Most Important Messages for Employees During Change (2024)

Couple days ago I've finished a poll to check the most common obstacles for successful org. Change. Without surprise „Poor communication“ came as a winner. So I decided to share some relevant findings from Prosci Best Practices research.

Preferred senders

Study indicated preferred senders for both personal-level and organizational-level change related messages. Overwhelmingly, the employee’s supervisor was the preferred sender of personal messages. Executives and senior leaders were preferred senders of organizational messages.

What to say to your employees during change

Research participants identified 5 most important messages to communicate to employees regarding the change.

1. Business reasons for the change. Make sure your employees know the reasons the organization was changing and the necessity of such change, including:

• The benefits of the change including strategic objectives, potential Return on Investment (ROI), improved performance and increase in business value.
• The risks of not changing and the negative consequences if the change was not pursued.
• The necessity of the change to remain competitive in the market.
• Improvements to processes, operations and design enhancements.
• The role of the change in support of business initiatives and business strategy .

2. Why the employees should want to participate. Those messages are important in order to build employees’ desire to participate in the change, answer “what’s in it for me?” (WIIFM), from the employee’s perspective including:

• Demonstrating how the change will make their jobs easier, more efficient, more productive, more rewarding and less redundant.
• Normalizing the change or the occurrence of change.
• Indicating potential opportunities for new jobs or advancements.
• Explaining how the change aligns with employee priorities.
• Sharing how the change would increase the quality of their work lives and environment.
• Transferring ownership of the change to employees with phrases such as “this is your change” or “innovation is the right and fun thing to do”.
• Providing testimonials and examples of where the change was successful elsewhere.

3. Impact of the change on employees. These messages covers how the change would impact employees including:

• Changes to the way employees did work or changes to their job roles.
• Behavior changes that would be required.
• Who specifically was impacted.
• The tradeoffs and downsides of the change.
• Employees’ new roles and what needs to be done.
• What the change meant for the employees including what they could expect, what their new roles would entail and how the change applied to them.
• How they were expected to perform.
• What was needed from employees in terms of involvement, commitment, support and contribution.
• Emphasis that the employees’ support of the had a direct impact on the success of the project.
• Potential for job loss

4. How the change is happening. These messages includes information regarding the specifics of how the change is occurring within the organization including:

• The dates of implementation, the rollout schedule or timeline, the time frame for adoption and the go-live date.
• Project status including progress updates and milestones.
• The change plan or phases of the change.
• The next steps of the change.
• Who was leading or managing the change.
• Where the change was happening.
• Celebration of short-term successes.

5. Details about the change. These messages explains the specifics of the change including:

• What the change was and the accompanying project objectives.
• The new processes, activities or procedures.
• What was not changing (e.g., ensuring job security).
• Specifics about the difference between the future and current states (i.e., how tomorrow will be different from today).
• Acknowledgement that not all the answers were available, “what we don’t know”.
• The scope of the change.
• The challenges of the change.
• What the change meant for the organization.

So do not underestimate the impact of Communication. Good luck with your Change Initiatives and If you want a Checklist for YourChange Management Approach just pm or ask for it the comment.

Lukas Mackevicius, Prosci Certified Change Management Advanced Instructor