Leaders need to help workers get a clear picture of the external forces driving the changes reverberating through the workplace. The survey findings suggest that many executives can be doing a better job on that front. For example, the share of workers citing technology as a main driver of change is markedly smaller than the share of executives who did so in PwC’s 2024 Global CEO Survey. This tells me that senior leaders may not be conveying the full impact that new technologies like generative AI are having on the company. Indeed, when it comes to GenAI, employees also need to know how it’s being deployed, where the data is coming from, and what the opportunities and challenges are in using GenAI in their jobs. 

• Transparency, in turn, requires free and frequent communication. This means top-down, bottom-up information flows, across multiple channels. Helping employees understand the reasons for change, and getting them to embrace it, calls for honest, consistent and repeated messaging. There’s the old dictum that you can say something n times to get a point across, but it’s only when you say it n+1 times that it sinks in. It’s equally important that employees have the chance to share their feedback and that leaders show they’re listening with empathy by putting that feedback to use. Similarly, promoting citizen-led innovation by giving workers the opportunity to experiment with the tools of change—new tech, new ways of working—can boost across-the-board buy-in. Also, how you communicate matters as much as how often. I’ve always believed that changing behaviours requires engaging people on both an emotional and intellectual level—and sometimes on a political and commercial level too. Honour workers’ intelligence, judgment and savvy, and you’re likely to be rewarded with loyalty, productivity and creativity. 

• Employees can’t drive change if they aren’t given the skills they need to do so, and if they aren’t empowered to use them. Gone are the days when every employee got hired on the basis of pedigree alone and then rode a single track to the end of the line, where a retirement gift awaited. More than a third of Hopes and Fears respondents say they’ve got ‘hidden’ skills that may not not be apparent from their job history or title. And 67% of workers who are considering an imminent job change say that the opportunity to learn new skills would affect their decision to a large or very large extent. The fact is, skills and upskilling are high-value currencies for today’s workers, as are workplace flexibility, internal mobility, fair pay and a sense of fulfillment. This is why many companies are adopting a skills-first workforce strategy, one that knocks over silos and recognises talent hiding in plain sight. One global organisation I work with, faced with a shortage in analysts, conducted an assessment of the skills needed for the job and found that around 40% of those skills could be pulled from other roles within the company. Another organisation I work with is engaging its workforce in ways that would have been unrecognisable at the company ten years ago: their employees are more diverse, better equipped to work across silos, and more empowered to experiment and even fail. Today, share prices and customer satisfaction at the company are both up. 

The takeaway? Prioritising the employee experience is key to navigating massive change. Because when you meaningfully engage your people, they become an accelerant for successful transformation and not a drag on it.