Supporting staff through organisational change
Organisational change can cause stress, fear, frustration, and worry. RSSB’s new Good Practice Guide helps leaders support their teams through times of change.
'As leaders, we sometimes need a little bit of help and guidance on how to lead through change as well as how to look after ourselves and each other.’ These words by South Western Railway’s Managing Director, Claire Mann, will ring true for many rail industry leaders. And, in many ways, they signal the need for guidance on how to support staff during times of change.
RSSB and the industry’s Mental Wellbeing Group jointly published such a guidace for leaders in August 2023: ‘A good practice guide on protecting staff’s mental health while going through change’. It takes users on a reflective, self-guided journey through understanding the problem, reviewing processes and support systems, communicating effectively, consulting employees, and supporting development (upskilling).
Organisational change can take many forms. According to ISO45003 – Psychological health and safety at Work, it can include changes:
to the company’s objectives, tasks, systems or staff
to the company’s organisation
to the company’s legal requirements
in the company’s understanding of risks and hazards
in industry knowledge and technology, leading to the need for additional training.
Any one of those elements can trigger an adverse reaction among staff members. For example, when considering how those developments might affect them personally, employees could feel stress, fear, frustration, worry, or any number of other emotions.
And that’s where the new good practice guide comes in. It challenges rail leaders to think deeply about the possible impact of organisational change on their workers, asking things like, ‘Do we know what employees are struggling with?’ and ‘Do we know how people feel?’
Using the results of these internal reflections as a springboard, companies can—and should—take the conversation to the workforce at large. The guide provides prompts for each step in this conversation, the purpose of which is to create a two-way dialogue between leadership and the wider workforce.
Download the good practice guide today.
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The guide includes questions that you could ask staff during times of organisational change, such as:
Reviewing: How supported do you feel?
Communicating: How would you prefer to be kept up to date?
Consulting: What do you think about this idea?
Upskilling: How can we support you in practising new skills?
Engaging in conversations like these with team members up and down the business can foster a sense of collaboration and openness, both of which are key for employee engagement, retention, and wellness. Getting buy-in from people around the organisation during times of change can also strengthen the overall approach; listening to a range of perspectives from employees in different roles provides the big picture necessary for navigating periods like this.
Crucially, it’s thought that around 15% of working-age adults have some type of mental health condition. Unprecedented, poorly communicated, or improperly managed change at the organisational level can compound such conditions in some individuals. And only by building an authentic picture of its current change management landscape will an organisation be able to make meaningful change—and make change meaningful—for its people.
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