The ROI of Change
What the data says about projects that invest in people
Shane Tyrrell — Head of Advisory and Capability Enablement, Prosci ANZ
An organisation completes an 18-month workforce restructure. The business case was rigorous. The operating model was designed by people who knew what they were doing. The new structure went live on the date that it was promised. By every project measure it was a clean and successful delivery.
Twelve months later the productivity gains are not there, three senior managers have resigned, and the people who stayed are doing their new jobs through the lens of the old structure — because no one ever gave them a reason to do it differently. The org chart changed. The organisation did not.
I have seen versions of this story more times than I can count. The delivery and project management was technically successful. The change was not. And the cost of that gap rarely shows up in the project close-out report. It shows up six to twelve months later, in numbers that no one connects back to the original investment decision.
The question every project manager should be asking at the start of any significant change: what percentage of our expected benefits actually depend on people doing their jobs differently?
For a workforce restructure this answer is almost always close to 100 percent. That means 100 percent of the value is at risk if the people side of the change is not managed with the same rigour as the technical side.
What two decades of research actually says
Prosci has been tracking the relationship between change management effectiveness and project outcomes for more than 20 years. The data comes from its Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking research — one of the largest and longest-running studies of its kind in the world. The finding at the centre of it has not shifted.
| With excellent change management | With poor change management |
|---|---|
| 88% met or exceeded their objectives | 13% met or exceeded their objectives |
88 percent versus 13 percent. This is not a marginal difference. It is the difference between a project that delivers what it promised and one that technically closes while the value it was meant to create quietly disappears. Projects with excellent change management are 7x more likely to meet their objectives than projects with poor change management.
McKinsey's research on major transformation initiatives points to the same gap from a different angle. Across 40 large-scale change programs, organisations that managed change effectively at every level achieved an average of 143% of expected ROI. Organisations with poor or no structured change management achieved 35%. The business case writes itself.
Where the value actually lives
Prosci frames the ROI of change management around three direct levers of benefit realisation — not abstract measures, but the exact things every people-dependent project lives or dies by:
- Speed of adoption — how quickly people take up the change. Slow adoption means benefits arrive late.
- Utilisation rate — how many impacted people actually make the change. Partial utilisation means only a fraction of the value is ever realised.
- Proficiency — how well people perform in the new way of working. Low proficiency means the change lands but does not perform.
Any one of these can erode the ROI of an otherwise well-run project. All three together will destroy it. In the workforce restructure scenario, none of the people-dependent benefits — the productivity gains, the clear accountabilities, the faster decision-making — materialise unless the people inside the new structure understand why it exists, want to make it work, and have the capability to operate differently. That is an ADKAR problem. And it is entirely solvable if it is addressed deliberately and early.
Three things to do with this insight
1. Name the people-dependent percentage on your current project.
Before your next steering committee, work out what share of the project's expected benefits requires people to change how they work. Put a number to it. Once it is explicit, the conversation about whether to invest in change management becomes a risk conversation, not a soft-skills debate.
2. Use the sponsorship data.
Prosci research shows that projects with extremely effective and engaged sponsors are 79 percent likely to meet their objectives. Projects with extremely ineffective sponsors sit at 27 percent. That is a governance issue, not a change management issue. Take this to your sponsor — tell them what active, visible sponsorship looks like:
- Direct communication to impacted groups
- A coalition of mid-level leaders who are aligned and equipped
- Sustained engagement through delivery, not just at gate reviews
| Extremely effective sponsors | Extremely ineffective sponsors |
|---|---|
| 79% objective success rate | 27% objective success rate |
3. Put adoption in your status report.
Prosci data shows organisations that measure compliance and performance against change objectives are 3x more likely to meet or exceed those objectives than organisations that don't measure them at all. Speed of adoption, utilisation rate and proficiency are trackable. If they aren't in your governance reporting, the people side of your project has no accountability structure — a risk you are choosing to carry.
Why the stakes are higher right now
Most organisations are not running one major change. They are running five, six, or more simultaneously. Workforce restructures sit alongside AI rollouts, operating model redesigns, and digital transformation programs — all competing for the same people's attention and capacity to absorb something new.
In this environment, the assumption that a well-designed solution will be adopted because it is well designed is not a strategy. People do not adopt changes because the org chart is logical or the new system is technically superior. They adopt changes when they understand why, when their managers are leading the transition rather than just announcing it, and when someone has invested in their readiness before asking them to perform.
The data on this has not changed in 20 years. What has changed is the volume of change those same people are being asked to absorb while they are trying to keep the business running. Projects that treat people investment as a compliance activity will keep delivering the same result: a technically closed project with a benefit realisation problem that nobody traces back to the decisions made in the planning phase.
