Cutting through ambiguity: HR’s role in change

At the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) change is constant, as in most organisations today. But where the New York-based organisation is different is that it soon recognised that if an employee group is burdened with competing priorities, pushing these employees to go first in a change is an exercise in futility.  

So, rather than simply pushing change initiatives onto employees, DTCC made a deliberate pivot. Before deciding who would lead new initiatives it asked two simple questions:

• Do these teams have the willingness to change?
• Do they have the capacity right now to take this on?

Teams that scored high on both fronts became early adopters. Those without either readiness or capacity were spared from leading the charge until they could catch their breath.

DTCC made a direct intervention to cut through ambiguity – the fog that leaves employees confused, overwhelmed and resistant. And according to Jérôme Mackowiak, director of advisory in Gartner’s HR practice, tackling ambiguity is the single most effective step HR leaders can take to improve employee experience during change.

“Ambiguity is one and a half times more likely to challenge employees than any other aspect of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity),” Mackowiak explained during a Gartner’s webinar for CHROs. 

We often believe employees struggle with the speed or frequency of change. In reality it is not knowing what change means for them personally – what to prioritise, what stays the same and what exactly is expected of them – that creates the greatest resistance.

Ambiguity is the change killer hiding in plain sight

Gartner’s research, involving more than 3,500 employees, found that the average employee now experiences more than one significant organisational change every month. “There is no time to recharge batteries. Continuous improvement feels like continuous chaos,” says Mackowiak. 

But more tellingly, fewer than half of those employees reported having the information they needed for their most recent organisational change to be successful. This is despite employees saying that understanding the wider context of the change is the top lever for helping them adapt to it.

“Even though we try our best to share what we know and train managers and leaders on how and what to communicate, there are still going to be information gaps that keep our employees from understanding the change,” Mackowiak shares. “A lack of information leads to speculation; speculation leads to wrong assumptions and wrong assumptions lead to change resistance.”

For HR leaders this is where the opportunity lies. Unlike volatility or complexity, which are often outside their direct control, ambiguity is something they can address.

A three-step framework to reduce ambiguity

The most effective organisations, Gartner found, actively work to clear ambiguity at three critical points in the change journey:

1. When employees first learn about the change
2. As they prepare for the change
3. While they undergo the change

So how can leaders turn the theory into action? Here are three practical examples highlighted by Mackowiak.

1. Identifying information gaps early

Allstate Insurance took a proactive approach. Instead of waiting until after rollout to collect feedback, (when most organisations conduct pulse surveys that do little more than tick a box), Allstate involved employees at the proposal stage.

“They get employee feedback on a proposed change before it happens so they can pressure-test and iterate where needed,” Mackowiak explains. “If you don’t pull forward these efforts to engage with employees earlier you’re giving employees time to make up their own myths about the change.”

These myths harden into stories of uncertainty and distrust. By pulling feedback loops forward Allstate was able to identify where the information gaps were and adjust communication and design before mistakes were made. This made their employees feel part of the change process rather than recipients of it. As Mackowiak says, we need to make sure change is done ‘through’ employees not ‘to’ employees.

The lesson for HR and people leaders is, do not communicate change as a done deal. Involve employees in shaping the narrative. Be curious about what they do not understand.

2. Gauging readiness and prioritising capacity

With the average employee experiencing five times as many changes as they did seven years ago, Gartner’s research finds that employee willingness to support organisational change has dropped 41% since 2016. “Eventually our employees will drop the many balls we throw at them as they don’t have the capacity to juggle them,” says Mackowiak. HR professionals can help leaders to better prioritise change, he adds. 

Back to DTCC’s example - its simple yet strategic prioritisation exercise changed how the company approaches transformation. Using a quadrant model it maps willingness to transform on one axis and capacity to transform on the other.

“Where those two intersect then that’s who they choose to go first to lead the change and to be the organisation’s early adopters,” says Mackowiak. “These groups are not only excited about the change but have the capacity to undertake change.”

This creates ‘force multipliers’ – teams who not only adapt quickly but become champions of change for others. Instead of exhausted employees dropping balls under the weight of competing priorities DTCC created an organic wave of adoption.

HR leaders can do the same. Before launching new initiatives they should challenge senior teams with two questions: Are these employees ready? Do they have the capacity? If the answer to either is no, adjust.

3. Empowering teams to contextualise change

There is often a big disconnect between how leaders think work gets done and how work actually gets done. Those who are closest to the work know best how their work needs to adapt to support a particular change – and what needs to stay the same to support change.

At the Laurentian Bank in Canada hybrid work was a challenge, in particular how to create team norms around it. Rather than impose top-down policies they asked teams to co-create norms through a four-step process:

• Identify their own team persona and compare it to ways of working across the wider organisation
• Look at how team preferences balance with stakeholder needs
• Map out key moments where different approaches (together versus independent, remote versus in-person, synchronous versus asynchronous) should be prioritised
• Define clear ‘rules of the road’ – not only what they would do but what they would not do as a team.

This approach gave teams ownership over how change translated into their day-to-day. The result was not just smoother adoption but also increased trust.

“Only 38% of employees say their leaders encourage them to experiment to support change,” Mackowiak says. “We have to equip them with tools and guidelines to try new ways of working, and then it becomes a game-changer.”

What this means for HR leaders

Reducing ambiguity requires us to be deliberate. Instead of just thinking about how the organisation is experiencing VUCA, think how employees experience it.  

So how do you build this into your practice?

• Start before launch: Pressure-test change plans with employee input and adapt accordingly.
• Prioritise with honesty: Use readiness and capacity as your filters for deciding which teams go first.
• Make space for contextualisation: Equip teams with frameworks to co-design how change will land in their specific contexts.

Ambiguity thrives in silence. It feeds on assumptions and festers in rushed communications and top-down directives. For people leaders the job is to break that silence. By creating moments of clarity – early, often and contextually – you not only improve the employee experience but accelerate adoption and reduce resistance.

The fog will never disappear completely. Change will continue to stack and swirl. But your role, as an HR or people leader, is to clear just enough for your people to see their next step.

“It's about thinking differently about what we do and how we do it. How are your managers helping their teams navigate ambiguity right now? How are you empowering your teams or helping them?” Mackowiak asks. “By taking a clear step to identify and resolve ambiguity in the change process we will build confidence for change and create a better change experience for our employees.”