The impossible expectations for change leaders
Keywords: change leadership, leading organisational change, change fatigue, change management statistics.
More change is leading to more workplace stress
I’ve been doing some research into the statistics around organisational change this week. We know that there is more change happening than ever before. Even before AI came along organisations were already facing challenges resulting from the leaps ahead in technology, changing expectations, and wider ethical, regulatory and risk issues as well as post-covid changes in the way we work. Research consistently shows that the number of change initiatives in organisations is increasing, meaning not only that employees are more impacted by change but also that leaders are having to lead more change than ever.
And there’s evidence of the material impact that change has on the wellbeing of people involved, both in terms of mental and physical health. So with more changes happening, more people impacted by change, and more leaders leading change (potentially for the first time) it’s hardly surprising that the level of trust and engagement in organisations is falling, and specifically the level of trust in organisations to lead change.
One survey asked specifically about the impact of the previous years changes on a number of categories, and found a collective decrease in wellbeing (68%), reduction in role clarity (61%), increase in workload (60%), with employees also feeling less relevant (58%) and with decreased employability (56%). (Deloitte, 2026, Global Human Capital Trends).
In fact, few business and HR leaders believe their organisations manage change effectively.
What does good change leadership look like?
But what does effective mean? I’m sure you’ve read the statistics that are often repeated around the large percentages of changes that fail (somewhere between 70% and 90% - depending on who you believe). But, many of these claims have little evidence to support them, or clarity on what they are measuring.
Are we measuring effectiveness of change leadership by the impact that leaders have on “achieving the desired benefit” for the organisation’s bottom line?
Or are we measuring effectiveness by how “happy” the people in the organisation are with the change and how highly they rate their leader?
Or attrition levels during a change?
Lots of these surveys are ambiguous about what they mean by success or effectiveness and are often framed in a way that asks for a judgement call in the process. Which makes a great headline – or an opportunity for organisations who want to sell you consulting services to tell you everything you’re doing wrong.
It’s not black and white
But creating a black and white view that a change is a success or failure, or that leadership is either effective or not effective oversimplifies the challenge that leaders face, and sets an impossible standard that change leaders can’t realistically meet.
For example. If you’ve merged two culturally different organisations together, and you’ve got a new integrated team that are working together well most of the time, but you’ve only achieved 28% market share instead of 30%, does that mean you’ve failed because you’ve not realised the desired benefits?
What about if you’ve achieved the benefit but two of your employees have gone on long term stress leave as a result of the way you’ve treated them and you’ve lost corporate knowledge and your reputation as an employer of choice in the process?
Imagine leading a significant change for the first time and looking for guidance only to be told that you’ve got pretty much no chance of succeeding?
Change leadership is complex
As with the other leadership challenges we face, Change Leadership isn’t simple. There will be some days you do it well, some bits you find easy, some that you find hard. After all, organisations are made up of people – every one of them with a different way of thinking, personal situation, level of adaptability. Trying to create change that works for everyone is very difficult, and having worked on change and transformation programs for all of my career I can confirm that it’s never easy.
But it is possible. I’ve seen someone announce a whole division was getting outsourced, impacting thousands of jobs, and the response was basically a shrug. Everyone knew it was going to happen, they all understood why, they knew the implications for them. It wasn’t news.
The sweet spot is in the balance between the organisation’s interests, the leader’s interests and those of your employees. It’s an ongoing, incremental challenge to create connection, set direction, make progress, challenge the status quo and build capability. Alongside the organisation’s metrics, engagement and trust are the best ways of measuring this.
What is indisputable is that you and your leaders have a significant impact on the wellbeing of your people, and as lots of what you spend your time doing is about change or transformation, the ability for your leaders to lead this is critical. Don’t try to be perfect. Just try to lead change better.
The evidence:
Every figure below links to its source. Peer-reviewed studies link to the published paper.
How much change organisations are absorbing
98% of executives surveyed across 16 countries are planning organisation design changes over the next two years (Mercer, Global Talent Trends 2026).
The average employee faces 13 enterprise-wide changes each year, up from two in 2016 (Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo, Orlando, October 2025).
The 2016 baseline of two changes (O Móráin & Aykens, Harvard Business Review, 2023).
60% of employees report experiencing five different types of change at the same time (Gartner, October 2025).
72% of employees experienced significant organisational change in the last 12 months (Qualtrics, 2026 Employee Experience Trends, 33,831 employees across 24 countries).
95% of organisations have had two or more transformations in the past three years, and 61% have had more than four (Accenture, Change Reinvented).
More than half of Australian company directors say the pace of change is faster than their organisations can keep up with (AICD Director Sentiment Index, 1H 2026, 828 directors).
What that change costs the people going through it
Employees exposed to multiple organisational changes were 1.75 times more likely to be experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression severe enough to warrant clinical treatment two years later than employees who were not exposed (Fløvik, Knardahl & Christensen, 2019, 7,985 employees followed over two years).
Employees who kept their jobs through a major downsizing were twice as likely to die of cardiovascular disease over the following 7.5 years as employees in workplaces with no downsizing (Vahtera et al., 2004, 22,430 municipal employees).
Among employees experiencing continuous change, 66% say they are expected to be much more productive, 54% say they are expected to do a lot more work with fewer resources, and 50% say they are experiencing higher levels of stress and burnout (Gartner, October 2025).
