From Leading Change to Caring for the People Who Carry It

For much of my career, I have worked in change.

I have helped organizations prepare people for new systems, new processes, new ways of working, new expectations, and new realities. Like many change professionals, I was trained to think about stakeholder engagement, readiness, communication, training, adoption, resistance, reinforcement, and sustainment.

All of those things matter.

But over time, I began noticing something that was much less likely to appear on a project plan:

We spend a great deal of time teaching leaders how to lead change. We spend far less time teaching them how to care for the people who have to carry it.

That distinction has stayed with me. It is also one of the ideas behind ThriveWell Care Collective™.

Because change does not happen to an organization in the abstract. It happens to people.

Change Lives in People, Not Project Plans

On a project plan, change may look like milestones, workstreams, training dates, readiness assessments, go-live activities, and adoption metrics.

For the person experiencing it, change can look very different.

It may mean learning a new system while still doing the old job. It may mean absorbing responsibilities from a reorganized team. It may mean uncertainty about a role, a manager, a schedule, or the future. It can mean answering questions from employees when the leader does not yet have all the answers.

And often, all of that happens while life outside of work continues.

People are still parenting. Caring for aging parents. Supporting spouses. Managing households. Attending appointments. Navigating grief, illness, financial pressure, or other transitions no one at work may know about.

Research continues to show that employees' reactions to organizational change are shaped by more than the change itself. How the change is introduced and implemented, the organizational environment, and employees' perceptions of how the change will affect them all influence their responses (Oreg & Sverdlik, 2026). Change can also create stress and anxiety, particularly when employees face uncertainty about what is happening, how the change will unfold, and what it will mean for their roles and responsibilities (Rafferty et al., 2023; Yin et al., 2024).

That is an important reminder for leaders:

The same change can look manageable from the conference room and feel overwhelming to the person carrying it.

When Change Becomes Cumulative

Most organizations are not implementing one change at a time anymore.

A new technology arrives alongside a restructuring. A workflow changes while staffing remains tight. A new leader comes in. Priorities shift. Another initiative launches before the previous one has fully settled.

Eventually, people may stop reacting to each change individually. They begin reacting to the accumulation of change.

Researchers describe this experience as change fatigue, which can develop when employees face repeated organizational changes and feel increasingly exhausted by the need to continually adapt. Research has linked change fatigue to greater stress and burnout, lower organizational commitment, reduced engagement, and stronger intentions to leave an organization (Bernerth et al., 2011; Cox et al., 2022). More recent research among healthcare professionals has reinforced these findings, identifying similar relationships between change fatigue, burnout, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions (Sarıgül & Uğurluoğlu, 2023).

That matters.

When someone appears disengaged, resistant, skeptical, or slow to adopt another initiative, the problem may not be that they simply "do not like change."

They may be tired.

At ThriveWell Care Collective™, that idea feels especially relevant because many of the people we are designed to serve are already carrying significant responsibility for others: mothers, family caregivers, professional caregivers, and people who care for teams and communities.

For someone who spends much of the day caring, leading, solving problems, responding to others, and adapting to what comes next, another organizational change does not arrive on an empty plate.

It lands on top of everything already there.

Caring for People Is Part of Change Leadership

Caring for employees during change does not mean eliminating accountability or making every transition comfortable.

Some changes are difficult. Some decisions will disappoint people. Organizations still need to move forward.

But leaders can acknowledge that the human experience of change deserves as much intentionality as the implementation plan.

That can mean examining workload instead of simply adding another expectation. It can mean giving people clarity when clarity is available and being transparent when it is not. It can mean involving employees in decisions that affect how they work. It can mean preparing managers to listen, not simply distribute talking points.

It also means creating an environment in which employees can raise concerns, ask questions, admit that they do not understand something, and speak honestly about what is not working.

Amy Edmondson's foundational research on psychological safety demonstrated the importance of creating team environments where people feel able to take interpersonal risks, including speaking up and acknowledging mistakes or uncertainty (Edmondson, 1999).

The World Health Organization has similarly emphasized that supporting mental health at work requires attention to organizational conditions, including workload, flexibility, communication, manager capability, and other psychosocial factors—not simply expecting individuals to become more resilient (World Health Organization, 2022).

That point is critical.

Employee wellness should never become a way of asking people to tolerate unhealthy working conditions more quietly.

A breathing exercise cannot fix chronic understaffing.

A massage cannot repair poor leadership.

Mindfulness cannot make an unreasonable workload reasonable.

Organizations must address the conditions they control.

But once we understand that another piece of the conversation becomes possible.

People Also Need Opportunities to Recover

Changing the workplace and supporting the person are not competing ideas.

We can do both.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Total Worker Health® approach similarly emphasizes an integrated view of worker well-being that begins with improving the conditions of work while also supporting broader worker health and well-being (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 2024).

