Communicating Change: What Do Employees Want to Hear and How Do They Want to be Told?

摘要

Unsuccessful change programs in organizations are viewed as ordinary, routine, and expensive. While assessments of failure rates are extensive, modern studies describe failure rates to be as high as 70%. Despite all the best efforts of leadership, change agents, and scholars over the last decade, the excessive failure rates remain. One source for these failures may be the ways in which leaders communicate change initiatives to employees. Applying a qualitative case study methodology, the findings from this study provide additional information for business and communication professionals about communication content and channels during organizational change. The efforts of this case study focused on two departments in a large Florida university with 40 employees. This study explored frontline workers' and leaders' perceptions, reactions toward, and preferences for change communication information and channels. The results from the interviews suggest that leaders believe they are providing employees the information they need to hear such as strategy, goals and objectives, when in fact employees are more concerned and interested in hearing about their job security and their roles and responsibilities. The data also suggest that leaders tend to use small informal discussions and general informational meetings most frequently in disseminating change information. Universally leaders and employees both preferred change information dissemination face-to-face, either on the individual or group level. The most significant and surprising finding was the absence of an internal communications department or program. The results of this study illuminate and provide a better understanding of the importance of effective communications, particularly the content and channels of communication during a change effort.