In the 1970s, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the stages of change that people go through after finding out that people they hold dear are seriously ill and close to death. Reaction to a change is described as a journey through several typical phases. According to her concept, an individual faced with the acknowledgment of death will go through phases of denial, anger, bargaining, melancholy and finally acceptance.

Business practice has recognized universality of the model and applied it with the necessary variations, in describing an employee’s reaction to a change. Change is the only invariable of our time and it is getting faster.

Whether it’s a global reorganization of a company that carries tectonic changes that affect all its employees or it’s a mundane decision of an HR department of a local company to abolish free soda and sparkling water, employees usually go through similar phases.

After some time of the stability phase, an externally imposed change occurs. First, we do not know what to do, we are blocked and confused by changes. Then comes a phase of denial in which we try to keep the old model of behavior in the hope that we will “think of something”. When we realize that we are not succeeding we start to feel the anger towards the company. The anger phase can be very long in organization andreduce results. Especially after merging of two companies, this phase can take years. And anger is not productive. We don’t hear the other side, we see only bad intention, we see ourselves as right or as a victim and sometimes we plan revenge.

After some time, anger decreases, just to be replaced by an attempt to negotiate or rectify something, in order to reduce the effect of the change somehow. The change is slowly being accepted, but still not completely.

As time passes, the employee slowly accepts the change and enters the stage of mourning for previous, “better” times. A person with constant, above-average results from the period before the change can now face bad results which further intensifies the feeling of sadness and disorientation in the new situation. Usually,employees decide to leave their jobs because they do not want to work in a “new company”.

With good management, the above-mentioned phases can be significantly shorter and introduce employees into the testing phase of a new reality without major oscillations.

Manager has a key role in the process of change – he understands the individual differences of his employees and gives the support to try a new way of working in new circumstances, so that the “new” becomes stable at some point…until the next change.

(Nedeljnik, August 2019)