Leading organizational change well is now core to HR’s business impact. Transitions are constant, and Gartner finds that when change becomes an instinctive part of daily work, organizations are three times more likely to see healthy adoption. For HR teams, success often comes down to how a change is managed, not just what’s changing.
This article breaks down the different types of change management you should know, the models that fit each one, and a checklist to help your team quickly identify the type of change your organization is facing.
Contents
What is change management?
7 types of change management to know
Change management models explained
Continuous change management: The new reality for HR
Key change management strategies for HR leaders
How to implement change management
Checklist: Identifying the type of change
What is change management?
Change management is the structured process of guiding people through a shift in how an organization works. It covers the planning, communication, training, and support that help employees adopt a new tool, structure, or way of working.
Done well, it keeps productivity steady and lowers resistance while the change takes hold. The technical side of a change matters, but adoption depends on people, and that is where HR leads.
Why is change management important?
A clear change management strategy prevents confusion by setting clear goals and managing expectations, ensuring business continuity and productivity. Without it, teams struggle to understand the reasons behind changes, priorities shift unpredictably, and communication gaps hinder progress.
Tracking change management metrics such as employee engagement, adoption rates, and feedback also helps HR teams catch problems early and refine the approach. Effective change management is not just about a new strategy; it’s about guiding people with clear communication, the right tools, and steady leadership.
HR’s role in change management
HR plays a multifaceted role in change management. This includes:
- Communication and feedback: Ensuring employees understand the reasons for and benefits of the change, communicating it clearly through emails, FAQ, and town halls. HR also gathers employee feedback to gauge their attitudes toward change.
- Employee training and support: Offering personalized training to upskill the workforce, as well as workshops, e-learning modules, and mentoring programs to develop employees’ confidence and adaptability.
- Aligning change with company values: Modeling the operating system’s policies, processes, and cultural expectations to ensure the system aligns with company values. To secure staff support, they also define how the change aligns with the company’s vision.
- Building the framework for implementing change: Developing change management plans, including policies, communication strategies, and training programs. HR also works with leadership to ensure company-wide alignment and provide a clear roadmap for implementation.
7 types of change management to know
Let’s take a look at the seven types of change management HR teams handle most, each with the model that they can use to manage the transformation.
Tip: In the section Change management models explained below in the article, you can find a detailed overview of these key models, including stages.
1. Organizational change management
Organizational change deals with organizational design, leadership, or operational shifts. This includes mergers and acquisitions, department restructures, layoffs, or leadership changes. This affects both business operations and employees.
Example: When two companies merge, HR must help combine teams, align policies, and manage the uncertainty that comes with significant transitions. The goal is to keep employees informed, reduce resistance, and maintain productivity.
Recommended change management model
When clear planning and execution matter most, Lewin’s Change Management Model is a strong fit. Often credited as the earliest change management model, Lewin’s approach is valued for its simplicity. Its three stages give any structured change a clear beginning, middle, and end, which is why it suits high-stakes moments like mergers and leadership changes.
2. Technological change management
Technological change focuses on adopting new tools or systems, such as CRM software or automation tools. This type of change requires upskilling employees and minimizing workflow disruption.
Example: A hospital transitioning to electronic health records (EHR) must train staff on the new technology. The rollout should happen in phases to ensure widespread adoption.
Recommended change management model
Tech rollouts live or die on individual adoption, not installation. That’s why the ADKAR Model fits so well here. Developed by Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt, ADKAR is built on a simple premise: organizational change only sticks when individuals change first. It’s goal-oriented and works best when adoption depends on people changing their daily behavior, moving each employee through their own change journey across five stages: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.
3. Transformational change management
Transformational change involves large-scale shifts in business strategy or culture, such as HR digital transformation or entering new markets. This type of change requires visionary leadership and sustained momentum.
Example: A traditional bank wants to transition to a fully digital-first service model in order to advance technologically and appeal to younger clients and potential customers.
Recommended change management model
Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model is designed for large, complex change. It’s a top-down sequence that builds urgency, forms a leadership coalition, and uses early wins to carry momentum through a long transformation. The model aims to help create buy-in across the organization, break a big transformation into manageable steps, and use communication and early wins to keep energy up through a long shift.
4. Incremental change management
Incremental change is about continuous, minor modifications rather than overall restructuring. Organizations commonly use it for quality control, process optimization, or minor policy tweaks.
Example: A manufacturing plant wants to optimize assembly line efficiency by implementing a series of necessary changes.
Recommended change management model
The Kaizen approach matches the pace of incremental change. Kaizen comes from Japanese manufacturing and treats improvement as everyone’s job, every day. Rather than one big overhaul, it relies on a steady stream of small changes that compound over time, which makes it easy for employees to absorb.
