How to help overcome your employees’ fear of the new

How to help overcome your employees' fear of the new

Every change process generates doubts and fears in employees. For this reason, the objective of this article is to find out and answer questions such as "what is the new employee afraid of and why", but also what are the effects of "this fear" in the company and, very importantly, what strategies you can use to beat it.

Fear of the new in organizations. What is it?

That emotions occupy the central axis of our lives, both personal and professional, is no secret. However, certain emotions are negative when they affect the performance of workers, such as fear.

As discovered by Dr. Deming in 1989, fear in workers causes the loss of corporate culture , since it strips them of their pride.

But... what is fear? Fear is a fundamental, necessary and universal emotion that we all feel. It can be both objective and subjective, real or imaginary, rational or irrational, and it depends on the person who suffers from it. It is usually accompanied by fear, helplessness, apprehension, and loss of confidence...

Fear will depend to a large extent on the existing economic and social context, but the feeling of fear, like the rest of the feeling, is subjective and arises internally as a consequence of emotion and thought.

Therefore, faced with the same reality, a person can interpret it negatively and react with emotions and thoughts that make them feel afraid, while other people do not. Thus, there are certain extreme situations that objectively cause a feeling of fear in most people, while other situations will depend on the assimilation and approach that each person gives to that situation.

The reality itself is not the problem, but the interpretation we make of it , and how we feel will depend, to a large extent, on how we interpret that reality. And as a consequence of all this, we will act in one way or another.

Knowing how to detect when you are having a negative or distorted thought of reality that makes us feel afraid and that is disproportionate to reality is important to be able to face it .

It is part of the complex internal process of each person's thoughts, taking into account that every day a person has around 60,000 thoughts. Carrying out an internal analysis of what negative thoughts are causing us the feeling of fear and making an effort to give importance to positive thoughts can help us overcome them. How To Overcome Fear Of Organizational Conflict

But, even if it is the same emotion, it has several types. Let's see what they are.

Types of employee fears

If we look at these fears from a productivity and quality perspective, we will see that there are different types of fear...

• Not surviving (losing a job, not making ends meet)
• To rejection (to stand out, not to adapt, to relate to others)
• To failure (to make mistakes, to make decisions, to assume responsibilities)
• When changing (office, position, city)
• To the loss of power (not to be recognized socially, to lose the influential position)
• To boss

Speaking of fear, of emotion, we see its negativity for the person and the company, but what effects can fear to have on the company?

Effects of fear on the company

As we have seen in the previous point, fear is a universal and subjective emotion, whose effects will always depend on how they are managed by the person who has it . However, it has direct effects on the employees of a company, such as:

1. workers silence
2. Stop creativity and innovation
3. sick with fear
4. Deterioration of the work environment
5. Resistance to change - link to Change Management
6. Productivity drops more and more -link to productivity formula
7. I feel “unable to make decisions”
8. Inefficiency in the direction and management of employees
9. Poor performance and employee satisfaction

In the workplace, it is important to nurture small daily successes to achieve security. Fear causes a lack of confidence and involvement, which is why continuous support and accompaniment of the teams is necessary, especially in difficult situations.

It is necessary to provide tools to deal with situations of change, having to use assertive communication and active listening.

So that fears or new situations do not negatively affect health, we must keep the emotional thermometer in mind in organizations. The middle managers of the companies, who are in direct contact with the day-to-day workforce, they must be given the necessary skills and tools to support the teams and be the vector of change.

In the new reality of organizations, with the generalization of remote work caused by the Covid-19 health crisis, the personal sphere is linked to the professional sphere, which makes emotions receive special attention, having to meet the demands of Template.

Now that we know what it is and its effects, we are going to find out what strategies we can use to learn to know, live with and overcome fear.

Strategies to overcome fear

The benefits obtained, both for the person and for the company, when fear is managed in favor of fear, are abundant and well-known: less turnover and absenteeism, fewer complaints and claims, better communication and coordination, greater confidence, as well as an improvement in processes and innovation.