According to a study by Harvard Business Review 62% participants ranked poor communications as a major factor in the failure of change programmes.

At Marlowe we see the following five elements as being essential elements to effective communications during a period of change:

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1. Be clear, keep it simple – while organisational change can be complicated the role of communications is to simplify the complex, helping workers, customers and other key stakeholders to understand and connect with what’s changing.

2. Have a strong story to tell – if people are going to commit to the change, they need to understand the context – why it needs to happen, and how it is going to impact on them as well as some of the benefits. We work closely with senior leaders and wider stakeholders to translate their ideas into a credible, coherent and compelling narrative. We then deploy a range of creative storytelling techniques (including film and animation) to engage the workforce.

3. Make it relevant – too often communications can be top-down and not targeted to the right people. Effective engagement through change means providing the right information, at the right time in the right way. This requires some planning and insight work to understand the impacts of the change on different groups through a structured business change management approach. Once those insights have been gathered some tailoring and segmentation should be factored into the communications approach.

4. Equip leaders and managers – a further part of making the change relevant is ensuring leaders and managers have the practical tools, training and support to engage their colleagues and put the change into local context.  Those managers and leaders close to the workforce will have significant influence on making change happen. We provide them with the right tools to engage their teams is essential to enable local change delivery

5. Give employees a voice – a fundamental aspect of engagement is ensuring that those impacted by change feel they are being listened to. Putting in place effective listening and feedback mechanism during a period of change is therefore critical. We then use this invaluable insight throughout the process of change - ensuring that communication remains credible, relevant and meaningful.

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The Marlowe communications offer

• Communications planning and strategy

• Narrative, storytelling and message development

• Define, refine and articulate organisational purpose, vision, values and strategy

• Creative and visual design

• Leadership and Manager training and toolkits

• Providing immediate support to leaders and managers (including urgent comms issues or crises)

• Communications delivery and channel management (including outsourced communications workstream support)

• Communications audits

Sharing Knowledge

Transferring Skills

Developing Capability

to discuss your

change communications needs

Methodology

Our methodology for change communications is built around 5 'i's.

Insight

• Hold stakeholder interviews and focus groups

• Audit communications channels and capability

• Conduct desk research

• Build picture of audience segmentation

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Innovate

• Develop our big idea - the overarching creative platform

• Create supporting strategic narrative and messaging

• Introduce new channels and improve existing ones

• Build robust communications plan based on insight

• Involve early adopters

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Initiate

• Mobilise leaders, line managers and influencers

• Build capability

• Establish baseline metrics

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Implement

• Provide supporting tools and templates

• Gather stories and proof points

• Create online and offline communities and networks

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Integrate

• Evolve communications and communities into business as usual

• Establish listening forums

• Re-evaluate approach versus baseline metrics

• Gather lessons learned and share

We are expertly equipped to bring a wide range of perspectives to our training, ensuring a comprehensive, adaptable and immersive learning experience.

Please get in touch for more information.

Our change partnership services

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Assurance

Leadership

Culture

Capability

Delivery

Training

Communications