When management initiates change, it can be frustrating if staff don’t respond with excitement and a can-do attitude. Resistance to change is not only frustrating; it can also be seen as a deliberate attempt to cause trouble. But the more firmly the change is pushed on staff, the stronger the push-back becomes. No wonder organisational change is often regarded with fear.

David D’Souza is Membership Director at CIPD, a worldwide professional body for HR and people development with 145,000 members. He spoke about the challenges of organisational change at HR Innovation & Tech Fest.

He says the reason staff don’t get on board with change is down to a sense of disengagement – and it’s the HR team’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen.

D’Souza makes the point that when Clark Kent leaves the office of the Daily Planet he becomes Superman, and the reverse is also true.

“People at the weekend are smart, passionate, funny and intelligent,” he says.

“But they come into work each day and they’re slightly less than that.

“And you [HR managers] are wholly to blame because you hire someone for the bright spark in their eyes, and you think ‘This person will really make a difference here’. Six months later, they’re exactly the same as everyone else. The job in HR is to get the best out of people.”

An HR paradox is that when people are hired, most organisations say, “you are in this box”. They become confused later when told off for not thinking outside the box to which they were originally assigned.

D’Souza believes there’s a danger that HR performs ‘HR activities’ believing they are doing their job, but these activities that are of little value to the company.

To illustrate this, he tells the story of the man seen sprinkling white powder in a city street by a passer-by. When asked what he was doing, the man replied that the powder was a special type that deterred elephants.

“But there aren’t any elephants here,” the passer-by said.

“Yes,” replied the man. “It’s a marvellous powder.”

In a similar way, HR teams often perform meaningless routine tasks that make it seem they are controlling performance outcomes. In other words, keeping the elephants at bay.

“We don’t look at the things we do and ask whether it’s making a difference,” D’Souza says.

HR departments want a smooth transition process when it comes to organisational change. It’s not like there’s no value in planning. But the staff that are going to go through that process are all in different places.

D’Souza points out that a genuine organisational chart would show feuds, friendships, family connections, mentoring, debts owed, love affairs, and all the other ways a group of people connect.

“The job of HR is understanding that organisational charts and hierarchies don’t define the actual jobs we have in the workplaces,” he says.

Because relationships are so complex, often members of an organisation find it easier to parrot company dogma than think for themselves. But toeing the company line does not necessarily mean they are achieving a meaningful goal. The ability to be a ‘loyal opposition’ within a company is important, because to have genuine passionate engagement, you also need genuine dissent.

In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch performed a famous experiment about group conformity. Surrounded by actors posing as subjects, one unwitting subject went along with the majority answer even though the group was deliberately giving the wrong one. It showed that group dynamics is one of the most powerful forces in group psychology.

Before announcing a plan for change, planning committees often have the benefit of weeks or months of discussion, assigning goals and revising objectives, says D’Souza. From their point of view, everything is settled.

“The senior team implementing a change have the advantage of studying the problem, weighing up the pros and cons and ownership of the change, which in their eyes gives it an implicit value the rest of the organisation may not see. Then they give the plan to someone cold and wonder why they aren’t excited by it.”

Staff disinterest when a plan is imposed on them can be mistaken for resistance to change. But there are things HR can do to make staff feel they own the change. D’Souza offers the example of the easy instant cake mix that was too easy.

“When they first invented instant cake mixes, all you had to do was add water. It didn’t sell, and the reason, they think, is that it didn’t feel like you were actually baking. It didn’t feel like you were involved in that process. So despite having the technology to make it so that you just add water, the manufacturers added an egg – people were asked to break an egg into it. And the cake mixes starting flying off the shelf.

“Just that one change allowing you to make a bigger contribution fundamentally changes your emotional relationship to the outcome. It’s still going to come out as a chocolate cake, but people feel like it’s theirs.”

There is an argument that staff should have full participation and control over change. However, although aspirationally it’s healthier for people to have complete control, it’s not practical in any organisation to allow this to happen. After all, it’s still a chocolate cake you want, not a vanilla sponge.

In conclusion, D’Souza quotes American organisational psychologist Edgar Schein, who said of true leadership: “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.”

“We need to allow people to be the best version they can be at work,” D’Souza says. “We are complex human beings and we don’t drop that sense of humanity when we go into the office.”

David D’Souza is the Membership Director at CIPD (UK). David is a respected speaker and writer on progressive HR & business practice, recently described as “one of the UK’s most influential HR and workplace commentators”.

David was the Keynote speaker at HR Innovation & Tech Fest 2017.