Companies racing to keep up with new business practices like hybrid work or AI may be overwhelming their employees and creating ‘transformation fatigue’

While change can be exciting in some ways, leaders need to watch out for “transformation fatigue” with their employees, several executives said at a panel discussion at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif. this week.

“I like to see it as an evolution, sometimes, versus just a transformation. Change fatigue, I feel like is pretty constant in terms of the level of change,” says Sheri Rhodes, chief customer officer at Workday. While employees have to get used to change, leaders can focus on providing transparency around business decisions. “People have to get used to the idea of change being constant. And so building and investing in that [mindset] is super important to make sure that you’re driving that transformation.”

Often, leaders focus on the transformation from a broader lens and fail to embed that strategy across their ranks, says Peggy Alford, executive vice president of global sales and merchant services at PayPal.

“I do think one of the things that drives these constant yearly transformations, reogranizations, or layoffs, is not going deep enough. And I think part of that comes from not necessarily really getting clear on what you’re changing for and what success looks like after the transformation,” says Alford. Still, she acknowledges that the world, nor customers, doesn’t stand still for a business’s transformation, and whatever end result leaders envision will likely still be constantly changing.

“So it is an evolution, but I do think that where companies go wrong is by setting [arbitrary goals] or going to cut 2% [of staffers] as opposed to focusing on what should the number be, and let that drive what you’re actually doing,” she adds.

Make sure employees’ sponges aren’t full

Transformational change can be overwhelming. Employees may become exhausted or jaded with constant changes at the organization. It may be wise to think of employees’ capacity for change like a sponge: if the sponge is full, it can’t absorb anything else. 

“When people’s sponge is full, and they just can’t take on additional change, or if there’s something fundamental about your culture or your values or some attributes, that’s creating resistance to change, that’s where you then have to go into deeper fundamental questions,” says Lara Caimi, president of worldwide field operations at Samsara. “Changing culture is a real journey. You have to explicitly go on a journey to transform and talk about that and articulate that in a really consistent way.”

Before Dara Treseder joined Autodesk as chief marketing officer, she had already developed a 100-day plan for what she would do once she started the job. But a key lesson for her was to pause and take stock of her team’s energy, once those 100 days were up.

“It was like a blitz. We got a lot done. But then I paused, because one of the things that I think is really important is—it’s like a marathon, you’ve got to take your recovery days,” says Treseder, one of the panelists. She also started holding listening sessions with staff to make sure they were absorbing that change, and if she as a leader needed to course correct.

“Make sure that you’re pausing to see if the organization is absorbing and also to course correct, because you’re not going to do everything right. You don’t know a lot when you are leading a transformation or you’re taking on a new challenge. So there are things you don’t know. And I think it’s important to take that pause for reflection for learning for yourself or your organization. It also gives her team time to breathe and kind of you know really make sure that they’re coming along with you.”