That philosophy aligns closely with the way we think about care at ThriveWell Care Collective™.

We are interested in what happens in the spaces between all the responsibilities.

When does the person who spends the day responding to everyone else have an opportunity to stop responding?

When does the caregiver receive care?

When does the leader stop leading?

When does someone who has spent months adapting finally have a chance to simply be still?

Through ThriveWell, we are creating restorative experiences that can include massage therapy, chair massage, guided breathing and pranayama, guided relaxation, mindfulness, and grounding. Our services are mobile and can be brought into workplaces, organizations, community settings, and other appropriate environments, as well as offered to individuals.

The purpose is not to promise that one wellness service will erase stress or solve an organizational problem.

It is much simpler than that.

It is to intentionally create opportunities for people to pause, reconnect with themselves, and receive care instead of always being the person providing it.

There is some research supporting breathing practices as one possible tool for stress management. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that breathwork was associated with lower self-reported stress compared with control conditions, although the researchers appropriately cautioned that the evidence base is still developing (Fincham et al., 2023).

Massage therapy also has an established role as a complementary wellness practice, although evidence varies considerably depending on the population and outcome being studied (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, 2018).

That is why ThriveWell approaches these practices as supportive wellness experiences, not medical or mental health treatment.

What If Recovery Were Built into Change?

This raises a question I wish more organizations would ask:

What if supporting people during change were built into the change strategy instead of offered only after people were exhausted?

Imagine a major implementation in which leaders considered not only whether employees had completed training, but whether the workload surrounding training was realistic.

Imagine preparing managers not only to deliver key messages, but to recognize when their teams were overloaded.

Imagine major go-lives that included intentional opportunities for teams to pause and recover.

That might involve a quiet guided breathing session before a demanding day, chair massage during an employee appreciation or go-live event, a guided relaxation experience after an intense implementation period, or wellness programming designed specifically for teams whose work requires them to continually care for others.

These activities do not replace sound organizational change management.

They expand our understanding of what change management can include.

The People Carrying Change Are Often Caring for Everyone Else

This is particularly important in healthcare, education, social services, nonprofit organizations, and other caregiving environments.

Healthcare professionals, for example, frequently experience organizational, technological, regulatory, staffing, and workflow changes while simultaneously being responsible for the needs of patients and families. Research specifically examining nurses has documented the experience of change fatigue in environments characterized by rapid and continuous organizational change (McMillan & Perron, 2020).

The pattern is easy to recognize beyond healthcare as well.

Some employees spend their professional lives caring for patients.

Others care for students, clients, customers, employees, families, or communities.

And when those same people go home, many begin another caregiving shift.

This is one reason CaregiverWell™ is an important part of ThriveWell Care Collective™. We believe organizations should recognize the particular load carried by people whose professional responsibilities already require sustained empathy, attention, and care.

They should not have to reach complete exhaustion before restoration becomes legitimate.

A Different Measure of Successful Change

For years, I thought about successful change primarily through the lens of adoption.

Did people understand the change?

Were they prepared?

Could they perform differently?

Was the organization sustaining the new way of working?

I still believe those questions matter.

But I would add others now.

What did it cost the people who got us there?

Did we create unnecessary exhaustion along the way?

Did people feel that they had a voice?

Did managers know how to support them?

Were employees given time and space to adapt?

Did we recognize that people have finite emotional, cognitive, and physical capacity?

And after asking people to stretch, did we create any opportunity for them to recover?

Those questions are not separate from change leadership.

They are part of it.

That is the connection between my work in change and the work we are building through ThriveWell Care Collective™.

One focuses on helping people move through change.

The other reminds us to care for the people doing the moving.

Perhaps organizations need both.

Because ultimately, organizations do not carry change.

People do.

And if we want them to keep showing up with energy, empathy, and capacity for the people and work that depend on them, we have to begin caring for the people who carry the change.

References

Bernerth, J. B., Walker, H. J., & Harris, S. G. (2011). Change fatigue: Development and initial validation of a new measure. Work & Stress, 25(4), 321–337. doi:10.1080/02678373.2011.634280.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. doi:10.2307/2666999.

Fincham, G. W., Strauss, C., Montero-Marin, J., & Cavanagh, K. (2023). Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 432. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27247-y.

McMillan, K., & Perron, A. (2020). Change fatigue in nurses: A qualitative study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 76(10), 2627–2636. doi:10.1111/jan.14454.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. (2018). Massage therapy for health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (2024). About the Total Worker Health® approach. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461–524. doi:10.1177/0021886310396550.

Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2006). Perceptions of organizational change: A stress and coping perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1154–1162. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1154.

World Health Organization. (2022). WHO guidelines on mental health at work. World Health Organization.