Full article with thanks to: forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2022/02/24/how-comms-pros-can-prepare-their-organizations-for-constant-change
When it comes to creating a healthy organisational culture in an ever-evolving business landscape, employee communication and engagement are key to successful change management. Ensuring the most consequential messaging gets through to the most important stakeholders in an organisation falls within the purview of its communications team, so the ability to create and execute a successful change management strategy is key to any professional communicator’s success today.
How can communications leaders best prepare their companies to withstand the constant changes that occur in the life cycle of any organisation? Below, 14 members of Forbes Communications Council share their best tips for making sure every team and team member comes out stronger on the other side of inevitable changes.
1. Courageously Address The Challenges Change Presents
Professional communicators can prepare their organisations for change by promoting healthy open conversations around the challenges that come with change. It is a part of change management that is sometimes ignored because leaders tend to sell change as a 100% positive thing, which isn’t always true. Sometimes, change comes with job losses. These challenges need to be addressed courageously. – Tolulope Adedeji, Anheuser Busch/ AB INBEV
2. Build Trust By Providing Many Options For Raising Concerns
The open door is the start of this journey. No one’s concerns should be dismissed out of hand. We all know the old saw about a stopped clock being right twice a day. Whether it’s a squeaky wheel or a quiet worker, there should be multiple ways—including an anonymous one—for them to raise any concerns about wellness, safety, pay equity, gender or racial diversity, and bread-and-butter performance/efficiency issues. – Michael Moran, Microshare
3. Build A Culture Of Transparency That Integrates Diverse Voices
A strong culture of transparency is the foundation needed to manage expectations, especially in a rapidly changing market. Additionally, making sure you’re integrating a diverse set of voices and communicating changes with reasonable timelines and a process in place for integrating feedback is key to ensuring alignment, success and investment from the relevant stakeholders. – Murtaza Khomusi, CrowdAI
4. Focus On Four Elements Of Effective Employee Engagement
First, ensure consistent connection—help employees connect the dots between the change and the strategy/vision; employees need the “why.” Second, frequency is key—communication can’t be a one-time event; a regular cadence can build more engagement. The third is transparency—share how employees will be impacted and what’s coming next; honesty can dismantle resistance. Finally, foster patience by authentically listening to concerns and questions. – Lana Johnson, Sterling Engineering
5. Communicate News As Quickly And Transparently As You Can
Try to communicate news as quickly as possible, with as much transparency as you can. Communicators should be tapped into the highest levels to review content and ensure messages are authentic, empathetic, equitable and on-brand. The only constant changes; communicators can leverage their skills by swiftly and clearly updating staff on business, financial, policy, personnel and other changes. – Amanda Ponzar, CHC: Creating Healthier Communities
6. Tie Changes Back To The Company Vision And Values
It’s helpful if the top leadership in the company has established a pattern of communicating with employees—thus, building trust and a human connection—long before any major change. Also, we recommend trying the change back to the company vision and values to help employees understand the business reasons for the change. – Elizabeth Baskin, Tribe, Inc.
7. Follow The Three E’s To Ensure Valuable Communications
Avoid overcommunicating basic, FYI details and ensure every employee’s communication is seen as valuable by thinking about the three E’s: educate, excite and engage. To educate, and give people the information they need to do their jobs. To excite, tell them how it can help them be more successful, addressing the “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me?) question. Engage them by giving them a call to action, and make the next steps easy to follow. – Andrew Kokes, HGS
8. Share Company Priorities To Clarify The Big ‘Why’ Behind Changes
Successful change requires an understanding of why the changes are occurring. Communicating the big “why” behind changes through the sharing of company priorities will go a long way in increasing understanding and decreasing resistance. – Brandi Holder, Brandi L. Holder, Brand Voice Strategy & Coaching
9. Get Leaders On-Board With A Well-Managed Process
Properly planned, prepared and executed communications around change take time and effort. This reality competes with an impulse, especially among leaders with pronounced type-A styles, to “just get it done” or “get it over with.” But rushing a process will result in more time and effort expended on cleanup and mitigation. Prep your leaders for the pacing of a well-managed process. – Al Girardi, GEP Worldwide
10. Embrace The Mindset That Every Change Is A Chance To Grow
Change is inevitable, and keeping a mindset that every change is an opportunity for growth is key to a healthy organisational culture. Embracing both the struggles and the positive outcomes of a change in the most transparent way will ultimately lead to a culture that thrives! – Amber Mullaney, Virtual Peaker
11. Create Strategic Messaging Highlighting The Company’s Evolution
Even positive organisational change creates fear and uncertainty. Strategic messaging with themes and stories regarding the evolution of the company can help condition employees to view change as part of the natural progression of the company. Educating employees about how changes advance the company vision helps employees feel connected to the business while supporting retention and brand advocacy. – Nicole Koharik, PartsSource Inc.
12. Don’t Mistake Communication For Comprehension
If your audience doesn’t understand or retain the information, then you need to continually reinforce the key messages. Too often, we tweet once and expect the entire world saw it. Leverage a multi-channel, multi-touch approach and measure retention. – Jay Atcheson, Sitecore
13. Embed Different Messages For Each Audience Into Your Operations
It starts with early communication in a hierarchical manner, which means you really have to pay attention to different messages for each audience, as well as embed them into your business operations. Your communication plan (which includes multiple layers) is instrumental to the success of change management. An acronym to live by is ADKAR: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. – Emily Burroughs, BGSF
14. Get Employees Involved In Every Part Of The Change Journey
Change is a journey, and you should solicit employee involvement at every step to keep them engaged. Explain the reasoning behind the change and invite them to articulate what it might mean for their area of responsibility. Give them a forum to not only voice their questions, fears and expectations but to also offer ideas. – Isabelle Dumont, Cowbell Cyber
Full article with thanks to: forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2022/02/24/how-comms-pros-can-prepare-their-organizations-for-constant-change
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