Communicating something new to your company?

What’s your communication challenge?

When you are communicating something new to your company, or communicating anything at all it is important to think through your communication strategy.

Maybe you want to roll out a new training course, launch a new employee program, or change your expenses policy. Whatever it is you need to ensure that your team are all on board and embrace the actions you need them to take. You need them to do the action in a timely manner, and you need them not to moan about it!

But you know that going by your past experience this is going to be a problem!

One thing is for sure – writing a quick send-to-all email that says ‘please do this thing’ is not going to ensure success. After all, it probably took you a long time to plan the new course or policy, so you also need to spend time on communication to ensure that the implementation goes well.

What can you do?

Your team needs warning, to be prepared for the change, and to understand why change is needed. They need to be told about the change more than once, in different ways and be clear about what things they need to do to implement the change. Perhaps you need to pilot it and get some key staff on board.

Although this may seem like overkill, and a lot of preparation time, imagine if your team are supportive and implements the change when needed, without any fuss! And imagine if they are so clear about what they are implementing that they don’t ask you a million questions! And that means you don’t have to keep chasing them. Imagine the time you will save!

Your steps to successfully communicate something new to your company

Ask yourself these questions to to ensure that your message is communicated as effectively as possible:

Step 1 – be sure that you are clear on what the change is and what you want your people to do, each step they need to take and when. And ensure that your senior team also understand and can speak about it too. This will ensure your communication is clear and understandable and can be repeated by anyone.

Step 2 – create a communication strategy by answering these questions:

• how (email, company meeting, face-to-face, online.. ),
• what (a clear message – keep it simple!)
• when (how long beforehand do you start, during implementation and after)

Step 3 – Implement your strategy – right to the end! Even if it appears your team are on board you need to keep going until you can see action has been taken!

Of course, these steps each take time. But when done well it makes a huge difference to the implementation.

And if we can help let us know 😊.

Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.

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