Only one in three (32%) mid-to-senior level business leaders said that the last change they led achieved healthy change adoption by employees, according to a new survey by Gartner.
Gartner defines healthy change adoption as the success elements that leaders can directly influence – getting employees to act on change, do so on time, and in a healthy way that doesn’t adversely impact employee performance and engagement and cause undue stress.
“Changes today are continuous, stacked on top of one another, highly interdependent and often driven by factors external to the organisation,” says Kayla Velnoskey, director in the Gartner HR practice. “While leaders are used to operating in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) environment, the nature of change today has made it ungovernable.”
Ungovernable change has lowered employees’ trust in the organisation’s ability to change effectively. An April 2025 Gartner survey of 141 HR leaders found that organisations experiencing ungovernable change are 1.6x less likely to experience high change trust. Another April 2025 Gartner survey of more than 2 850 employees revealed that 79% of employees have low trust in change.
“Organisations with better than average healthy change adoption report two times higher year-over-year revenue growth rate,” says Ingrid Laman, vice-president, Advisory in the Gartner HR practice. “For companies with more than 50 000 employees, this can equal up to $2,2-billion annually.”
Typically, leaders use inspiration and the vision of change to get employees to adopt change, however, Gartner analysis found the inspirational approach only works when there is high change trust. When change trust is low, Gartner’s model predicts that only one-quarter of changes led by inspirational leaders would achieve healthy change adoption.
The best change leadership approach is when leaders routinise change so it becomes instinctive for employees to adopt change as part of the normal course of doing work. Gartner has identified three ways HR can help leaders routinise change to achieve healthy change adoption:
HR clarifies leaders’ change role
HR needs to help leaders communicate that constant change is today’s business reality and focus employees on making regular progress on the change journey. This requires business leaders to embrace a new, active role in leading change all the time – not just when it is most intense. Leaders must regularly prepare employees for change and focus on acknowledging progress on interim goals, not the ever-shifting vision for the future.
“To business leaders, this sounds like more work than they have capacity to tackle,” says Laman. “HR can help by showing business leaders that acknowledging the change journey is not more work; instead, it requires them to apply the skills they already have in new ways, redistributing and balancing their time and effort to make change leadership sustainable.”
HR equips leaders with emotion regulation tools
Leaders and employees often feel great discomfort when they are asked to lead through or adopt changes. It is hard for leaders to help employees manage these emotions without knowing what’s driving employees’ discomfort. However, if leaders and employees cannot cope with this discomfort it can create resistance to change.
HR must equip leaders with tools and techniques to regulate the emotional component of change including resources to help employees self-identify and cope with their reactions to change. Ultimately, leaders are responsible for equipping employees to get to an emotional state where they can act on change despite how they feel.
HR teaches leaders to build change reflexes
Leaders who routinise change drive employee action by training intuition so that change adoption is second nature. HR must help leaders build employees’ change reflexes by identifying what core change skills matter most and finding moments within daily work to practice those skills.
HR should partner with leaders to address the following:
- What are core change skills – skills needed by employees to prepare for and adopt change regardless of the type of change – that employees must practice?
- How and when do they practice these change skills?
- How can leaders get employees to commit to practicing these change skills?
“When leaders routinise change, our model predicts that employees are three times more likely to adopt changes on time and in a healthy way even though they have low change trust,” says Velnoskey.