Change is not just something leaves do. Change occurs in our efforts to improve profitability, achieve greater customer satisfaction, reduce operating expenses, enhance talent recruitment and retention, and more.

But change is not easy. Simplified surely, here's why not:

Change alarms employees.

Alarm impacts employee engagement.

Employee engagement affects reception of change.

Reception of change determines performance (real-time and as viewed by management regarding "did he accept the changes?").

Let's look a little deeper, but still simply.

* Change affects how and how much the employee engages in her (changed) job requirements.

* Employee's level of engagement affects how and how well he reacts to the changed requirements.

The fully engaged (positive) employee quickly identifies the change and its effects. She likely accepts the change (assuming it's been well thought out and intro'd in a timely manner) as a new component of her expected performance. She then assimilates the changes into her behavior, into her engagement.

Her relatively seamless step up to new expectations is performance improvement in and of itself.

The non-engaged (neutral) employee digs his heels in. The status quo is his comfort zone, and he resists changing that comfort. In effect, he extends non-engagement from his current work to the required changes as well.

Ironically, he might possibly improve his performance in "the way things were" because he unconsciously engages in protecting the status quo. But he's not performing well around the change(s).

The disengaged (negative) employee reacts perhaps extremely to the change. She verbally finds fault with the change, reasons to stand against it, and problems it is likely to produce. Her disengaged behavior carries right over to the introduced change, pro forma.

She probably allows the resistance to spill over to other aspects of her performance, even increasing the disengagement with which she approaches work assignment.