Change impact assessment template

Fill in the template

CHANGE IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Group
What changes in their work
Size of the impact (Not sure / Low / Medium / High)
Other changes they are carrying
Support they need, and who gives it

1.
   Group: ______________________
   What changes in their work: ______________________
   Size of the impact: ______________________
   Other changes they are carrying: ______________________
   Support they need, and who gives it: ______________________

2.
   Group: ______________________
   What changes in their work: ______________________
   Size of the impact: ______________________
   Other changes they are carrying: ______________________
   Support they need, and who gives it: ______________________

3.
   Group: ______________________
   What changes in their work: ______________________
   Size of the impact: ______________________
   Other changes they are carrying: ______________________
   Support they need, and who gives it: ______________________

4.
   Group: ______________________
   What changes in their work: ______________________
   Size of the impact: ______________________
   Other changes they are carrying: ______________________
   Support they need, and who gives it: ______________________

Get the editable version: this template as an Excel file with a worked example, in the Change Toolkit. Or learn to use it on your own change in the course Leading Change with Evidence.

How to use it well

These steps are practice suggestions, not tested findings.

Be specific about the work. "Affected by the new system" says little. "Enters orders in a new screen, loses the paper backup, gets a new approval step" can be planned for. List processes, tools, roles, skills, reporting lines and location in turn, and write down what changes for each.

Ask the people in the group. Draft the assessment, then ask a few people from each group to correct it. They may see impacts that a planner misses.

Look at the whole load. For each group, list the other changes they are carrying. A small change on top of three others can matter more than a large change on its own. The change saturation entry has a worksheet for counting that load.

Rate the impact, then plan the support. For every High, write the support the group needs and who will give it. If no one can, that is a reason to change the plan or the timing.

Include the managers. The managers in the middle are a group of their own: they can carry their own changes and help their teams with theirs at the same time.

Use it with the communication plan. The size of impact column tells you where a communication plan needs a conversation rather than an email.

What the research says

No study in the Evidence Library behind this site tests a change impact assessment as a tool, so treat this template as a practical one. Research on restructuring and hardship suggests why it is worth doing group by group.

What sits between restructuring and well-being. A systematic review of 39 longitudinal studies of restructuring listed physical demands, job control, communication, provision of information, training, procedural justice, job insecurity and change acceptance among the variables that intervened between restructuring and employee well-being (de Jong et al., 2016, rated Medium in the Evidence Library from its abstract). Several of those, such as training and information, are things an assessment can plan for. The abstract does not say how much each one matters.

Repeated change weighs more. A systematic review of 22 studies of hospital restructuring that included layoffs found significant decreases in job satisfaction, professional efficacy, ability to provide quality care and health among nurses who stayed, along with higher turnover. Nurses with fewer years of experience, or who had been through repeated restructuring, experienced greater effects (Cummings & Estabrooks, 2003, rated Medium from its abstract). That is the reason for the other changes column.

The impact is not the same for everyone. In a field experiment with 173 employees in one plant during a pay freeze, staff were assigned to 12 workshops, and only the last six heard an explanation of why the freeze was fair, given by a researcher. The explanation did not change average attitudes. It mattered for the people the freeze hurt most: hardship went with lower commitment and higher turnover intentions only among those who did not hear the explanation (Schaubroeck et al., 1994, rated Medium after a full-text read). Because the explanation followed workshop order rather than a random draw, read it as one plant's result. Averages can hide the group the change hits hardest.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

1. Week 0
   Before you start

   The impact column is part of the Week 0 baseline, which asks what the team says the change will cost. Ask the groups themselves, then compare against it at every review.

2. 1
   Surface both ways
3. 2
   Make sense together, top included
4. 3
   Start it close to the work
5. 4
   Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace

   The column for other changes they are carrying feeds the second half of Part 4, hold the pace. The Loop's pause rule has no trial yet and stays labeled as judgment.

6. 5
   The middle’s own weather

   Assess the managers in the middle as a group of their own. They can carry their own changes and their team's at once.

7. Ring
   Safe to speak, and speaking changes something

Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.