Change fatigue is widespread, with 73% of HR leaders reporting employees are overwhelmed, showing that traditional change management is outdated. To thrive, HR leaders must foster antifragile organizations by upleveling managers into change coaches and adapting operating models to be skills-fluid.
Maria Valero
Editorial Strategist, HR
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If 2025 has taught us anything, it¡¯s that change is the only constant in business. With reporting their employees are experiencing change fatigue, it's clear the typical approach to change management isn't working. This, combined with the historically slower pace of change, highlights a large discrepancy between traditional methods and our current reality.
But what if, instead of just reacting to change, you can build an organization that thrives on it? One that doesn't just withstand disruption but actually gets stronger as a result? This concept is called antifragility, a powerful mindset and goal for today's HR leaders.
As the pace of change continues to accelerate, organizations that fail to become antifragile will eventually be outrun by those that meet the challenge. That¡¯s why organizations need a proactive approach not only to survive, but also to thrive, in this era of work.
To truly become antifragile, consider these key aspects:
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While feedback and collaboration offer benefits, excessive collaboration can lead to endless review cycles and conflicting opinions. When changes to employee workloads and goals aren¡¯t delivered effectively, they become bottlenecks rather than aids.
As the pace of change continues to accelerate, organizations that fail to become antifragile will eventually be outrun by those that meet the challenge.
This can leave your employees feeling misinformed about the decisions that impact their work, leading to resentment and frustration that could easily be avoided.
Add in shifts in strategy, increased expectations of adopting new technology, and fluctuating economic conditions, and employees quickly become overwhelmed and disengaged.
Managers are also equally affected. Nearly is spent on urgent problems or administrative work. This epidemic of competing priorities is an all-too-common shared reality.
Additionally, feel they have more responsibilities than they can handle, indicating mounting top-down pressure.
When employees and managers are exhausted by change, they're less likely to embrace new initiatives or innovate, often too busy playing catch-up. Inadequately equipped managers render new changes ineffective, as change fatigue contributes to a staggering failing.
Combatting this starts with upleveling your managers and leaders from order takers to proactive change management coaches.
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This current era of work is dismantling old beliefs, making 'what if' scenarios business-critical rather than taboo. Instead of managers being passive recipients of change mandates, they¡¯re being called to step into a new role that actively champions and coaches their teams through change.
Because managers are the bridge between strategy and execution, they need to be equipped to not just communicate change, but to lead their teams through it with empathy and robust support. Empowering managers with tools for transparent conversations builds trust and helps employees view change as an opportunity, not a threat. HR teams can support this transformation in a number of ways. Here are three recommendations:
To truly move from managing change to mastering it, the HR function must evolve from the practice of being employers to being stewards of innovation enablers. This means moving beyond the traditional frameworks and org chart mentalities to strategically rewiring the entire operating model to support continuous change.
This new operating model must be fluid, centered on interactions and end-user needs, and designed to unlock the agility the business now demands. Here are some ways that this can be achieved.
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While the classic HR operating model prioritized efficiency and economies of scale, sometimes at the expense of employee experience, an antifragile HR model is designed around the modern employee lifecycle. It supports flexibility, so that processes don¡¯t crack and splinter under pressure.
Nearly 40% of a manager's time is spent on urgent problems or administrative work.
The HR business partner (HRBP) role, for example, should be unburdened from administrative duties and empowered to serve as a strategic talent leader and trusted coach. With Al taking on the routine and transactional aspects of traditional work, HRBPs can focus on high-priority employee cases and become data-driven problem solvers.
Instead of chasing insights by manually compiling QBR data, their systems should auto-generate a Talent Risk Dashboard, allowing them to immediately escalate high-potential flight risks or critical skill gaps.
Another area to optimize for sustained agility are centers of excellence (COEs). COEs must be fluid as they can¡¯t be slowed down by complicated project requirements and timelines. Instead, they need to provide agile support, acting as a dynamic pool of specialists that can be rapidly deployed to solve critical business problems or accelerate strategic shifts.
Instead of working in silos, a modern COE has the support of a dedicated people relations manager to handle operational work, freeing the HRBP to act as a consultative problem-solver.
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Put simply, an operating model based on static roles and lacking insights into workforce skills will struggle to adapt to disruption.Dynamic talent deployment shifts focus to a skills-first, not role-first, mentality. When HR teams are able to establish a skills-based internal talent marketplace, they create the fluidity in their operating model that¡¯s needed to adapt to change and deploy talent in real-time.
This informed deployment leverages Al to instantly match the right skills to the most critical business needs¡ªmaking it easy for an antifragile organization to know where its people are, what they can do, and where they need to go next.
For example if a software platform suddenly shifts their policies, failing to meet regional regulatory requirements and requiring urgent sunsetting and replacement, an internal talent marketplace can instantly identify and recommend employees with the niche skills required to successfully manage this project, regardless of their current reporting line.
The future belongs to organizations that actively get stronger in the face of disruption, rather than being pummeled by it. By focusing on your people, empowering your leaders, and rewiring your organizational structure to create a more connected and adaptable workforce, you can build an organization that is not just resilient¡ªbut antifragile.
An antifragile organization knows where its people are, what they can do, and where they need to go next.
It prioritizes fluidity in its HR operating model to meet the shifting needs of the business, while balancing employee experiences. This is the new frontier of HR leadership.
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