“High-stakes” projects are not only those of downsizing (redundancies, redeployment, legal constraints, worries about the future…) or of deep organisational transformation (internally or externally driven). Some are the result of growth.
And contrary to what some imagine, certain sectors grew during the health crisis. And not only in health and social care.
During those months, most teams were scattered. And yet output had to continue, regardless of morale, isolation, the lack of real interaction, and sometimes the distress caused by people’s personal situations or anxiety about the future. For some teams, it was therefore necessary not only to carry on “as usual”, but also to welcome new recruits to meet growing needs.
Hiring and “un-hiring” at a distance
Many of you will have heard of employees recruited (or even “un-hired”) remotely, sometimes without ever meeting their manager – let alone their colleagues – “for real”. These situations were one of the reasons why many companies organised collective moments, on a timetable that depended on each one’s sensitivity to risks and needs. To get back together.
Beyond this necessary (re)discovery, this bond to be established, these very unusual arrivals had other consequences. Less visible impacts, but at least as destabilising, or even dangerous.
The arrival of new recruits is always good news. Because they bring new skills and new energy. And also because they make it possible to question habits acquired over time.
So it is always good news for the group, but it also means changes. And not only formal ones. Informal relationships too, which involve something other than hierarchical power. Something that is sometimes forgotten, out of sheer habit. But which newcomers question. Systematically. Sometimes explicitly, but often indirectly, or even invisibly.
The famous “resistance to change”
And when these changes in interactions and habits lead to dysfunctions, or even hostility (the famous “resistance to change”), there are two possibilities.
Questioning ourselves collectively, with trust and benevolence – all the more so as these new arrivals are part of a growth that opens up prospects for everyone. Or finding a “culprit”. And very often that is the manager. This is legitimate (assigning responsibility, that is, not “guilt”), since the manager carries, or at least embodies, the changes. All the more so when the manager, too, is “new”…
Faced with this difficulty, the temptation may arise to adopt this logic of “guilt” and look for the weaknesses of the manager in question. With tools to assess their “competence”… all in the unprecedented context of the health crisis and “remote management”. But the far more courageous choice was made to look at the collective dynamic as a whole, at the interactions and at individual commitments.
And of course, the “resistance to change” went far beyond the necessary adjustments linked to the arrival of a new manager – with their strengths and weaknesses, admittedly, but quite simply with all the specific features that make them unique.
Here again, it might have been “simpler” to find an isolated, “technical” reason. But it was the choice of interpersonal and collective synergies that made it possible to take into account all the consequences of the past months, of the changes chosen and of those that emerged, in order to seize every opportunity they offered. And to launch a dynamic that brought together the goodwill of everyone, old hands and newcomers alike. Thus preparing the future, and the “return on investment” of the recruitment carried out.
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