Change management: what does switching between old and new tools cost?
An IT migration often leaves old and new ways of processing cases operating side by side. The management question is specific: should teams switch freely between the two environments, or should work be organised into separate time blocks?
What the literature establishes
Sophie Leroy (2009, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) shows through experiments that some attention can remain attached to a previous task when people move to another, particularly when the first task is unfinished. This attention residue can impair performance on the next task. For an organisational transition, these findings suggest examining switches between activities, not just the time spent learning a new tool.
Switching rules also has a cost
Joshua S. Rubinstein, David E. Meyer and Jeffrey E. Evans (2001, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) demonstrate time costs associated with task switching in controlled experiments. Their findings support an executive-control mechanism involving goal shifting and the activation of relevant rules. Switching between two environments with different rules is therefore a potential source of cost to investigate, rather than simply a matter of familiarity with interfaces.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that the old tool should be withdrawn immediately. These studies do not compare migration strategies and do not justify that prescription. Temporary coexistence may remain necessary for traceability or service continuity; the issue is then to reduce avoidable switches without removing useful checks. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot quantify
These experimental studies cannot directly estimate the productivity loss of a company using two systems. Moving from one screen to another does not necessarily mean changing tasks or rules. Meaningful monitoring must distinguish switches required by the process, urgent requests and returns to the old tool because information is unavailable in the new one.
A practical check in Fribourg
Within SHR's « Conduite du changement » programme, an exercise applicable to a food-processing company, a bilingual industrial site or a service within Fribourg's university hub would compare a normal working period with a period organised into separate processing blocks, using comparable cases. The primary measure would be the number of switches between systems per completed case, recorded on a shared French–German tracking sheet. Processing time and necessary corrections should also be monitored, without removing quality or traceability checks. Fewer switches without deterioration in these outcomes would support this arrangement locally, but would not on its own establish causality. To go further: explore the Change Leadership training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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