Jen Dransfield | June 2025

The impact of organisational change on individuals falls solidly into the realm of psychosocial risk but is often overlooked in times where a business is furiously trying to keep its head above water. There tends to be a hyperfocus on getting through periods of change (especially restructure or redundancies) unscathed of personal grievances. But what of the workers left behind? And what about organisational change in a broader sense? Changes in work instruction? Promotion and demotion? Changes in social norms and legislation that effect the way work is done? These are all types of organisational change and can be fairly simply broken down into to two distinct groups: Macro and micro.

Macro-level change is the type we most often think about when we hear the term organisational change. Think strategic change, global company systems, restructures and expansions. Micro-level change refers to the ones that occur on a day-to-day basis, or primarily only affect an individual worker. A change in reporting manager, a foreperson moving to a new site at the conclusion of a construction project, updates to client instructions that change the methodology to be used by a tradesperson, introducing new processes to a person’s job description. These more incremental changes are all micro-level but deserve just as much strategic attention as the big stuff because they can induce just as much stress on a worker as finding out that their employer is laying off 10% of its workforce.

Macro-level Change

• Restructure
• Economic
• Development of new division/s
• Downsizing
• Legislative/Enforced (e.g. COVID)
• Cultural/Values

Micro-level Change

• Job description
• Line management
• Locational (regional transfer)
• Locational (site transfer)
• Methodological/work plan
• Interruption caused by delays

We know that sustained stress isn’t good for anyone. As health and safety practitioners, we know about the hypertension, the muscle tension, the headaches, and the heart palpitations that come with stress (arguably the most popularly recognised psychosocial output cured magically by EAP and fruit bowls in the break room). There is something just as interesting that sits often unrecognised and perfectly alongside these negative health effects though, and that is the propensity for workplace injuries. Perhaps you might have noticed this- your company lost a large tender, the secured forward-work isn’t looking prosperous and all of a sudden, people start hurting themselves more. Maybe back in 2020, in the weeks before the first lockdown when the world went a bit mad and no one knew what the future looked like, you saw a spike in those lesser, ‘silly’ incidents. Well, there’s evidence that suggests there’s a reason for this.

The sympathetic nervous system is a funny thing. It turns on our fight-or-flight response when we perceive something as being a threat to ourselves or our livelihood. How often this involuntary caveman safety device rears its head for an individual person is largely influenced by their beliefs, personality, past experiences and current circumstances. Uncertainty is a threat, the threat splatters a mix of adrenaline and cortisol all over our gut and brain like a tomato sauce bottle with a loose lid, and as part of this evolutionary hangover, something really interesting happens: The parts of our brain responsible for thoughtful decision-making turn off.

At a governance level, our friends across the ditch at Safe Work Australia have officially recognised this link a lot sooner than us, and more-so, as usual, indigenous populations around the world have known it for millennia. The relationship between physical, mental, spiritual and emotional wellbeing is real. Consequently, when organisational change is poorly managed, the uncertainty that comes with it induces the stress. That fight-or-flight leaves little energy for the other parts of the brain which control memory and performance of higher-order tasks. Things like the ability to remember, concentrate, problem-solve, think critically and make decisions which require a higher level of cognitive function. And what requires all of those things…? Risk assessment. The thing we all learn to do as babies and later in life use to plan our work, choose the right tools for the job, apply our skillsets well and recognise our own limitations or consult a supervisor before we start a new task.

So what can businesses do to lessen the negative effects of organisational change on its workers? Well, it’s funny you should ask, because I’ve just spent the last two years investigating this through my GDPP(OSH) research journey, and it’s identified some very simple but critical influences for ensuring a best chance at successfully upholding worker wellbeing while managing change. There are four identified Key Elements:

• Quality change communication
• Who delivers the communication matters
• Participative decision-making
• Perception of support

Quality change communication

When we are delivering change information to workers, whether it be about a late material delivery effecting programme, or national redundancies, it is not the amount of communication that matters, but the quality. At the core of this is being honest and answering questions- tell workers what is known, what is not known and what can’t yet be known. At a macro-level, often our executives may think they have transparently delivered a satisfactory amount of information, followed by a swift retreat to the boardroom. But people have previous experiences with former employers, and fears, and families to feed. They have questions. Not only is genuine transparency critical, keeping the comms two-way is too. There are simple things that businesses can do to facilitate this. When sending out group emails, put a simple line at the bottom with the contact name, phone number and email address of the person who should be contacted if staff require further clarity. Set up a designated email address just for the situation that anyone can email with their questions and actively monitor it. Invest in supervisors to be good leaders who let their teams know they can come to them if they need help on the job.

