Change is often challenging for individuals because they tend to prefer a comfortable and predictable state. While this minimizes risk, it also can disconnect us from the present moment. We become less receptive to change-related messages. We’ve all felt this before; have you ever arrived at a destination without consciously considering the route? Perhaps missing a more efficient path. This automatic mode (or “auto-pilot”), while comfortable, often blinds us to innovative possibilities and hinders our ability to adapt to new, potentially better ways of doing things. This auto-pilot state is evolutionary in nature, it allows us to dedicate less cognitive effort and frees up capacity for other activities, talking with your partner in the car and listening to music. We like our auto-pilot state, it’s why people resist change so much. Change requires a significant amount of cognitive effort and introduces feelings of discomfort, unfamiliarity, and fear of the unknown. We associate change with loss and added effort, no wonder we resist it.
We can all agree that communication is the cornerstone of engagement, yet it is often met with resistance. We have to remember that our employees come from different backgrounds, departments, and levels of experience, they are individuals, unique in every aspect, including how they prefer to receive information. Some might favor direct emails, while others might respond better to interactive platforms like Slack or Teams. Furthermore, the tone, format, and detail can resonate differently across these groups. Recognizing and respecting these nuances is crucial. For instance, a young, tech-savvy team might appreciate concise digital updates, whereas a more traditional group might value detailed reports or face-to-face meetings. Tailoring communication strategies to suit these diverse preferences is not just about delivering a message; it’s about ensuring the message is received, understood, and acted upon. When change initiatives fail, it’s often not due to the change itself, but rather to a gap in how and what we communicate to those who are being impacted. Ultimately, the goal is not just to check a box and send out information timely; it’s about fostering a deeper understanding of what is going to happen and inspire action amongst those who are being asked to change the way they do things moving forward.
The most important messages to communicate depend on a number of factors. It depends on who you’re communicating to, what you’re communicating about, the internal and external landscape that is surrounding the change and so much more. It’s why here at Reroute Consulting we advocated for a targeted approach to how we communicate our messages. We spend time getting to know the business, it’s stakeholders and those who will be impacted by the change. Does it take more time? Yes. Do we always get the intended results? Sometimes. We are after all dealing with people, there is no such thing as a guaranteed solution in managing change. This concept of complexity is explored in more detail in our article, Complexity and Change Management.
While there is no playbook we can follow, there are some guiding principles based on several years of research. In general, employees want to hear organizational related messaging from the top, from the CEO/President of the firm. However, personal messages, such as how my day-to-day activities will be changing as the result of a change, not surprisingly require a personal touch; employee prefer to hear these messages from their direct supervisor/leader.
When we consider the messaging, employees typically want answers to five fundamental questions:
- How will this change impact me?
- Why is this change happening?
- Why should I care?
- What will the future look like?
- How will we get there?
Leaders, including our senior leaders. want similar messaging, with one additional piece: what will their role be in managing the change. In other words, what are they expected to do to help support the change. This has many facets to it, it includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- How and what should we communicate to our employees?
- What are the key messages we should be sharing with employees?
- Where do I go to get the information I need and who do I contact for support?
These are things you can control; identifying your audience, targeting the message to a particular group, identifying who is best to send it out and determining what the message will say. The difficulty comes in trying to encourage motivation, understanding and engagement about the change, This has always been a challenge and it’s getting harder over time. There are so many distractions today, while many of us in the field seek to achieve 80% readership, we’re lucky if we get 20% of our readers to read a message we send in it’s entirety. It’s our firm belief here at Reroute Consulting, that the challenge lies not in the change itself but in how it’s conveyed to employees. We don’t think that people hate change, full stop. People are far more complex to enable us to make such a prevailing assumption. We think the gap is in how we approach communication strategy that needs an overhaul. In our experience, less formal messaging, with the primary goal of encouraging collaboration and transparency yields the highest likelihood for success.
Are you feeling a bit discouraged, feeling like there is no such thing as an effective communication strategy; there are just too many variables that need to be considered and who has the resources to ensure that we dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t.’ You know we wouldn’t do that to you. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and a two actionable solutions to help you design, develop and deliver effective communications.
First, effective communications requires the support of our people leaders. Leaders are crucial to helping customize the messaging to meet the specific needs of their employees, they are best equip to tailor a standard message to their team so it resonates. They are also better equipped to provide employees with the space they need to express their concerns and questions, and this space is crucial to driving engagement. Leaders should be receptive to their employees concerns, even resistance, ensuring that they feel comfortable to share their grievances so that they can tackle them head on instead of having these feelings linger in silence only to come up later, stronger and more disruptive in nature. There are many tactics leaders can use to help manage employee resistance.
Second, given the inherent unpredictability of change, it is also important that we continuously monitor, learn from, and adjust our approach to managing the change as necessary. This includes how we communicate details of the change. This process is easier said than done, it requires a willingness to receive feedback from employees and, more importantly, actually do something about the feedback received. It isn’t always easy to operationalize, but giving employees a voice will work wonders to drive the level of motivation, understanding and engagement we all want to see when introducing a change, an investment in maintaining open lines of communication, transparency and collaboration will always yield dividends, if you can commit to taking the necessary action based on the information received. This means sometimes going back to the drawing board and starting over.
Change will never be flawless, and employees may never fully embrace it. However, by altering the way we communicate change to our employees, can have a significant impact on our ability to introduce a successful change.
Read our follow up article for a list of the top 5 communication tactics and strategies we’ve used in practice to improve our ability to drive motivation, understanding and engagement for our clients.