During your career you are likely to experience some change that affects the way you work, the way you view your career or employer, or forces you to adapt to new situations and people. Change may be inevitable, but it's still something you can learn to handle more easily and effectively. Understanding what change might look like and how to respond effectively to it can influence your view of change and help you adopt a more positive response to change.

Here's how to deal with change at work and why it's important to handle change positively:

A great way to learn to handle change is to first gather as much knowledge as you can about the upcoming changes. Information is often the key to successful adaptation, so talk to your managers, colleagues, and anyone else with information about the upcoming changes to find out:

• How these changes affect the way you work
•  Which parts of the company are directly and indirectly affected by the changes 
• When and if the changes become final
• If your group size can be reduced or increased
• What resources are available to you to respond to change

If necessary, you can ask your immediate supervisor for a meeting with everyone affected by the changes. This can allow everyone to talk about their concerns and questions in an open environment, with quick and accurate responses from the people leading the changes.

When changes occur, they may affect your position in the company. You may change position, team or department or have completely different duties. If the changes don't align with your career goals, you might consider applying for a different internal position or asking management about how you can keep your duties similar. You can also embrace the incoming changes and accept the new tasks as an opportunity not only to learn some new skills and techniques but also as an opportunity to change the way you contribute to the company.

Staying flexible and adaptable to the coming changes can help you not only accept those changes but also perform well if your duties change. For example, if your job changes and requires a different schedule, staying flexible can help you embrace the new schedule and maintain the quality of your work. You can practice adaptability by learning as much as you can about the new processes or tasks and filling any skill gaps that may be preventing you from adapting effectively. You can also ask your managers and colleagues for feedback or advice to get a different perspective.

Helping other colleagues with upcoming changes can benefit you by creating a more cohesive response to those changes. If everyone in the workplace helps each other adapt, you can also strengthen relationships with the people you work with, which can help you better cope with future changes. A cohesive team can support each other, share ideas and information, and provide feedback on your processes to help you improve.

When changes occur, they can challenge your core skills and require you to evolve. To remain a competitive job candidate or productive employee, it's important to continually work on your skills and show adaptability in filling any outstanding skill gaps. For example, if a change in your job requires you to learn new video editing skills, you can spend some time on the weekends to make sure you have those skills before the changes officially go into effect. This can also show the employer that you are committed to the position and the skills it requires.

It is important to handle changes in your work so that you can both stabilize your position with your employer and achieve your career goals and adapt effectively about this change. When you learn to adapt to change, you can become more resistant to change and better able to handle it, which affects everything from your morale and confidence to how you interact with your colleagues. Since change is often inevitable, planning for change can help you learn permanent, universal skills and techniques that you can apply to any situation.

Change is primarily an external process and is something that happens to you. Transition is an internal psychological process and it is something you can guide and control. In many ways, transition is often a reaction to change, or a way to quantify your reaction to those changes.

For example, you might be in the middle of a restructuring at your company and not sure how you feel about these changes. As the restructuring progresses, you begin to understand your company's new structure and how it can benefit your work and career. You begin to internally accept the changes that have occurred in your workplace and your feelings about what has happened and what has changed. Your company is changing and you are moving into a new role with new responsibilities.

Although change is a constant in life, it is not always easy to predict when it will happen. If you're planning for change, your preparation can allow you to adapt more quickly, even if you don't know when to manage a change. A great way to do this is to create a change plan for yourself so you can review the things that make you feel better when you're dealing with change.

A change plan can include a list of trusted people you can contact for everything from personal support to networking help, ideas for forms of self-care that are especially stress-relieving, thoughts about your career goals, and skills that you can use to manage change and advance your career. Having a plan makes it less stressful when there are changes at work, since you won't have to decide on all these things while handling the change.