Change Communications

Navigate Change

Whether you're heading toward an organizational restructure, technology implementation, or any other significant development that could impact your employees, your company's culture, or your ways of working, it's important to connect the dots and tell your change story.

I'll partner with you to develop a strong internal communication strategy to help your company navigate change, communicate effectively with your team, other leaders, clients, and stakeholders, and achieve desired outcomes for your company or organization.

Clarify Your Change

Assess and document your current and future state, then define SMART objectives and create a strategic communications plan that will drive awareness, desire, knowledge, adoption, and reinforcement (the Prosci ADKAR model for managing change).

• Is your company rolling out a new safety, DEI or return to office initiative? 
• Is your finance team leading a process improvement project that will streamline their workflows and simplify the user experience? 
• Is your IT department upgrading a system or implementing a new technology? 
  

Identify Your Stakeholders

Map your stakeholders, identify your audiences, and understand where your employees sit on the change curve.

• Who will be impacted by your change? 
• Who are your champions, your resistors, your influencers? 
• How can your people get involved, feel like part of the change, and even help you test and iterate?

Craft Your Change Communications

Tailor your message to a variety of audiences at multiple touchpoints, keeping in mind that the answers to these questions may be different for different people at different times for different reasons.

• What do your employees need to know, feel, and do to successfully make this change?
• How can you help your people understand what will be different in the future and why it matters to make this change now?
• Who should deliver your messages? 
  

Reach Your People Where They Are

Build a change communications plan tailored to your messages, audiences, channels, and timeline, and designed to manage the people side of change.

• What channels are available for you to deliver your messages about this change?
• Do your employees get their information primarily through your intranet, email, internal social media like Teams, Slack, or Yammer, digital or physical signage, townhalls, team or department meetings, or manager standups? 
• Will you need to cascade information to leaders first and then ask them to deliver messages to their teams, or are you sharing a time-sensitive announcement to everyone at once? 

Measure What Matters

You’ve identified your change and crafted and delivered your messages making the case for change. But how will you know if you’ve been successful in helping your employees understand what they need to know, feel, and do? Did people take the action you wanted, needed, or expected? Did behaviors change – and stick?

I can help you gather your baseline measurements and identify the listening tools available to gather that data. I can also recommend additional touchpoints for listening to what your employees have to say, checking for understanding, and taking action. It’s important to keep in mind that sometimes it may take months or even years to determine whether you were successful, especially with a large change like a company-wide reorganization or a large technology rollout.

An Agent for Change

As a Prosci Certified Change Management Practitioner, I’ve supported several businesses and teams through change.  Technology changes I’ve communicated successfully include a corporate mobile phone upgrade, a SharePoint clean-up and lift-and-shift, intranet redesign, ERP implementation, expense management system upgrade, and an organization-wide roll-out of Microsoft Office 365. I’ve also supported the shift to Agile delivery for a company’s IT organization.

Over the past decade as an internal communications consultant, manager, and director, I’ve tactfully, sensitively, and confidentially supported executive leadership teams and Human Resource leaders to communicate the people side of change through organizational restructurings, reorganizations, reductions in force (RIFs), and layoffs.