Change Communications 101
What it is — and why it’s the most important skill set for 2022
I’ve spent the past year trying to solve a billion-dollar business problem: why do so many workplace transformations fail despite huge investments in time, money and expertise?
The answer is sometimes simple: because they don’t know how to have meaningful conversations with employees about change. This mistake is costing companies millions by negatively impacting innovation, staff retention, digital capabilities, supply chain management and just about any other way of working needed to succeed in a post-COVID workplace.
Over the past year, I reviewed thousands of change program documents to identify best practice templates, researched current marketplace solutions and created an integrated communications roadmap that can be applied across different types of change projects. The result is the first-ever (to my knowledge) change communications framework specifically designed to help people learn new ways of working.
Following are a few basic Q&As about change communications and how it might be implemented across different business environments:
1. What does change communications success look like?
The objective of change communications is to help people learn new ways of working by creating effective content, resources and engagement opportunities.
Sounds easy, but change programs are incredibly complex and almost always met with resistance — either by leaders, people managers, employees or all three of the above! To overcome this, change communications professionals need a diverse set of skills to achieve success across five main focus areas, including:
Project management
Change communications activities should align with the change program’s key milestones and success metrics — and be delivered on time, within the budget.
Stakeholder engagement
It’s important to align with program sponsors, senior leaders, practice leads and people managers on the change communications strategy and support them in achieving key benchmarks, best practice and sustained adoption rates across the organization.
Change management
Understanding how new ways of working will affect different employee groups is crucial to providing communications support for stakeholder, training, influencer, readiness, adoption and change resistance/reinforcement initiatives.
Design
Working directly with employees to uncover their top frustrations and feelings about the proposed new ways of working (with prototypes, content testing and usability interviews) is the best way to create informed communications strategies.
Communications
The end goal is to help people learn, act on and ritualize new ways of working by creating content, engagement and support resources that detail practical actions, key benefits and honest, transparent advice.
2. Where does a change communications role sit within the organizational structure?
As a consultant, I’ve never worked within the same team structure twice, but based on my experience, there appear to be some trends:
1. Working with a specific practice
If you’re helping to launch a new practice within an organization, then this makes the most sense. I’ve worked directly with Human Resources (People & Culture) as well as new practice teams established as part of the change.
2. Working with a dedicated project team
Large organizations sometimes have dedicated change project teams that may work closely with the Change Program Director to the support training, communications, change and project management needs of a specific workplace transformation.
3. Working with internal communications
Based on my past experience, this seems the least likely scenario — but I did work with a dedicated communications team of about six people on a large transformation. Regardless of who you report to, you’ll need to work closely with the employee and internal communications teams if you want to succeed.
3. What types of cross-functional stakeholders does a change communications consultant work with?
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
As a change communications consultant, it’s not necessarily your role to understand all of the finer technical details BUT you do need to know who can validate these types of key messages before they get finalized. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are normally the practice leads for areas like Finance, Supply Chain Management, HR, etc. that have the expert knowledge to confirm if your content is accurate.
Senior leadership
Without a dedicated sponsor, your change program may never get off the ground. So being able to advise them on how to communicate effectively with senior leaders to get additional funding, alleviate roadblocks and align on solutions is crucial to the success of your change program. In the past, I’ve also helped pull together informational materials for Executive Boards and Steering Committees.
Workplace team leads
Because change programs require cross-functional alignment, these people are key to your day-to-day success. I’ve helped Learning & Development Leads, Service Design Managers, Business Analysts, Solutions Architects and others to update training materials, people analytics, process maps and systems knowledge so they align with our change communications approach.
Rebecca is a change communications innovator, design-thinking advocate and Fulbright Scholar who’s worked across digital, organizational design and compliance workplace transformation programs. She spent the past year trying to solve a billion-dollar business problem (the annual economic cost when 70% of workplace transformations fail) by identifying change communications best practice and translating it into a series of implementation plans, playbooks and templates.
