Frontline workers see three times more negative change

A female worker in a blue uniform operates machinery in a textile factory. Photo: EqualStock IN/Pexels

A recent survey of 10,018 employees across ten countries found that 26% of frontline employees reported negative transformation experiences, nearly three times the rate of senior management. The survey, titled “2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust at Work”, revealed a significant divide in how transformation is perceived depending on one’s position in the organizational hierarchy. The study covered a range of industries and regions, including India, China, Japan, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, the UK, the US, and Canada, providing a broad view of workplace sentiment.

Among senior management respondents, classified as executives in the study, 9% reported a negative transformation experience. The difference becomes more pronounced when mixed experiences are included. Forty-nine per cent of employees in non-management roles described their transformation experience as less than positive, compared with 17% of senior management respondents. These contrasting figures suggest that perception of change varies sharply across hierarchical levels.

Transformation Experiences Vary by Role

The findings suggest that companies may be evaluating transformation through the experiences of those who have the greatest influence over it, rather than considering the impact on all employees. The disparity indicates that an organization can deem change successful based on the views of designers, even though the individuals who execute the changes perceive a fundamentally different reality than the decision-makers.

Globally, 76% of employees experienced at least one major workplace transformation during the previous 12 months, with the integration of AI being the most common change, experienced by 53% of respondents.

The survey highlighted regional variation, noting that in India the transformation rate climbed to 96%, the highest level among all ten surveyed nations.

Beyond AI rollouts, respondents reported strategy shifts (47%), culture changes (45%), and layoffs or workforce reductions (38%) as other prevalent transformation types.

Senior management is more likely to participate in designing transformation and understand its strategic rationale, while frontline staff are more likely to encounter its operational consequences. This difference in perspective can lead to a mismatch between the intended outcomes of transformation and the actual experience of workers.

Workload and Control Matter

The report identifies added work without additional pay as the leading reason employees give for a negative transformation experience. Those who reported positive experiences, on the other hand, cited more manageable workloads, followed by strategic alignment, adequate guidance, easier customer service, and opportunities for growth.

The ability to influence how change affects them also matters. Among those who reported at least one good transformation experience, 67% attributed it to being empowered to adapt on their own terms. This included receiving guidance, having time to plan, developing skills, and being heard.

These findings challenge the tendency to treat resistance to change primarily as a communication problem. While explaining the benefits of transformation is important, communication cannot compensate for a process that makes people’s jobs substantially harder.

The analysis suggests that employees are not necessarily resisting change itself, but rather the loss of control over how that change affects their work.

As enterprises continue to implement transformations, they must consider the impact on all employees, not just those in senior management. The survey found that 59% of employees worry about being monitored by their employer without consent, with 71% of senior management respondents expressing this concern.

In the subset of nine countries where the question was asked—excluding China due to the sensitivity of the questions—India stood out, with 80% of employees expressing monitoring concerns, the highest proportion across those markets.

The survey notes that 40% of employees with positive transformation experiences expressed enthusiasm or passion for the growing workplace use of AI, compared with 18% of those with negative experiences, suggesting that technology adoption cannot be separated from workers’ wider experience of organizational change.