The collective impact of a year of change: decreased wellbeing 68%, reduced role clarity 61%, increased workload 60%, feeling less relevant 58%, decreased employability 56% (Deloitte, 2026 Global Human Capital Trends).
Trust and confidence in how change is led
A high-change environment nearly cuts in half the likelihood that an employee will be highly engaged (Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo, Orlando, October 2025).
79% of employees have low trust in the changes their organisation makes (Gartner, April 2025 survey of more than 2,850 employees).
73% of HR leaders say their employees are fatigued from change, and 74% say their managers are not equipped to lead change (Gartner Top HR Priorities Report 2025, survey of 473 HR leaders).
Only 27% of business and HR leaders believe their organisations manage change effectively (Deloitte, 2026 Global Human Capital Trends).
Only 45% of employees achieved the change goals their organisation set for them, and 36% say their team hesitates and delays to see whether changes will stick before adopting them (Gartner, October 2025).
Engagement and trust across organisations, and what it costs
Gallup classifies employees as engaged when they are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. Worldwide, the proportion who are engaged fell to 20% in 2025, the lowest since 2020 and the first time it has fallen two years running. No region increased (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026, 141,444 employed adults across more than 140 countries).
Among managers, the proportion who are engaged fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025. Among employees who do not manage anyone, it stayed flat at between 19% and 20% across the same four years (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).
In Australia and New Zealand, 21% of employees are engaged at work, 66% are not engaged, and 13% are actively disengaged. 49% report having experienced a lot of stress during the previous working day, the second highest of ten global regions (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).
In Australia, the proportion of workers reporting a lot of stress during the previous day has risen from 34% in 2010 to 50% in 2025. Over the same period the proportion rating their current and future lives highly enough to be classified as thriving has fallen from 76% to 55% (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).
45% of Australians say they trust CEOs to do what is right, the lowest of eight groups measured and below both government leaders and journalists. 72% say CEOs are obligated to build trust between groups who distrust each other, and only 36% say they are doing it well (Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, Australia report, 1,200 Australians).
50% of Australian workers say they trust top management, against 60% who say they trust their direct manager and can speak openly with them (PwC, Global Workforce Hopes and Fears 2025, 1,225 Australian workers).
Mental health conditions now account for 12% of serious workers' compensation claims in Australia, meaning claims involving a week or more off work. That is a rise of 161% over ten years, the largest increase of any type of injury. The median time off work for those claims is 35.7 weeks against 7.4 weeks for all serious claims, and the median compensation paid is $67,400 against $16,300 (Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics 2025).
What leadership actually changes
Among employees who went through a downsizing in their own department, those who rated the involvement, information and support they received as sufficient were at no greater risk of mental distress than employees who experienced no downsizing at all. Those who rated it insufficient were five times more likely to develop clinically relevant distress (Degerud, Marti & Sterud, 2025).
Across 112,532 employees, leaders who focused on relationships with their people had employees with measurably lower burnout, and the quality of the relationship between a leader and an individual employee was the single strongest predictor of that employee's wellbeing in the analysis (Montano, Reeske, Franke & Hüffmeier, 2017).
Employees whose leaders scored highly on fairness, empowerment and support were 31% less likely to be experiencing clinically relevant mental distress two years later. Where a whole work unit rated its leadership highly, rather than individuals rating their own, the reduction was 46% (Fløvik, Knardahl & Christensen, 2020).
Across 209 studies covering 82,386 employees in 45 countries, the quality of an employee's leader was consistently one of the strongest measured predictors of how engaged that employee is (Li, Sun, Taris, Xing & Peeters, 2021).
Across 55 longitudinal studies, the way work is organised, designed and managed predicted employee engagement over time considerably more strongly than the quality of an individual leader did. The authors conclude that intervening at the organisational level is the most promising approach (Lesener, Gusy, Jochmann & Wolter, 2020).
Among employees going through significant disruption at work, those who strongly agree they trust their organisation's leadership are 4.5 times more likely to be engaged and 62% less likely to be burned out than those who do not. Where employees say their leaders communicate effectively, they are 4.3 times more likely to be engaged and 65% less likely to be burned out (Gallup, 2024).
Workers who trust their direct manager most are 72% more motivated than workers who trust them least, measured by pride in their job, willingness to go above and beyond, and how much they look forward to work. Workers who feel most aligned with their leadership's goals are 78% more motivated than those who feel least aligned (PwC, Global Workforce Hopes and Fears 2025, 49,843 workers).
Across 136 studies covering more than 22,000 employees, leadership support and clarity about a person's role were among the strongest predictors of whether a team is psychologically safe, meaning people believe they can take an interpersonal risk without being punished for it. Psychological safety in turn predicted engagement, commitment, willingness to speak up, learning behaviour and job performance (Frazier, Fainshmidt, Klinger, Pezeshkan & Vracheva, 2017).
Where managers create a psychologically safe environment for their team, change fatigue can reduce by up to 46%. Gartner defines change fatigue as apathy, burnout and frustration in response to change, at a level that harms organisational performance (Gartner, September 2023).
On the claim that 70% of change fails
The five most prominent published sources for the 70% figure were examined and each either asserted it without evidence or cited someone who did. The author's conclusion is that there is no valid and reliable empirical evidence to support the narrative. It traces back to an unscientific estimate in Reengineering the Corporation (1993) that 50 to 70% of organisations did not achieve dramatic results, which is not the same claim. John Kotter, to whom the figure is most often attributed, never published a failure rate (Hughes, 2011, Journal of Change Management).