February 05, 2026
Employees Love Change, When It’s the Right Kind
The corporate world has long operated under a cautionary principle. Too much change exhausts employees, leading to disengagement, burnout, and eventual turnover. Leaders have been taught to manage transformation carefully, spacing out initiatives and watching anxiously for signs of change fatigue among their teams.
What if this conventional wisdom is wrong?
New research from Qualtrics suggests that the relationship between organisational change and employee wellbeing is far more nuanced than previously understood. Rather than dreading transformation, many employees actually thrive during periods of significant organisational shift, provided the changes signal investment and progress rather than instability and decline.
Not All Change Affects Employees Equally
The past few years have subjected workers to unprecedented levels of disruption, from pandemic-driven remote work transitions to AI implementation, economic uncertainty, and widespread restructuring. The assumption has been that employees need stability to recover.
The Qualtrics 2026 Employee Experience Trends Report, based on responses from 33,831 workers across 24 countries and 30 industries, challenges long-held assumptions about workplace transformation. The data shows that 72% of employees went through major organisational changes in the previous 12 months. Contrary to expectations, these individuals demonstrated greater motivation and commitment than their counterparts in more static workplaces.
Dr. Benjamin Granger, Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics, explains that the constant change and uncertainty workers have experienced has actually hardened them. Those experiencing more change today are generally more engaged, he notes.
However, the research emphasises a critical distinction. Not all change affects employees equally. The type of transformation matters enormously in determining whether teams will embrace or resist it.
Investment Versus Disruption
Changes that signal forward momentum and capability building correlate with strong engagement scores. New technology implementations, particularly AI tools, showed the highest positive impact. Engagement reached 78% among affected employees, representing a 10-point increase over baseline engagement levels. Updated workplace policies came in second at 77%, followed by physical workspace modifications and strategic pivots, both at 76%.
Dr. Granger says employees can distinguish between changes that build toward something meaningful and those that feel like cutbacks, offering them no benefit. The former signals investment in the future, while the latter suggests they might not have one.
In contrast, disruptive changes that suggest uncertainty about the future have the opposite effect. Leadership transitions and manager changes both correlate with 67% engagement, while organisational restructuring drops to 66%. Downsizing and layoffs show the lowest engagement at just 61%, representing a seven-point decrease from baseline metrics.
There is a Goldilocks zone for the right amount of change to keep employees engaged, according to Granger. Too much can leave them burned out, and too little can leave them bored and stagnant.
The Shadow AI Problem
While frequent AI use has climbed seven points year-over-year, only 20% of employees exclusively use company-approved tools. This figure has actually dropped from 22% previously. This trend intensifies among workers facing high productivity pressures, suggesting that employees bypass official channels to meet demanding expectations. The top reported benefits include completing tasks faster, selected by 65% of workers, improving work quality at 58%, and boosting overall productivity at 51%.
Perhaps most notably, 37% of employees say AI enables accomplishments previously beyond their reach. This indicates the technology extends capabilities rather than simply accelerating existing workflows.
Organisations must regularly measure AI usage and sentiment to ensure approved tools meet employee needs. Otherwise, they risk workers turning to unauthorised alternatives that could expose the company to security and compliance risks.
Warning Signs in Critical Roles
While change-ready employees show resilience, two vulnerable groups deserve immediate attention. Both frontline workers and new hires reported declining experiences compared to the previous year, with part-time workers showing particularly sharp drops.
New hire engagement fell seven points to 65%, while their perception that the organisation exceeded expectations dropped nine points to 36%. This represents the lowest level since 2021. These employees also reported significant declines in feeling empowered to challenge established practices, dropping from 64% to 50%. They also experienced less transparent communication, down from 71% to 63%.
This matters because new hires often fill customer-facing positions. This creates a direct link between employee experience and customer satisfaction. Interestingly, frontline workers demonstrate better understanding of customer pain points than senior leadership does. They identify communication failures and service delivery problems as primary issues, exactly what consumers themselves report. Senior leaders, by contrast, are more likely to blame product quality or post-purchase support.
The deteriorating experience for these critical groups threatens to disrupt customer experiences just when organisations need strong customer relationships most.
The Listening Advantage
Organisations that increased employee listening frequency in 2025 saw engagement metrics up to four times higher than those that reduced listening efforts. Currently, 25% of workers report their employer is listening more, while 42% want increased listening frequency.
Employee listening becomes even more valuable during periods of transformation, when workers most need to feel heard and understood. Organisations that successfully support employees through change with the right tools, processes, and communication strategies will be rewarded with greater motivation and loyalty.
The research suggests that successful change management is not about minimising transformation. It is about choosing the right changes and supporting people through them effectively.