Change initiatives often go off track when HR teams lack a clear, shared approach. AIHR for Business helps your team identify what type of change they’re managing and apply the right support, communication, and implementation plan.
With AIHR for Business, you can:
✅ Develop your team’s ability to manage organizational change
✅ Build shared standards for communication, training, and employee support
✅ Equip HR professionals to use data and feedback to monitor adoption
✅ Give your team access to practical tools, templates, and learning resources
🚀 Prepare your HR team to guide change with more structure, consistency, and impact.
5. Remedial change management
Remedial change focuses on rectifying past errors or inefficiencies, such as post-merger integration problems or sales decline. Its purpose is to address the root causes of issues and make necessary changes in the system.
Example: A tech startup is planning a restructuring after a failed product launch and needs to reassess its business strategies and the product’s value proposition.
Recommended change management model
A failed product is rarely an isolated problem. It usually traces back to misalignments in structure, leadership, or values. The McKinsey 7-S Framework is valuable here because it looks at seven interconnected elements that enable change: three hard (Strategy, Structure, Systems) and four soft (Shared values, Skills, Style, Staff). Its strength is diagnosis. When something goes wrong, it shows how one problem connects to others across the organization.
6. Developmental change management
Developmental change prioritizes enhancing employee skills or processes (e.g., leadership training and upskilling programs). It aims for long-term growth without disrupting core operations.
Example: A consulting firm plans to roll out a company-wide mentorship program.
Recommended change management model
Most models track external change like systems or processes. The Bridges Transition Model tracks the internal, psychological one, what people feel as they let go of the old and adjust to the new. That makes it well-suited to developmental work, where people need time and space to grow.
7. People-centric change management
This addresses emotional responses to change (e.g., cultural shifts or hybrid work policies). It prioritizes empathy and psychological safety.
Example: A fully remote company introduces a hybrid policy that requires employees to be in the office a set number of days each week. Some feel they are losing the flexibility they had come to rely on.
Recommended change management model
Adapted from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief, the Kübler-Ross Change Curve provides leaders insight into how employees react to change. It’s useful in people-centric change, where resistance stems from fear, uncertainty, or loss of control, and it’s a reminder to lead with empathy through each stage: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
Change management models explained
There’s no single best change management model. The right one depends on the type of change, the amount of emotional adjustment your people face, and how hands-on your leaders can be. Many models fit more than one type, so treat the pairings above as starting points, not rules.
The table below compares the main change management models in an overview, and more detailed explanations of each model follow.
Model | Origin | Core idea | Best suited to |
Lewin’s Change Management Model | Kurt Lewin, 1940s | Three stages: Unfreeze, change, refreeze | Organizational change |
ADKAR Model | Jeff Hiatt, Prosci | Change succeeds one person at a time, across five building blocks | Technological change |
Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model | John Kotter, Harvard | A top-down sequence that builds urgency and momentum | Transformational change |
Kaizen | Rooted in Japanese manufacturing | Small, continuous improvements driven by everyone | Incremental change |
McKinsey 7-S Framework | McKinsey & Company | Aligns seven hard and soft elements of the organization | Remedial change |
Bridges Transition Model | William Bridges | Focuses on the internal, emotional side of change | Developmental change |
Kübler-Ross Change Curve | Elisabeth Kübler-Ross | Maps the emotional reactions people move through | People-centric change |
Lewin’s Change Management Model
The three stages of Lewin’s Change Management Model move people through change in a rhythm that suits a merger or leadership change:
- Unfreeze: Prepare employees by explaining why the change is happening and what problems it will solve.
- Change: Begin the transition. HR should lead communication efforts, support managers, and ensure people have the necessary tools and training.
- Refreeze: Once the change is in place, reinforce it with new policies, procedures, and continued support to make it stick.
Best for: Organizational change. It also adapts well to incremental and technological change, where the steps are predictable.
ADKAR Model
ADKAR is a change management model built around individual adoption. Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt developed it to explain why change succeeds or stalls at the personal level. The name is an acronym for five outcomes each person moves through in order:
- Awareness: Employees must understand why the hospital is adopting EHR. HR can explain how it improves patient care and streamlines processes.
- Desire: Encourage staff to support the transition. Highlighting benefits like reduced paperwork and offering recognition can motivate them.
- Knowledge: Provide hands-on training on EHR functions, workflows, and troubleshooting so staff know how to use the system.
- Ability: Run simulations or supervised usage periods where staff apply their training, with IT or trainers on hand to help.
- Reinforcement: Schedule regular check-ins, feedback sessions, and refresher training to keep usage consistent for current and new employees.
Best for: Technological change. Because it centers on individual readiness, it fits any change where the risk is low adoption, not just tech.
Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model
Created by Harvard professor John Kotter, this model is a top-down sequence that builds urgency, forms a leadership coalition, and uses early wins to carry momentum through a long transformation. In practice, that looks like:
- Creating urgency around digital trends: Highlighting the need to meet regulatory requirements or stay competitive.
- Building a coalition to drive the vision: Forming a group of executives, IT leaders, and department heads to lead the transformation.
- Empowering employees via quick wins: Pilot testing mobile banking in select regions to build momentum and show progress.
- Embedding changes into the culture: Updating policies to make digital-first practices the new normal.
Best for: Transformational change.
Kaizen
The Kaizen approach aims to reduce waste and improve efficiency without overwhelming people, especially in a manufacturing or operational setting. Its main characteristics:
- Encouraging employee feedback to spot inefficiencies: Staff shares daily frustrations, like delays or poor tool placement, to help improve workflow.
- Implementing bite-sized improvements: Based on that feedback, the plant manager rearranges workstations to cut unnecessary movement and adds equipment to reduce repetitive tasks.
- Measuring results and refining processes: Supervisors track production speed, defect rates, and downtime, and staff assess whether their employee productivity rate has improved.
Best for: Incremental change, especially in operational and manufacturing settings.
McKinsey 7-S Framework
Consultants Tom Peters and Robert Waterman developed it at McKinsey in the late 1970s. The core idea: an organization performs well when seven internal elements support and reinforce each other. Here’s a practical illustration of change after a failed startup product launch:
- Strategy: The startup revises its strategy by improving its flagship product, adjusting its value proposition to meet customer needs, and involving all stakeholders.
- Structure: It establishes cross-functional teams to speed up decision-making and improve coordination during product development.
- Systems: Next, it upgrades its project management tools to better monitor progress and introduces data analytics tools to generate customer insights.
- Shared values: The startup then reinforces its commitment to innovation and customer-centricity by hosting town hall meetings, where management shares lessons from the failed launch.
- Skills: It identifies skills related to its user experience design problems and invests in employee upskilling through targeted training programs led by UX experts.
- Style: Management then facilitates an open-door policy that allows everyone to voice their opinions to inform decision-making.
- Staff: Finally, the startup realigns positions to match employees’ skills with organizational needs post-restructuring.
Best for: Remedial change, where a single failure often signals deeper misalignment.
Bridges Transition Model
William Bridges drew a useful line between change, which is external and situational, and transition, which is internal and psychological. His model focuses on the transition, making it suitable to manage change that asks people to grow into something new over time. It guides employees through three stages:
- Ending stage: Employees may feel apprehensive about the shift from informal mentoring to a structured program.
- Neutral zone: Employees learn the new mentorship framework, including guidelines, roles, and expectations for mentors and mentees. HR provides feedback and assistance during the transition.
- New beginning: The firm integrates mentorship into its culture by incorporating it in performance reviews, career development plans, and new hire onboarding.
Best for: Developmental change, where employees gradually build on what they already do and need time to adjust internally as expectations shift.
Kübler-Ross Change Curve
Originally a model of grief, this curve helps leaders anticipate the emotional path people take through difficult change. It isn’t a step-by-step plan so much as a lens for reading resistance and responding with empathy through the following stages:
- Denial: To counter employee resistance, managers should explain the reason for the transformation, emphasizing the benefits.
- Anger: Managers should acknowledge employee resentment by allowing them to voice their concerns and address them, thereby reducing their frustration.
- Bargaining: Employees may attempt to negotiate by proposing alternative arrangements. Managers should listen to suggestions but explain that work arrangements should be consistent across the organization for fairness and efficiency.
- Depression: Managers may expect low morale due to employees’ difficulty adapting to new workflows. They can offer emotional support in team-building activities (e.g., virtual coffee chats) and encourage open dialogue about challenges.
- Acceptance: Employees may start to acclimatize to the hybrid work schedule and new ways of working. Managers can reinforce this positive behavior by offering ongoing training to further support employees.
Best for: People-centric change involving fear, uncertainty, or a sense of loss.
Key change management strategies for HR leaders
Whatever type of change your team is running, a handful of strategies apply across all of them. These are the levers HR pulls on almost every initiative, regardless of which model you’ve chosen.
- Map your stakeholders early: Identify who the change affects, who can influence it, and who sponsors it. Name an owner for each group so accountability is clear before work starts. A stakeholder map also shows where support and resistance sit, and surfaces the executive sponsors the team leans on when momentum dips.
- Build a communication plan, not one-off messages: Change fails quietly when people stop hearing about it. Agree on who communicates what, through which channel, and how often, then hold that rhythm through the initiative. A structured communication plan keeps two-way channels open so employees can raise concerns early.
