Download the full 2026 OCM Trends Report here.

This free industry report outlines industry perspectives and expert advice from our team of change management consultants. You can view an excerpt of the report below, and if you’d like to discuss any of the trends or other challenges in the OCM space, connect with our team today.

Key OCM Trends

It’s clear that the shifts taking place across industries are reshaping how organizations approach change. The growing recognition of OCM as a strategic priority, the need to strengthen individual readiness, and the push for training methods that endure over time all signal that organizations are preparing for a future where change is constant. At the same time, the adoption of data-driven decision-making, AI-related training, and modern development tools shows a commitment to staying current in an evolving landscape.

Clarkston’s change management consultants have highlighted the top OCM trends that businesses should consider and keep top-of-mind throughout the year:

1. Enacting an Overall OCM Strategy
2. A Focus on Data-Driven Change
3. Change Enablement vs. Change Management
4. Change Management for Data and AI Initiatives
5. Sustainable Training
6. Modern Training Tools

Trend 1:

Enacting an Overall OCM Strategy 

Businesses are focusing on creating an overall OCM strategy for their business rather than handling change on a case-by-case basis. Historically, OCM has often been considered something that strictly impacts specific projects or initiatives. While OCM may be considered in those spaces, it’s not often considered at a program or organization level. Rather than focusing on specific areas to manage change within, we’re seeing that businesses are considering an overall strategy and goals that align with their vision.  

According to data collected in 2023, only 12% of organizations report that they have been able to sustain their transformation goals for more than three years. In a world where things are constantly changing and evolving, having an overarching change management strategy allows businesses to adapt to change more easily, especially in cases where change can’t always be anticipated.  

Creating a comprehensive OCM strategy and goals that provide guidance on what steps your company should take when a change occurs allows businesses to move through a change while staying aligned with their vision, empower their employees to feel confident with the change, and successfully navigate that change.  

When creating this strategy, consider what your long-term goals for the organization are. This approach should have an outlined structure for how the organization would like to go through change with transparency at the forefront. To have buy-in from employees, it’s imperative that the goals of a change are clear with benefits outlined for all impacted. As part of this OCM strategy, it may be helpful to have a template for going through change that can be adapted as new changes and processes come up. 

Trend 2:

A Focus on Data-Driven Change 

When we think about changes to organizations, businesses typically focus on gathering and using data to identify their change readiness, adoption, and resistance to change throughout the lifecycle of that change. However, without tracking certain metrics such as adoption rates, employee engagement, and change resistance, it becomes difficult to understand how to best implement new changes within your specific organization.  

Every organization functions differently and is comprised of different people with different personalities, learning styles, skill sets, and hesitations. When we can collect both qualitative and quantitative data to better understand employees, we are then better able to implement change and ensure it’s successful with the specific audience in mind. 

The process of collecting data in regard to change should start before change occurs and continue after the change has happened. Before a change occurs, collect data to understand where employee skillsets are currently and how employees are feeling in anticipation of change. Understanding these elements allows businesses to understand what obstacles may be faced before going through a change and what specific learnings need to be had by a group to understand that change.  

From this, organizations can successfully mitigate resistance and negativity before it occurs and understand trends in how employees perceive and adopt change. By collecting data throughout a change, we’re able to understand how employees’ skills and resistance evolve over time in order to make changes to tactics, such as which tools and methods are used in training, in real time to be more effective for the specific user audience. 

After going through a change, the more information collected during the process, the more confident organizations can be in their approach to change going forward. When we understand what methods of implementing change were most successful, what roadblocks may be faced, and how long it takes for a specific audience to feel confident with the change, we can more accurately tailor our approach in future change situations and more accurately predict how long this process takes for the organization.  

Continue reading by downloading the full report below.

Download the Full 2026 OCM Trends Report Here

Contributions from Allie Wright