# Ten planned changes a year, up from two

> Gartner counted 10 planned enterprise changes per employee in 2022, against two in 2016. Over the same years, willingness to support change fell from 74 to 38 percent, on Gartner's own figures.

The Langford Institute, October 4, 2026. Operating Models and Workforce; Data, Data Desk. 3 min read.
Web page: https://www.thelangfordinstitute.org/articles/ten-planned-changes-a-year/

Gartner reported in 2023 that the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes in 2022, up from two in 2016. Over the same period, the share of employees willing to change their work behaviors to support organizational change fell from 74 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2022, according to Gartner's Workforce Change Survey.

| Measure | 2016 | 2022 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planned enterprise changes experienced by the average employee in the year | 2 | 10 | Gartner |
| Employees willing to change work behaviors to support organizational change | 74% | 38% | Gartner Workforce Change Survey |

On Gartner's figures, the change load rose fivefold between 2016 and 2022 while willingness to support change roughly halved. The count is an average per employee per year, not a tally of programs per organization. In a 2023 article in *Harvard Business Review*, Gartner's researchers gave a restructure and the replacement of a legacy technology system as examples of a planned enterprise change.

## Why we use 38 percent

Two versions of the willingness figure circulate. Gartner's own publications give 38 percent for 2022: its October 2022 article "What Will HR Focus on in 2023?" and the first-quarter 2023 issue of *Gartner Business Quarterly*. An article in *Harvard Business Review* by the same Gartner researchers, published in May 2023, gives 43 percent for the same comparison, and 43 percent is the version most often repeated online. We use 38 percent for 2022 because Gartner published it under its own name, in two places. We do not mix the two figures.

A second pairing adds to the confusion. A separate 2022 Gartner finding also uses 43 and 74 percent: only 43 percent of employees with above-average change fatigue intend to stay with their organization, against 74 percent of those with low fatigue. That measures intent to stay, not willingness to change.

## What the numbers do not show

Gartner has not published the sample size behind either series or how it counted planned changes, and it has not disclosed which countries the willingness survey covered. Both Gartner figures describe 2022, and the planned-changes count in particular is often repeated in 2025 and 2026 as if it were current. Gartner has since taken the original pages down, so our links to them go to archived copies.

The two lines moving in opposite directions do not show that more change caused less willingness. Much else changed at work between 2016 and 2022, and these data cannot separate the effects.

Later evidence comes from a different vantage point. In Prosci's 2023 benchmarking study, 80 percent of change professionals said their organization was near, at or past the point of change saturation. Those respondents were practitioners describing their organizations, not employees describing their own experience, and saturation was self-assessed with no common threshold.

> We use 38 percent for 2022 because Gartner published it under its own name, in two places.

## What to count

The best benchmark is an organization's own count, repeated over time.

- List every planned enterprise change that reached employees in the past 12 months, and estimate how many each role experienced. Compare the result with Gartner's 2022 figure of 10 only loosely, because Gartner has not published its counting method.
- Ask the willingness question in a pulse survey, in Gartner's terms: whether employees are willing to change their work behaviors to support organizational change. Track it each quarter against the change count for the same teams.

Prosci's 2023 study gives one reason to keep the list current: respondents who actively managed their portfolio of change projects met or exceeded objectives more often. A quarterly count of your own would show what has happened since 2022.

## Sources

- Cian Ó Móráin and Peter Aykens. "The Transformation Deficit." Gartner Business Quarterly, Q1 2023 (archived copy). https://web.archive.org/web/20231002093039/https://www.gartner.com/en/insights/gartner-business-quarterly/q1-2023
- Gartner. "What Will HR Focus on in 2023?" Gartner, October 4, 2022 (archived copy). https://web.archive.org/web/20240104122253/https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-will-hr-focus-on-in-2023
- Cian Ó Móráin and Peter Aykens. "Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives." Harvard Business Review, May 9, 2023. https://hbr.org/2023/05/employees-are-losing-patience-with-change-initiatives
- Gartner. "Gartner Survey Reveals Leader and Manager Effectiveness Tops HR Leaders' List of Priorities for 2023." Gartner press release, October 12, 2022. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-10-12-gartner-survey-reveals-leader-and-manager-effectiveness-tops-hr-leaders-list-of-priorities-for-2023
- Prosci. "Best Practices in Change Management, 12th Edition: Executive Summary." Prosci, 2023. https://prosci.com/hubfs/Website_English/2.downloads/webinars/EN-EUR%20Webinar/Best-Practices-in-Change-Management-12th-Edition-Executive-Summary.pdf

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Cite as: The Langford Institute, "Ten planned changes a year, up from two," October 4, 2026, https://www.thelangfordinstitute.org/articles/ten-planned-changes-a-year/
Editorial standards: https://www.thelangfordinstitute.org/standards/