My academic and professional careers have been eclectic enough that I’ve sampled the literature from numerous diverse fields. Most overlap little or not at all. (Safe to say I’m the only author published both in “Transfusion” and “Journal of Communication Management”!) Some, however, treat similar subjects, and on occasion the scholars in two fields actually find widespread agreement on certain principles.
Thus it is that change management scholars, many from the field of business, and employee-public scholars, many from the field of communication or industrial relations, have forged this axiom: that in time of organizational change, direct, honest and transparent communication with employees is a critical success factor. Change is not effectively implemented without effective employee communication and engagement.
This summer I’ve served on 13 capstone paper committees in the Professional M.A. in Strategic Communication at the University of Minnesota. Topics have ranged widely, but a couple have focused on the employee public.
One paper – a very fine paper; I don’t mean this essay to embarrass the author in any way – did explore, among other things, this startling proposition: “Organizational change management leaders argue that the approach and implementation of internal communication for change management differs from an organization’s typical approach to internal communication.”
Can this be true? Is it even possible to manage employee communications one way routinely, but switch into a different mode at times of great change?
If we believe this is possible, then we can imagine an organization that routinely communicates only on a need-to-know basis, is not transparent, is not empowering (or supporting) of front-line supervisors as communicators, but reverses all this when change needs to be communicated and embraced.
We can also imagine the converse: routine, ongoing flow of open-two-way communication, which screeches to a halt when major change is afoot. Communication then shuts down because the change is regarded as too sensitive, or the need for secrecy is too great.
In the first instance, it seems clear that the change initiatives will not succeed, because an employee public that’s kept in the dark most days won’t suddenly become trusting, engaged, and committed to the change in question, just because of an equally sudden shift to openness.
And conversely, an employee public that’s enjoyed the benefits of a free-flowing communication climate won’t be very accepting of a sudden change in this posture, especially when major change is occurring.
My student’s paper cited some “organizational change management leaders” as advocating a dual approach, so some respected practitioners or scholars evidently believe that employee communication can have an on-off switch, depending on whether change is going on.
To them, I would ask this question: When would you turn the switch off? What viable organization is not perpetually in a state of change?
Thus: no on-off switches, please. Communicate consistently with employees, whether day-to-day routine, or intense change.
David J. Therkelsen, MBA, APR, Fellow PRSA is an educator at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
During a time of intense change management you may have all kinds of communication materials that you don’t have in normal day to day operations. I managed communication for one of the largest change management programs in the US, impacting more than 250,000 employees. When we instituted this major program we had to create new communication channels for managers to help them know the timing, content and impact of the proposed changes. We created new operating manuals, new job descriptions, processes, reporting structures and two-way communication channels. Timelines, dashboards, feedback devices all were created. We had video and time-management studies and had to summarize and communicate the results to senior management. Testing the new processes, then refining our materials and rolling out the changes in three waves all required communication that did not exist previously.
While the strategy of open, transparent communication may not change, the tactics certainly will in a time of major reorganization. Perhaps this is what the paper meant more than changing the communication philosophy or strategy. (Sorry, I have not read the paper).