Today, it is unarguable that continual innovation is vital to company success. However, making big changes in the workplace requires a lot of internal communications with your employees. Considering the fact that approximately 70 percent of all major changes in the workplace end up failing due to employee resistance, effective communication is crucial to ensure your employees understand your motivations for the change.
To prevent this from happening, you need to know how to properly convey communications regarding major company changes. Luckily, this article will guide you through this process so that your next major corporate overhaul has a better chance of being a successful one.
Get a Common Message to All Executives and Management
First, in order to optimize internal communications for big company changes, it’s important that every leader at the company is on the same page. If one manager tells employees a completely different reason for the changes than another, it will create confusion and misalignment within the company. This will not only cause uncertainty in the workplace, but will also likely lead to feelings of distrust developing between the employees and management.
That is why you need to include all of the executives and members of management in the conversation when creating the internal communications plan so that they all know exactly what they should be saying in regards to the upcoming changes.
Provide the Reasoning for the Change
No one wants to simply be told that a change is happening with no other additional context. That is why you should always be providing some background information regarding why the change is being introduced to the company. If you take the time to carefully explain what the issue in the company currently is and how this upcoming change will hopefully fix the issue, then employees will be far more likely to understand the reasoning and be on board with it.
Communicate More Than Once
One of the biggest mistakes that companies tend to make when trying to communicate major company changes to their employees is that they only ever send out one piece of communication on the matter. Instead of leaving them with radio silence after the initial announcement, you should be following up with your employees several times, informing them on what stage the transition is in and how the changes are being implemented. By doing so, you make yourself 12.4 times more likely to be successful in implementing the changes. A fixed timeline or schedule can allow employees to better plan any disruptions they may face themselves, and a content calendar is a fantastic way to schedule out multiple bursts of communication.
Make It About the Employees
While informing the employees about what benefits the changes will bring is definitely important, it is only going to get you so far. The bottom line is that employees are far more interested in how any corporate changes are going to affect them personally.
That is why you need to make sure to include your own employees as part of the internal communications campaign. Let the employees know exactly what differences they will start to experience in their job so that they can better prepare themselves and don’t get caught off guard when the changes are implemented.
By following all these steps, you will be able to successfully communicate any major company changes to all of your employees. To help improve other areas of your internal communications, contact us today.
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