Change Management Communication: The Dos and the Don’ts

Significant changes are increasingly sweeping organizations big and small, whether it’s a system modernization project, kicking off an AI strategy, streamlining core processes – the list goes on.

That’s because organizations realize that resisting industry changes is a top reason companies lose momentum and ultimately vanish.

Still, large-scale change is incredibly challenging to navigate effectively, with recent Gartner research demonstrating that:

• Less than 1 in 3 planned changes is successful, and performance objectives are often missed during the transformation process.
• The success rate decreases with the company’s size, sinking to less than 19% for organizations with 5,000+ employees.

One of the biggest root causes of underperforming digital transformations: communicating change ineffectively. It’s a communication minefield with numerous opportunities to curb your momentum. One wrong move can spark fear and resistance, leading to reduced work quality and missed targets. It can even damage employee trust, which is difficult to earn back.

With all this at stake, the communications piece of change management is well worth your time investment, so you get it right the first time. To help you get there, we’ve created a list of the top “dos” and “don’ts” of change management communication.

Change Management Communication: The Top 3 Dos and the Don’ts

1. Communicating the Cultural Implications of the Change

❌ DON’T: Whether they realize it or not, your employees perform their jobs and make decisions based on your organization’s company culture values and the “invisible rules” behind them. But often, in digital transformation, your change sets forth new priorities that may contradict your company culture’s values and expectations. This is known as “cultural tensions,” a challenge that 80% of employees experience during times of significant change.

Here’s an example of what that might look like: Your company’s culture may have historically prioritized outstanding customer service above all, even if it means not taking a less efficient route. Now, if your company’s digital transformation messaging emphasizes operational efficiency as the new priority, your employees may be left confused about how that new expectation will affect their customer communications. Should they now take the most efficient route, even if it means a less satisfactory experience for the customer?

Other common company culture values that digital transformation messaging often conflicts with include:

• People vs. Commercial Focus
• Compliance vs. Risk-Taking
• Efficiency vs. Innovation
• Quality vs. Speed

✅ DO: To help your employees understand their new expectations, they need to know how to make the new trade-offs between competing priorities. If your employees need to prioritize efficiency in their work, explain how this will impact their approach to customer interactions.

Wherever you can, it’s best to work with department leaders to offer well-defined guidance on prioritization best practices. Maybe this means that you create streamlined standard protocols for common customer support scenarios. Better yet, you might document them in a specific, easily accessible location for staff to refer to.

2. Balancing Clarity and Reassurance

❌ DON’T: You care about your employees’ well-being and understand that change is daunting and scary. So, you might feel a natural inclination towards reassuring them, even if it means slightly downplaying how much the change will disrupt their daily lives. Think, “There are changes in expectations coming, but fundamentally, everything’s carrying on as it always has.”

Despite this approach’s best intentions, it can quickly drift into mixed messages territory, sometimes bordering on sugarcoating. And that’s a recipe for confusion.

✅ DO: As comforting as reassurance may seem, you’ll avoid confusion and panic far more effectively by “telling it like it is.” Effective communication needs transparency. Each employee needs to know precisely what you expect of them based on their role. You can make that happen by working with their department leaders. Then, lay out a straightforward path that shows how employees will make those changes, like an upskilling program.

You do have the opportunity to add some lightness, however, in the form of listing the benefits the change will offer to the individual’s daily work life. Maybe it means that their least favorite task will take under 5 minutes versus days, or it’ll mean they unlock spare hours in their week to take on that new project they haven’t previously had the bandwidth for. It gives them something to look forward to and a reason to buy into the change without giving them unrealistic expectations.

3. Seeking and Applying Employee Feedback

❌ DON’T: Communication is a two-way street. As a result, your change management communication plan must both seek and apply employee feedback throughout the initiative. Their ideas can make your initiative stronger, and involving them reassures them that they are a valued part of the process. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for organizations to rush through this process by failing to prepare a structured feedback system, resulting in poor response rates.

Another common mistake is seeking feedback as a formality without the follow-through of considering or implementing it. This can lead to distrust and a lack of engagement from staff going forward. Still, going in the opposite direction and overwhelming employees with too many feedback requests can backfire too.

✅ DO: To encourage your employees to provide feedback, set up a structured feedback system. It should allow for anonymous contributions to ensure that employees feel safe to share their honest opinions. It’s also important to follow up on each response you receive to show that you’re taking their input seriously and are committed to continuous improvement that benefits each level of the organization. To find the right balance for employee feedback, seek it at meaningful intervals, like after a set duration of time or between specific stages. This will allow time for reflection and observation of the changes.

It can also be helpful to facilitate peer discussion groups that meet periodically to discuss the changes, whether that’s a designated 10-minute add-on to team meetings or company-wide break-out sessions. Here, employees can share their experiences with navigating the new expectations or systems and the strategies, tips, and tricks they’ve come up with along the way. Some employees will take to change sooner than others, so having these interactive discussions may warm those who are more resistant up to the change, and it may answer the questions of those who are confused.

Create Change That Resonates with Every Employee

Effective change management hinges on robust communication strategies that resonate with employees at every level. Emphasizing cultural implications, balancing clarity with reassurance, and valuing employee feedback are not just recommendations but necessities for successful change management. That’s how you’ll turn your journey through change from just “endured” to “empowered” and enjoy the results that follow.

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