Six Steps On How To Implement An Effective Change Communications Process

Effective change management requires a much more involved approach than simply telling people what to do. At Enthuse, we’re experts when it comes to successfully communicating change and making it stick.

If you’ve never worked with an internal communications agency before or you want to know what happens when you work with us to implement change, you’re in the right place. Here, we explain our six steps on implementing change communication effectively for your business.

What is Change Management Communication and Why is it Important?

There are many reasons your business might need to adapt: from the introduction of new technology and the threat of reduced profits to a lack of employee engagement, innovation and productivity. Or, maybe you need to change for another reason entirely.

Whatever the reason for your business transformation, all change involves people. Even the introduction of new technology relies on your colleagues to change their behaviour for the project to be successful.

But, when human beings are involved change can be quite the challenge. In fact, the failure rate of change management programmes can be as high as 93% (1).

Neuroscience reveals that telling people what to do differently isn’t anywhere near as effective as:

●       spending time to help people to understand the importance of change

●       showing people the consequences of not changing – you might have heard this called the ‘burning platform’

●       giving people opportunities to adapt their future behaviour

Getting employees to move through these three stages and accept, adapt and stick to change is a mixture of art and science.

Our six-stage change communications process is based on the work of leading change thinkers, Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter and psychologist Kurt Lewin. Choose to partner with us and here’s how we’ll help you land your next change management project.

Step 1 - Create Awareness With Your Employees

Change communications best practice starts by creating awareness among employees about the challenges your organisation faces. There could be a burning platform, for example, your business might be under-performing or failing to achieve maximum productivity and not everyone realises the seriousness of the situation.

By making it clear that you’re all in the same boat and everyone has a part to play, you’ll set the scene for the next stage in your company’s evolution.

Step 2 - Understanding The Reason Why Change Communications Is Needed

For change communications process to succeed, employees need to know why they have to do this and what’s in it for them. By spelling out the consequences of stagnation for the organisation, teams and individuals, you’ll create a sense of urgency and purpose. 

By building the narrative of your change story around your organisation’s ‘why’, you’ll help people have the ‘aha’ moment as they realise the importance of change.

Step 3 - Build Excitement and Enthusiasm With Your Employees

People are creatures of habit and often need to be motivated to embrace times of transition. We do this by using internal communications and engagement tactics to demonstrate how change will help your organisation. Together with your employees, this could involve exploring:

●       what a more productive future looks like

●       how aligning your outputs to the market generates better returns for everyone

●       how streamlining workflows or decision-making processes will make employees’ lives easier

By demonstrating what’s in it for everyone, you’ll be well on the way to getting your colleagues excited and ready to adapt. 

Step 4 - Listen, Act and Implement The Process

Once you’ve explained the new ways of working to your people, you need to listen to their feedback, particularly from those who aren’t on board.

It may be that 80-90% are excited by the changes and that's a good place to be. But if only 10% of people are cynical and saying or doing the wrong thing, you've got to listen and act as they could derail your project and all your hard work. Listening isn’t a one-off task on the to-do list, you need to keep your ear constantly to the ground throughout change.

Step 5 - Keep Nudging

Even when people are excited for a fresh future, it’s important to keep them that way. All change takes some getting used to and initially it can be feel onerous and frustrating to use new technology or processes.

When employees are on deadline and need to get something done quickly, they’re often tempted to go back to the old way of working. To counteract this, you need to keep nudging the right behaviours.

Because we’re social animals who like to follow the pack, demonstrating how others are following the new process or ways of working, helps encourage everyone to follow suit.

Step 6 - Celebrate Success

To close the change loop, celebrating success is key. We’ll remind employees about why you’re changing and we’ll promote the success you’ve had against your original goals.

Even the cynics will copy those doing the right thing if they can see others are positive about the change. This creates a snowball of positivity that’s hard to resist, resulting in your change becoming so embedded in your business it’s simply your normal way of working.

We’ve had proven success with a wide number of change management processes that have delivered brilliant business outcomes. Using a combination of organisational change theory and our own insights gained from years of internal communications experience, we’ve assisted organisations to adapt, evolve and deliver even greater success.

Find out how we helped a leading UK manufacturer successfully deliver their change programme. Or get in touch with one of the team to discuss your change communications needs.

References:
(1) “Predicting implementation failure in organization change”, Decker and Durand, Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, January 2012.