What about me? The impact of employee change agents’ person-role fit on their job satisfaction during organisational change

ABSTRACT Organisational changes do not always achieve their intended outcomes and have been found to have negative consequences on employee wellbeing. It has been argued that this is because change processes need to support employees adopting the change. In the present study, we study an organisational change aimed to improve employee capacity to provide eHealth services. To support the change, employees were appointed change agents and trained in running seminars to facilitate the change. Using Person-Job fit as our theoretical framework, we proposed that change agents who perceived they possess the necessary competencies to deal with the change agent role (Person-Role fit) would feel more efficacious in this role and be more satisfied with their jobs post-change. We suggested that role-specific self-efficacy mediated the relationship between person-role fit and job satisfaction and that the most dissatisfied pre-change would perceive the greatest improvements in job satisfaction. Using a paired t-test, repeated measures analyses and mixed methods mediation testing, we found that change agents (N = 110) reported increased job satisfaction post-change. Change agents who were dissatisfied with their jobs pre-change, but perceived a good fit to the change agent role, reported the greatest improvements in job satisfaction. No significant results were found for self-efficacy.