Creating a change management communications plan: a guide for IC and HR pros

Managing change is one thing; communicating changes to others is another. It’s not uncommon for organizations to task their internal communicators (ICers) and human resources (HR) professionals with the ultimate challenge of communicating a significant change. That might be a company-wide restructure, the celebration of a new acquisition, major rebrand, or something else bound to shake the stable ground. Especially in scenarios without a dedicated change manager, the change management communications plan often falls into your (capable!) hands.

You’re the expert in company-wide communication, but presenting changes can feel scarier. That’s normal. You likely want to ensure the changes are clear while maintaining a positive company culture, especially during times of uncertainty. Not to mention that change is no joke! We’re creatures of habit, and you know you’re about to impact someone’s day-to-day (sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse). 

You have big shoes to fill and an empathetic heart for doing so! But you don’t have to walk this journey alone. We’re here to help! You don’t need to be a change management expert to create a stellar change management communications plan. We’re sharing our best tips for effectively tailoring your communications strategy to convey change.

What is change management?

Even if you aren’t familiar with the discipline of change management, as an internal communicator or HR team member, you’re probably already practicing it! At a high level, change management helps organizations (and, more importantly, their people) adopt and navigate change by using specific strategies and tactics to encourage adoption and long-term sustainment. 

Project management and change management are complementary skills (and you use both of them). Here’s an example:

When managing a communications project, say an intranet implementation, you use your knowledge, skills, and tools to design and deliver an outcome. In this case, you’re using your skills to develop a plan to implement an intranet, which includes: defining your goals, choosing a provider, outlining roles, and migrating content, all on a project timeline. 

In the same project, change management includes applying a structured process to help your people use the new intranet (aka the behavioral changes needed to make this a success). Change management is the effort required to help them understand why you are adopting an intranet, how to use it, and how to implement it as part of their daily routine. 

Prosci, a global leader in change management solutions and creator of the popular ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) model, summarized it best: “Change management is an enabling framework for managing the people side of change.” 

How does change management help internal communicators?

If you talk to a change management professional or change manager, they’d likely be quick to say that change management is much more than a communications plan. That’s true; there is a lot more to it. However, communication is a significant piece of an overall change strategy.

That’s because managing change requires communicating what is changing (in addition to the other valuable aspects of a change management plan (sponsorship and commitment from leaders, impact assessments, adoption strategies, training, and sustainment planning). Like this:   

In an ideal world, you’d partner with a change manager (either internal or a consultant) to develop a communications plan that meets your organization’s needs. Unfortunately, for team-of-one internal communicators, that’s not always an option. You still need a communications plan (and one that incorporates elements of change management) to help your organization succeed. 

Tips for creating your change management communications plan

Understanding change management techniques and frameworks can help internal communicators who don’t have access to a change manager craft more effective communications. It can also help IC and HR pros build a communication plan with the necessary elements to ensure their teams feel supported through change. 

Whether you’re solely responsible for creating change communications or working with others, you can use these questions to frame your messaging to get helpful results. Remember that as you segment your audience into smaller groups, the answers to these questions may vary depending on who you’re talking to. (So you might answer these questions for people managers and frontline employees, and the answers might look slightly different for each group.) 

What are the 3-5 key messages we want to convey in this communication?

One superpower you possess as an internal communicator is conveying the most critical and essential information to your audience. When communicating change, call on this superpower to work with leaders to define the 3-5 key messages you plan to share with your team. If you stretch past five key messages, employees might struggle to remember what’s most important. 

What happens if there are more key messages to share? 

There might be! But what can happen, especially when assisting with a truly big change, is that the message contents can grow and expand, eventually becoming too muddy. You can develop additional campaigns to support other initiatives related to the significant change, but you only have one shot to nail the initial message.

Things to think about

Your key messages can (and should) answer the following questions, as these are often the questions your team members will have right out of the gate: 

• What’s changing? Honesty and transparency are the best ways to support your team members, so be clear about what exactly is and is not changing.
• Why are we making this change? Relevance is key! If a change feels particularly surprising to employees, they might wonder why this came out of left field and why it must happen now. Explain your rationale, which leads into…
• What happens if we don’t? Through your communication, you can also rally around the idea that this change is mission-critical while emphasizing its time-sensitiveness. 

Use the Do-Say-Think-Feel model to define your outcomes 

Effective communications always have a clear intended purpose. Some common ones include educating team members (for example, sharing the end-of-year open enrollment timeline), requesting information (like an RSVP for the upcoming team happy hour), or encouraging participation in the annual employee engagement survey. 

With change, it’s not unusual or uncommon to want to create a more holistic experience, driving how you want team members to feel, respond, and act to a message. Thinking about your communication from the perspective of those on the receiving end can help guide you from point A to point B. 

One way to do this is to use a version of the empathy map created by XPLANE’s founder, Dave Gray. Essentially, empathy mapping helps people “get into the minds” of their audience using a human-centered approach. This concept translates well to internal communications and planning change-related messages.

