Change fatigue: why support wears thin and how to win it back

A new course in January. A new system in March. A reorganisation in June. The employee survey in October, while nothing was ever said about last year’s. And in November, when a merger is announced, the management team says: “There is a lot of resistance.” But is it resistance to the merger? Or is it change fatigue, among people who no longer believe anything happens with their input?

Change has become the normal state

The Netherlands is reorganising more than it has in years. In 2025, 355 companies reported a major reorganisation to the UWV, the highest number in ten years. Almost 25,000 employees were affected. And employees are making it clear what that does to them.

If you lose people during the change, you pay the bill afterwards in turnover and absence.

Support works like a bank account

A useful image: every change makes a withdrawal from the same trust. Explaining, involving people, giving feedback and finishing what you start deposits something back. If you only withdraw, one day you will be overdrawn.

What sixty years of research teaches us

A review of 79 studies over sixty years (Oreg, Vakola and Armenakis, 2011) shows what determines how people receive a change. Two things help, three cause fatigue:

• Trust in leadership is the strongest and most consistent factor.
• A say in the how helps: people who help shape how a change lands in their work are more likely to accept it.
• Many, far-reaching and poorly planned changes increase uncertainty, resulting in less job satisfaction and a greater intention to leave.
• Previous failed changes fuel cynicism: people expect the next one to fail too.
• Speaking up seems pointless. Then people stay silent. Silence is then not agreement, but giving up.

So resistance rarely lies in the change itself. It lies in the trust that is left, in the stacking of changes and in whether people are heard. As HR, you have influence on all five.

Six things you will hear in the management team

You hear firm statements about change. Three we come across often:

• “We will just communicate it once more.” Sending more does not help if nobody can talk back. Show what you do with input.
• “But we asked them, didn’t we?” Asking without feedback costs trust. Next time, people will say less. Read how to feed back results properly.
• “It is quiet, so it has been accepted.” Silence often means people think it is pointless to say anything.

What makes a deposit? Ask, see, act, measure

The simplest rule: set at least one deposit against every new change. A completion, a piece of feedback, or a change that stops.

Give every change one owner who also arranges the feedback. Otherwise everyone is responsible, and nobody does it. And celebrate what is finished: visibly close off what has been achieved. Read why it pays to involve people early in involving employees in change.

How high is your stack?

Start small. Count with the management team how many changes are running at the same time, and sort the stack: what do we stop, what do we finish first, what can wait six months? The height of the stack alone is often an eye-opener. Want to know how two merging organisations compared their cultures before they started? Read the case on culture in a merger.

Get started

With Deepler Research you anonymously put statements such as “I can see what happens with my input” to all teams, and see per team where things chafe. The whitepaper includes a baseline measurement with ten statements that you fill in with your management team in five minutes.

Sources

• UWV (2026). Collective redundancy notifications 2025, via Nieuws.nl, July 2026.
• Integron (2025). Employee Experience in Nederland 2025. Poll among 5,000 working people.
• Oreg, S., Vakola, M. and Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients’ reactions to organizational change: a 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524.
• Rafferty, A. and Griffin, M. (2006). Perceptions of organizational change: a stress and coping perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1154-1162.
• Wanous, J., Reichers, A. and Austin, J. (2000). Cynicism about organizational change. Group & Organization Management, 25(2).
• Morrison, E. and Milliken, F. (2000). Organizational silence. Academy of Management Review, 25(4).