Who delivers the communication matters

Typically, people don’t want to hear whispers from their counterpart colleague that the business is going downhill, or that a process system they use daily is being changed. Where change communications come from can significantly influence workers’ responses, and consequently, the potential stress that comes with it. Executive members, directorate and senior management are best placed to deliver messages of strategic or global business change- direction, values and structure. Likewise, direct supervisors are better placed to deliver job-related and instructional change communications.

Participative decision-making

ISO 45003 might have the most comprehensive list of psychosocial risk factors of any guideline. Organisational change by itself is a standalone factor, but psychosocial risks feather out into synapses which talk to each other and from each other receive constant feedback. Things like job autonomy, workload, civility and role expectations. Years ago, I was at a Worksafe conference and heard then CE Nicole Rosie say something that I found really interesting at a time before the Safety II train was yet to leave the station. She expressed that when workers are made part of the process, they are more accepting of the outcome, even if they don’t like the outcome. There is simple sense in this remark. When change occurs, whether at a macro- or micro-level, we are always best to directly engage workers in the process, hear their thoughts and ideas, and use these to guide the trajectory of the change. Producing a document or set of predetermined choices, forwarding them to workers, asking them for feedback and calling it a consultation period isn’t true engagement. Expressing the challenge from the outset and asking for ideas to tackle it is.

Perception of support

This key influencer of organisational change outcomes is an interesting one, and perhaps the most contentious in some circles. A business can say it provides financial services, weekly check-ins, free counselling services, discounted pilates memberships and any other possible work or wellbeing-related offerings. But it’s not the businesses opinion that matters. An organisation can offer all these things, but if a worker does not perceive the business as providing support that is meaningful to them, then it isn’t support. During the early COVID-19 days, my employer at the time was able to retain and remunerate its entire workforce. Online weekly Friday catch ups were scheduled so staff could remain connected to their workmates. The Labour Manager and I rung around our 45 tradespeople once a week to check in on how they were doing being isolated at home with their families. Staff who could work from home were encouraged to maintain their 8-5 workday for normalities’ sake, but if their brain just wasn’t in the game enough to work then that was ok too. A dedicated hotline was set up directly to national HR for anyone who needed help.

The CE sent out weekly emails with his musings, lockdown family experiences and very transparently, the financial health of the business. It was a crazy time for everyone in the country, but within the business, at that unprecedented time, the People and Culture division did something I haven’t seen before. At the beginning of lockdown, they sent out a survey to all 900-odd staff. It contained just a few questions: Do you feel like you have enough COVID-19 information? How much do you feel this virus has affected you personally? What’s your general feeling? How is your family coping? The business used the responses to taper what support it offered to staff.

At the end of the first lockdown, it again sent out the same survey with two extra questions: Could the company have done anything better in managing the lockdown? 93% of employees responded ‘No’. Were you satisfied with the level of support from the company? 98% said ‘Yes’. The responses speak for themselves, and as an observer this is possibly the best example of actively measuring workers’ perception of support, and fit-for-purposeness of that I can think of. It was simple, it was outstanding. There are lessons to be learned from such examples of leadership.

So, where to next?

Our country is in an interesting climate. A cost of living is rising, employers looking for ways to offset economic challenges, and technology innovations that seem to change every other week. All of these facets continually lead to one thing. Organisational change is like the ocean. A constant ebb and flow. Where we don’t remain dynamic to it, and manage it thoughtfully, evidential literature suggests it can hurt our workers in more ways than one. Quality change communication, considering who delivers different change communications, active worker participative in decision-making and genuinely monitoring that the support we offer is of true value are factors which can positively influence our workers’ wellbeing during change. If we take the time to authentically assess our current change management and support systems against these four basic elements, we can manage this psychosocial risk for the betterment of everyone who walks through our workplace thresholds.