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Human Resources Q & A

By Tim Rutledge
October 14, 2008

The question:
I’m the executive director of a small agency. I believe that people need to be constantly renewing themselves by engaging in educational activities. This allows them to grow as human beings and employees, and helps to equip them with the coping skills that they need to deal successfully with change. However, some of my employees, despite my encouragement, just don’t want to learn. One of them said to me: “I don’t want to grow or develop. I just want to stay in this job for the rest of my career.” I simply don’t understand this attitude. Why don’t people want to learn?

Tim's Response:

For people who place value on education and learning, it can seem incomprehensible that there are those who don’t. For people who look for change and variety in their work lives, it can be baffling to encounter those who want to do the same thing year in and year out.

It really comes down to how individuals view change and their relationship with change. This is an old and well-trodden topic, but it bears the occasional revisit.

Why do people resist change, particularly the kind of change represented by learning opportunities? If I enjoy learning, and welcome change, it may be a head scratcher to confront people who seem threatened by what I welcome.

The first step toward understanding is to accept that the resistance is real, and not just laziness. In other words, it’s not a sign of an underlining character flaw. Here are some suggestions as to why this resistance may occur.

1. Fear of failure. Some people steer clear of learning opportunities because they think they won’t learn. They may have had a difficult time in school, leading to the formation of the perception that if they try to learn something new, failure is more likely than success.

2. The feeling that they have more to lose than to gain from change. This feeling produces an overall conservative approach to life in general, not just to work. We all make dozens of little decisions every day when we have to make a choice, no matter how small. We ask ourselves: "Do I have more to gain from this new thing, or more to lose? Where does the balance of consequences tilt - toward the positive or the negative?" Our life experiences have built up in us a bias toward one or the other. If our bias is to the negative, we require that the change provide us with overwhelming evidence of its positive value for us before we adopt it.

3. The wish to avoid stress. Change produces stress, even change that we think is good. This is because we need to adapt to any change, and adaption requires energy. If someone is undergoing significant change in another part of her life, asking that person to change at work by learning something new is asking her to take on even more stress, stress that she may see herself as unable to cope with.

4. A history of negative feedback. People whose formative years were punctuated with criticism, particularly from parents, may see themselves as unable to learn and to get things right. It’s only natural for someone with that self-perception to stick with what they know and can do successfully. They tend to view change as a reckless gamble that they’re bound to lose.

5. Poor coping skills. There are those who have gone through life surrounded by people who coped for them. Their own ability to deal successfully with change is limited, and they know it.

So, should we just accept that some of our employees won’t learn, won’t change, won’t adapt, and will stick with what they know for the rest of their working lives? The clincher for me is that we all live in a world that is constantly changing, and that change is not going to stop. Adaptation to change is a necessity of life, and of work.

Employees who want to remain employed need to change from time to time. They need to learn how to do new things from time to time. Someone who doesn’t want to do this is blocking a position in the organization from being occupied by someone who understands the need to grow and change. They are preventing your organization from adapting to the changes that the outside world will inevitably throw at it.

Last month I was in Washington, DC delivering employee engagement training to the management team of a large, national, member-funded association. We spent some time working with the notion that employee retention can stem not just from engagement, but also from the inertia of employees who are just stuck. They would leave if they could, but they don’t know how. Or, they doubt their ability to land another job, especially if they’ve been with their current employer for a long time. So there they remain.

The challenge for leaders is to ask to what extent the organization can succeed with employees who don’t want to learn or change. My suggestion...a very small extent. And the smaller the organization, the less inertia it can absorb. Leaders owe it to their organizations to ensure that when changes are required, they have in place employees who will adapt as the changes dictate.

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To submit a question for a future column, or to comment on a previous one, please contact editor@charityvillage.com. No identifying information will appear in this column. For paid professional advice about an urgent or complex situation, contact Tim directly.

Tim Rutledge, Ph.D., is a veteran human resources consultant and publisher of Mattanie Press. You can contact him at tim_rutledge@sympatico.ca or visit www.gettingengaged.ca.

Disclaimer: Advice and recommendations are based on limited information provided and should be used as a guideline only. Neither the author nor CharityVillage.com make any warranty, express or implied, or assume any legal liability for accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in whole or in part within this article.

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