- Close the skill gaps before they stall adoption: Review the capabilities the change demands, then reskill or upskill through workshops, micro-learning, or coaching. People resist what they don’t feel ready for, so enablement is often the difference between a change that sticks and one that slides back.
- Treat resistance as information: Resistance usually signals a real concern, whether fear of job loss, unclear benefits, or change fatigue from too many concurrent initiatives. Surface it early through feedback sessions and listen before responding. Addressing the root cause builds more buy-in than pushing harder on the message.
- Measure adoption, not just activity: Rolling out training isn’t the same as people using the change. Track change management metrics like adoption, engagement, and productivity, and review them on a set cadence so leaders can act on what the data shows.
- Manage the full change load, not one change at a time: Most organizations run several changes at once. Keep a simple view of what’s live across the business so you can sequence initiatives, protect teams from overload, and reinforce each change into everyday systems like onboarding and performance reviews until it sticks.
Continuous change management: The new reality for HR
Most change management models assume a clear start and end. You plan the change, roll it out, and help people settle into the new way of working. That approach still fits big, defined shifts like a merger or a new HRIS.
Change no longer arrives one project at a time, though. AI tools, automation, and shifting business models push updates through organizations on a rolling basis. Employees often adopt one new system while the next is already in motion.
For HR, this reshapes the work. You shift from delivering one-off change programs to developing a workforce that adapts as standard practice.
Continuous change management is the response. It treats change as a constant condition and focuses on building the capacity to keep adapting, rather than managing one transition at a time. In practice, that means:
- Equipping managers to lead through ambiguity, because they carry most of the change on the ground.
- Building change skills into everyday roles, so employees expect and handle change as part of the job.
- Communicating often and early, so updates feel routine, and people trust what they hear.
- Watching for change fatigue, since constant change wears people down and raises the risk of burnout.
Here’s what that could look like in practice: A mid-sized company rolls out an AI writing assistant to its marketing team. Before the team has fully adjusted, the company adds AI features to its CRM and analytics tools, so employees are learning new systems continuously. Instead of running a separate change program for each tool, HR builds ongoing support like drop-in training, peer champions, and regular check-ins, so the team can absorb each new change as it comes.
How to implement change management
Implementation is where a change plan becomes real. HR guides the process across five phases:
Preparation
HR works with the project lead or change team to define the change’s scope, objectives, and business case. Establish why the change is happening and who owns each part.
From there, map how it will affect different employee groups and work processes. This is also where the stakeholder map and sponsor alignment take shape, before anything is announced.
Planning
Agree on HR’s role with leadership and department heads, whether that’s communication, training, or policy, and make it clear across the business who is doing what.
Line up the resources each phase will need, and set the change management metrics and review points before launch rather than after. A structured change management plan keeps these moving parts in one place.
Implementation
Once the change goes live, make sure managers and employees have what they need to stay productive. Equip managers with talking points and FAQs so they can support their teams, and offer drop-in sessions or office hours. A phased rollout lets you catch problems before they scale, so pace the launch rather than switching everything on at once.
Support
Right after launch is when adoption is most fragile, so it’s critical to empower and support employees through the transition. Develop resource centers or toolkits that help people navigate the new systems and structures, and check on early adopters’ progress. Stay in close contact with department heads about any bottlenecks or problems they run into, and be visible and accessible as often as you can.
Evaluation
The final phase is about tracking progress, gathering feedback, and making adjustments. Review the metrics you set in the planning phase, then survey employees or run focus groups after implementation to collect honest feedback.
This shows you what worked and what didn’t, so you can refine your approach for the next change. Communicate the results and recommend any further support the change needs.
Checklist: Identifying the type of change
Use this quick diagnostic to align your team on the type of change before choosing the right approach to manage it.
- ✔ Does the change primarily involve shifts in company structure, leadership, or operations? (Organizational change)
- ✔ Does the change mainly focus on implementing new software, hardware, or digital systems? (Technological change)
- ✔ Does the change represent a fundamental shift in the organization’s culture, strategy, or business model? (Transformational change)
- ✔ Does the change involve small, gradual improvements to existing processes or systems? (Incremental change)
- ✔ Does the change address a crisis or significant performance issue requiring immediate action? (Remedial change)
- ✔ Does the change focus on improving existing skills, processes, or performance within the organization? (Developmental change)
- ✔ Does the change center on the emotional and cultural impact on your workforce? (People-centric change)
To sum up
Whether adopting new technology or making simple, continuous improvements, each type of change presents unique challenges and calls for a different approach. The right change management model helps organizations adapt faster, meet less resistance, and maintain productivity.
HR sits at the center of every phase of change, from planning and communication to training and evaluation. With the right approach, HR teams can turn even the most disruptive change into an opportunity for growth and resilience.
