Here are five communication channels that can be helpful for change management:
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
COMMUNICATIONS TO BUILD
EMPLOYEE ACCEPTANCE
Most companies don’t seem to do a very good job of communicating change. In
one Tribe survey, 84% of employees i n large companies nationwide said that change
management communications were “handled poorly” in their organizations.
There’s a tricky balance to change communications. You don’t want to tell emp loyees
something that ’s subject to change significantly, but you do want to tell them something
as soon as you can.
In the absence of solid information, what employees imagine can be much worse than
the reality. Just because corporate isn’t talking about an upcoming change doesn’t mean
employees aren’t. The watercooler rumors can do real damage to morale and create a high
level of anxiety, both of which are detrimental to employee engagement at a time when
engagement is more important than ever.
The goal is to communicate the change in a way that reduces employee stress. In many
cases, you might even be able to get them excited about what ’s coming. Either way,
strong change communications can help build employee acceptance of whatever change is
heading their way.
MICROSITE
A temporary microsite of maybe five or
six pages can provide employees with
a go-to source for the most current and
accurate information. This can be especially
useful in the case of acquisitions or mergers
when you’re addressing employees of another
company who don’t yet have access to your
intranet. Otherwise, you may choose to add a
section to your existing intranet rather than have
a freestanding site. Either way, make sure the site
is updated continually with the latest news and
information.
Q&A
Go beyond the usual prepared FAQs
to allow employees to ask their own
questions. There are several ways to do
this, but two good ones are to offer the option to
submit a question on the microsite or to provide
an email address for any questions for leadership.
Of course, once you promote either of these
options, you need to have a solid process for
providing answers to the questions. You don’t
want employees to feel like their questions were
dropped into a black hole.
SURVEY
Another way to give employees a voice
is to post a survey of questions related
to the change. How are they feeling
about the change? What concerns them about
the change? What are they looking forward
to in regard to the change? Not only does this
give employees a way to share their thoughts;
it also gives your communications staff and
leadership important information about areas
of concern for employees. Those key topics
can then be addressed in subsequent change
communications.
4
ROAD SHOW
The tried-and-true method of having
the CEO or other leadership show up at
locations throughout the organization
still offers a lot of benefits that digital solutions
don’t. One is just being able to make that face-
to-face contact. Employees in our research have
told us that in times of major change, they want
to hear about it from the top executives at their
companies. If doing a road show in person isn’t
practical, a Town Hall that’s live-streamed is
another good option.
5
MANAGER TOOL KITS
Employees are also likely to want
to discuss the change with their
direct management, so make sure
they’re prepared for questions. If you can, loop
managers in a little ahead of the rest of your
employees, so they can get up to speed on
the impacts of the change and the messaging
that’s important to share. By providing tools
like Talking Points, FAQs and PowerPoint
presentations, you’ll make their job easier and
also help ensure that employees throughout the
company are getting the same information.
Tribe’s approach to change communications is
to start from a place of respect for employees.
We recommend telling them as much as you can,
as soon as you can, and treating them like the
adults that they are. Employees understand that
sometimes their companies will have bad news,
but in our research, they consistently tell us
they’d rather have their leadership give it to them
straight. That gives them a chance to prepare
emotionally and logistically, so they’ll be ready to
face the change when it does occur.
Interested in developing change communications
that can help build acceptance? Tribe can help.