Assessing Change Severity

A change impact assessment shows what changes for each group: roles, processes, systems, locations. Change severity asks a different question: how hard will that change be for the people in each group to absorb?

The same change can be mild for one group and severe for another. A new booking system may be a small adjustment for occasional users and a complete change of daily routine for the team that runs it.

Research supports looking at several dimensions at once. Donald Fedor, Steven Caldwell and David Herold found that employees' commitment to a change depended on the combination of how favorable the change was for their work unit, how much the unit changed and how much their own job changed.

Assessing change severity therefore turns an impact list into a view of where people will need the most support.

Practitioners commonly weigh factors such as these:

• Scale of difference: how far the new way is from the current one in tasks, skills, tools and relationships.
• Number affected: how many people in the group change, and how widely they are spread.
• Frequency: whether people meet the change many times a day or once a year.
• Emotional factors: losses of status, expertise, identity, colleagues or job security.
• Cost factors: time, effort, learning and extra workload during the transition.
• Other changes: how much change the same group is already absorbing.

Severity is partly subjective. Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman's work on stress shows that people appraise a demand against their resources to cope, so the same change can feel different to two groups.

The factors of change severity are best rated with the people affected, not only by the project team.

Brightwater Health is introducing electronic prescribing on its wards.

1. Take the groups from the impact assessment.
2. Rate each factor low, medium or high with representatives of each group.
3. Combine the ratings into an overall level, and note any single factor rated high.
4. Check what other changes are landing on the same groups.
5. Review the ratings as the change progresses.

The overall level is a judgment, not a sum: one high emotional factor can outweigh several low ones.

Assessing change severity in this way gives each group a rating that the team can explain and revisit.

Severity tells the change team where to put its effort.

• High severity: engage the group early, involve it in design, use two-way communication, give hands-on support and allow a longer transition. Sponsors and line leaders should pay visible attention to these groups.
• Medium severity: targeted briefings, training and support from local change agents.
• Low severity: clear information at the right time is often enough.

At Brightwater Health, pharmacists receive early design workshops because their checking role changes, while visiting consultants receive a short briefing and a quick-reference guide.

Change severity ratings therefore stop a team from treating every group the same way.

• Rating from the project's point of view. The team that designed the change often underrates how different it is for the people using it.
• Counting heads only. A change that affects few people can still be severe for them.
• Ignoring emotional factors. Loss of status or expertise rarely appears in a process design but drives reactions.
• Ignoring cumulative change. A small change on top of three others can be the one that overloads a team.
• Treating ratings as precise. Low, medium and high are prompts for planning, not measurements.

Assessing change severity well means rating with the people affected and revisiting the ratings as the change lands.