Things to think about

• What do we want employees to do with this information? 
  • Do we need them to complete an action? 
  • When do they need to do the thing? 
  • Do we need them to take our initial message and have follow-up conversations? 
  • What are our expectations, and have we conveyed them? 
• What do we want them to say about this change (or our business)? 
  • What will they say in response to our announcement? (Either directly to us or indirectly through actions, surveys, etc.)
  • What are the key messages we hope they repeat amongst themselves? 
  • What will managers say to their direct reports? 
  • What do we want our team members to say about our business? (e.g., We supported them well throughout this process, and the change went great!) 
• What do we want them to think about this change (or our business)? 
  • What will they leave our communication thinking about our organization and future direction? Our leaders? Our industry? 
  • How is their role, team, or world changing? 
  • Will they think this is a solid path forward or a bad idea? (You can’t control what people think but can provide a well-structured argument for the former.) 
• How do we want our team members to feel after they receive these messages?
  • Your staff should feel supported, inspired, encouraged, and trusting. 
  • You probably don’t want them to feel afraid, stressed, or overwhelmed. 

Have we proactively addressed any concerns that might arise?

Internal communicators and HR professionals have the added benefit of being inside the organization’s walls; external parties don’t. So, even if you partner with a change management professional to bring your communications plan to life, this is your time to shine! 

You have more “ears on the ground” and a deeper understanding of the audience and how they might respond when they hear the upcoming news. The best change management communications proactively address employee concerns so they don’t have to ask (even if the change is positive). 

Things to think about

• “When I first heard about this change, what questions did I have?” If you asked, there’s a good chance someone on the team would have the same or a similar question. You can help ensure your leaders feel prepared to answer those questions before they come up. 
• “Are there any unintended consequences of this message?” What are the angles we haven’t considered but should? (For example, if senior leaders previously boldly stated they weren’t looking to expand the business, and you’re announcing an acquisition six months after that initial message, there’s room to address the confusion that might arise.) 
• “What past experiences can I learn from?” Did you communicate a change previously with a message that didn’t resonate with a particular team or individual? How might you adjust your communication plan this time around? 
• “Breathe, it’s OK that I’m not a superhero.” You can’t proactively address every question or concern. That’s okay. Addressing as many as possible is the goal because it will help relay to the audience that this messaging is intentional and that leaders have considered how this change impacts the broader business.

How will we know if this message is successful? 

We’re fans of data-driven feedback on communications, but success metrics become even more critical with change. We’re not just talking about open rates and clickthroughs, either. While these metrics can give us a general idea of whether or not your audience received your message, we also need to understand whether team members understand (or are adopting) the change. 

Things to think about

• Revisit your Do-Say-Think-Feel outcomes and set measurable goals around them. Here are some examples:
  • If you ask your team to do something (a specific action), you could set a goal to achieve a certain percentage of actions completed by a given deadline.
  • If you hope your team feels some way after a significant change, consider incorporating regular pulse surveys (or new questions to your annual employee engagement survey) that enable you to gauge where they are at. 
• This doesn’t have to be a one-and-done measurement. Instead, consider whether you want to measure your success over time and implement the necessary structures. Change takes time, so it can also be helpful to measure your success shortly after the communication happens and later down the road once people have time to digest the information! 

Do we need to tie this message to any other communications? 

No matter how change occurs in your organization, pausing and revisiting the bigger picture is essential. You need to understand how this communication fits into the broader context of everything else. Sometimes, you might need to tie messages together so they don’t feel conflicting and inharmonious. Or you might find that you need to reschedule other communications previously planned to give this one the space and time it deserves. 

Things to think about

• Where should we connect the dots and tie this back to other communications? If you announced a company-wide goal to increase employee engagement by offering more in-person events and plan to send a new calendar packed with upcoming opportunities, remind your readers! Give them the context needed to understand how these messages are related. 
• Is there a larger story here? This is a great one because stories (almost always) intertwine with each other whether you intend it that way or not. Zoom in and out to search for areas of connection. For example, while a layoff announcement should be empathetic and focused on the people to start, soon, your team members might wonder how they’re supposed to achieve those ambitious company goals leaders shared a few months back. 
• If this is a multi-part story, what have we already shared? What are we sharing now? What do we need to share later? You don’t have to have the specifics yet, but you can serve as a strategic partner to your leaders by guiding them through this process.

Change can be a good thing

With your change management communications plan carefully curated and ready to go, there’s only one thing left to do: start the conversation. If email and SMS are part of your communication strategy (or if you want them to be), an internal communications platform like Workshop can do wonders for information-sharing across multiple departments, locations, and roles. You can easily create emails with information segmented to various email lists, ensuring every employee receives what they need to know about the change.

Next steps: download a free change management plan template!

Our simple (and free!) change management plan template will help you line out the steps to your big initiative. It’s a fillable PDF, Google Doc, or Word doc that you can use, customize, and complete every time you start a project that requires change management. It’ll help you define success, outline the change, build your core team, craft your audiences and messaging, and organize your project management. Download the template now and get started!