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CHAPTER 2
A best-practice approach to designing a
change communication programme
Deborah J. Barrett
In today’s business climate it is arguable that however paradoxically it may sound the
only true constant is ‘change’. The focus of this chapter is change communication, an
essential companion to any effective change management programme. At the heart of
any successful change communication programme is effective employee communication,
for without effective employee communication any change programme will fail.
This chapter illustrates an approach to change communication by using a best-practice
model for employee communication called the Strategic Employee Communication
Model.
The importance of change
communication
Change is difficult, and organizational change
is particularly challenging, thus the huge
amount of research on managing organizational
change, usually called ‘change management’.
What is change management Some
might say that it is an oxymoron since change
is too unpredictable and chaotic to control
or manage. However, good managers must
attempt to manage it. Change management
is the executive skill or art of leading or
supervising the people involved in the transformation
of or in an organization. People
are the heart of change management, and
communication is at the heart of people.
Nothing happens in an organization without
communication. As Eccles and Nohria say in
Beyond the Hype: Discovering the Essence
of Management, ‘Without the right words,
used in the right way, it is unlikely that the
right actions will ever occur . . . Without words
we have no way of expressing strategic concepts,
structural forms, or designs for performance
measurement systems. In the end, there
is no separating action and rhetoric’ (1992).
Thus, without effective employee communication
and a rigid approach to communication
during major change, a change programme
has little chance to succeed.
Although much research exists on change
management, few of the articles or books
give adequate attention to the change com-
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors