„Managing Changes” is One of the Greatest, yet One of the Least Perceived Challenges within Companies.

Managers and executives should make a key contribution to shaping the desired corporate culture. But in doing so, they frequently find themselves confronted with several challenges. The German Institute for Employment and Employability (Institut für Beschäftigung und Employability) has investigated the main challenges and their implementation as perceived by company’s employees. The results of these surveys are documented in the current 2015/16 HR report*:

„Managing Changes” ranks at the top with 80% of the biggest challenges managers and executives are faced with. When implementing challenges it becomes apparent that while the management is often of the opinion that tasks have already been well addressed, the employees are more cautious in their comments. Thus, an implementation value of 45% regarding „Managing Changes” shows that there still is significant scope for further action.

Similar large gaps also exist between the percentage value for a challenge and its implementation rate with regard to the „handling of growing complexity” (68% challenge compared to 26% implementation) and with regard to „preserving credibility” (50% challenge compared to 25% implementation).

The conclusion is that efforts undertaken by decision-makers do often not reach the employees accordingly. Many companies are not yet able to manage changes in an active and positive way.

The solution is that changes need to become a natural part of the corporate culture such that significant challenges develop into normal corporate developments. And if employees are more involved in the change processes than before, then they will also become keenly aware of the implementation successes. These are two important factors that are fulfilled in the Participatory Strategic HR development, as Nicole Schlegel has firmly established in her „Change Management” model.

* The HR report is a series of empirical studies carried out since 2011 on behalf of Hays on an annual basis. In 2015/2016, the report has its focus on corporate culture.