Understand the 5 social needs in the SCARF model.
Applause or blank stares. The reaction you get when you present a change depends on whether it positively or negatively impacts employees' perceptions of status, safety, autonomy, cohesion and fairness. This is the essence of the SCARF model.
Avoid activating employees' fear center
New organization of home and nursing care in Sønderborg Municipality.
For you as a manager, there is therefore good reason to take an interest in how you lead change so that employees feel that their five social needs are met and their fear center is not activated.
Research shows that when we experience threat signals, the resources available to us in the frontal lobe decrease significantly. And that's problematic. It limits your employees' ability to perform complex tasks, increases the risk of errors and reduces their cognitive abilities. In short: They perform worse.
Learn more about change management through our knowledge universe
In most organizations, creating change and development is an ongoing challenge. Whether it's time pressure, process fatigue or resistance to change that makes it difficult to reach the finish line.
On this page you can find some of our articles and videos on the topic. Read along and get input on how to succeed with change management.
The five social needs
Status: How important am I?
- Status is about how important we feel in relation to others. If we feel better than others, our sense of status increases, while if we feel better than others, our sense of status decreases. Therefore, consider how you can provide your employees with skills that support their learning and recognize them when they make progress.
Security: Can I predict the future?
- To fulfill the need for certainty, your key word as a leader is "transparency". Clearly communicate both what you know and what you don't know about the future so that your employees have an informed basis to act on - and as a result, a reduced sense of uncertainty.
Autonomy: Do I feel in control of my surroundings?
- Do employees feel in control of the way they perform their tasks? To increase the sense of autonomy during change, you can articulate that the destination is predetermined, but that the path to get there can take several different forms. In other words, the desired outcome of the change is not up for discussion, but employees can help clarify how to get there.
Belonging: Do I feel part of the community?
- Organizational change can threaten your employees' sense of belonging. You may have an eye for supporting the creation of new communities. Specifically, this could be shake-up activities for new teams/departments or the establishment of buddy schemes, mentoring programs or similar, each of which can support the building of safe, social relationships in the workplace.
Fairness: Is there an equal distribution between solar and wind?
- The need for fairness is about the extent to which your employees perceive that the change results in a fair distribution of "sunshine and wind" for everyone involved. Here, you must try to reduce their perception of unfairness by increasing transparency. What were the objective and professional criteria behind the decision?
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Succeed with your implementation.
With a degree in implementation and change management, you'll be equipped to succeed with your current or future implementation efforts, whether it's a new strategy, process, program or decision.
The program for those who work with development and implementation tasks that require process and goal understanding, tools and methods to manage implementation processes.
