5. Managers, What Are You Doing About Change Exhaustion?

RE-ORGS, LEADERSHIP transitions, new technologies. Pre-Covid, many employees were already experiencing “change fatigue,” defined as feeling apathetic toward or overwhelmed by too many organizational changes in a row. When Covid hit, everything changed. We remember a tweet from digital health consultant Simon Terry that resonated with us: “Change fatigue. Resilience fatigue. Agility fatigue. WFH fatigue. Video-conference fatigue. Online schooling fatigue. Restriction fatigue. Conflict fatigue. Fatigue fatigue. 2020—the international year of fatigue.” The heightened level of uncertainty in both our work and home lives pushed many of us into change exhaustion. Gartner found that employees’ ability to cope with change in 2020 was at 50% of prepandemic levels. How can leaders help their teams combat change exhaustion—or step out of its clutches? Too often, organizations simply encourage their employees to be resilient, placing…