NEW YORK - Erika Muller still remembers the Rolaids and the sleepless nights during a corporate shakeup eight years ago. Just a week after she started a job with a consulting firm in Connecticut, the chief executive shocked the staff with an announcement that the company was being acquired.
"It was obviously very traumatic," she recalls. "When a majority of your workforce is on the road and rumours start flying nobody knows what's going on. They just told us everything's fine, everything's fine."
The reassurance failed to soothe colleagues. Instead, uncertainty triggered emotional meltdowns. A friend from human resources who knew she would be laid off broke down awaiting her day of reckoning.
"She was a nervous wreck to the point where she was getting ill and she was taking days off," Muller said. Another colleague, overwhelmed by the anticipation of big changes, went into a funk and began to slack off, prompting a dismissal threat from the bosses.
The trauma of a big organizational change can cause emotional scars for employees, and leave employers grappling with resignations, increased sick days and worker malaise.
Researchers say executives often fail to consider the emotional responses of employees when formulating and announcing major changes. Those emotional responses can determine whether an employee resists the changes, merely complies with them or is engaged and excited.
"For many people, changes don't need to be stressful, but the way they're handled by their companies cause them undue stress," says Mel Fugate, a professor with the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.
Managers might expect that when change arrives, employees will assess the situation rationally. Those at the bottom might start polishing up resumes, for example, while top performers or members of unaffected departments might ignore or even be excited by the changes.
But emotions, researchers have found, get mixed up in decision-making and lead to unintended and negative outcomes.
A worker in an unaffected department, for instance, might feel helpless or anxious about the fate of friends in other parts of the company, triggering a response known to psychologists as escape-coping.
To managers, it's known as calling in sick, quitting or considering other jobs.
Even a brilliant new corporate strategy or a perfectly conceived merger can leave workers stressed and unmotivated. Change can make workers feel threatened by the potential for job loss or changes, or believe chances to advance are threatened.
These feelings can be reduced when a company communicates a change clearly, referencing how employee roles will change and identifying a clear vision for the new organization.
Secondly, the researchers concluded that managers who act as role models will reduce escapist behaviour by employees. Managers, they say, might model other ways of coping by, for instance, proactively discussing their own concerns and past experiences.
Employees can help themselves by identifying their own complex emotions during a shakeup.
"It's good to be self-aware," Fugate said. And when managers do a poor job communicating, employees should seek out the boss on their own.
Muller says she regrets not doing that.
