Communication Plan

William Swoveland
AET/560
August 5, 2016
Lissa Goya

Why Have a Communication Plan?

Rumors

Reasons unclear

How affects employees exaggerated

Agenda
How to Launch Communication Plan
Technology Needed to Accomplish Plan
How to Test its Effectiveness and the Impact of Management's Response to the
Organizational Change
How to Generate Feedback for Continuous Improvement
Addressing Negative Responses/Communications About the Change
How Communication Plan Can Help Produce Organizational Change

How to Launch Plan

Four phases:
1. Buy in from leadership
a.

Must be able to convince managent of change

2. Why do we need change?

a.

Communicate to employees why change needed andlay out the steps how it will happen

3. Progress report
a.

Shows employees progress; looks at feedback, and spells out new procedures/roles

4. Confirm the Changes

a.

Recognizes successful change; prepares for next

Technology Needed to Accomplish Plan

To reach as many employees as possible in as many ways as possible--

Multiple media
Multiple platforms

Testing its Effectiveness and the Impact of

Management's Response to the Organizational Change
Morale
Employees informed and happy? /Not informed and mad
Management done anything to ease the change?
Feedback
Surveys--specific or general
Suggestion Boxes--anonymous
Comments--thru company website

How to Generate Feedback for Continuous

Improvement
Seek feedback

All level of employees

Communicate M-O-R-E

Keeps everyone involved and in same direction

Keep log book

Past experiences and as a reference

Do not automatically blame the agent

Sometimes it is recipient and not the agent

Identify changing requirements

(Yoskovitz 8, 2012)

Addressing Negative Responses

or Communications About the Change
Kotter and Schlesinge, six ways to reduce negative reactions and build support:
educate and communicate

participate and involve

facilitate and support

negotiate and agree

manipulate and cooperate

explicit and implicit coercion

(Cawsey, Deszca, and Inglos, 2012)

References
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2012). Organizational change: An action-oriented toolkit (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Economy, P. (2014). 5 Steps to Creating Really Effective Teams. Inc.com. Retrieved from
http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/5-steps-to-really-effective-teams.html
Spector, B. (2013). Implementing organizational change: Theory into practice (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Yoskovitz 8, B. (2012, February 6 ). Tips for Implementing Continuous Process Improvement [Web log post]. Retrived from
http://www.instigatorblog.com/6-tips-for-implementing-continuous-process-improvement/2012/02/13/