Introduction to Change Communication

Two-Hour Virtual Course

This introductory course will provide the confidence to build practical and creative communication support in times of change. You will understand how people react during change, how to create communication that help people successfully navigate change and how the communication professional’s role is as much about providing the space and time to ask the right questions as it is in creating and broadcasting information.

What to expect         

• Understand what ‘people-centred’ change means.
• Build confidence in your ability to bring people with you during change rather than ‘doing the change to them’.
• Explore the roles that leaders play through change.
• Think about how communication professionals provide value added support to leaders.
• Understand how ‘one size doesn’t fit’ all as different audiences have different requirements.
• Learn practical tips so you can provide engaging communication that help different audiences answer key questions and navigate their way through change.

Who should attend 

Professionals working in strategic communication, corporate communication, internal communication, external communication, corporate affairs, employee experience, human resources, change management or public relations. Those leading teams, projects or having to influence others as an organisation goes through change.

Career Level

Generalist / Specialist, Strategic Advisor, Business Leader

Course outline

Topic 1: Reflections

• Hold up the mirror – what is your experience of change? what has worked well and not so well?
• Fears about change communication
• Introduce SPACES model (self-esteem / purpose / autonomy / certainty / equity / social connection, rejection), McKinsey 70% statistic and change curve
• The role of the communication professional in times of change

Topic 2: Audience

• Do you know who you are talking to? What are their motivations? What do they think when a change is announced?
• Messaging – what do you want to say?
• The disconnect between what the organisation wants to say and what the audience wants to hear
• Emotion/neuroscience – communication of emotion and making an impact model
• Understanding, conversation and listening
• Answering the three key change questions
• How to include the hard to reach (non-wired) audiences

Topic 3: Roles and responsibilities

• Your roles as the communication professional
• The role of the leader and how to support them
• Stakeholder management
• ‘Champion’ groups

Topic 4: Bringing it all together

• What does success look like?
• How do you get there?
• Strategy/plan and measurement

About the trainer
Howard Krais  co-founded True; a business set up to help organisations build winning cultures through maximising the potential of their people, in early 2023. Before True, Howard spent much of his career in senior in-house communications and engagement roles at businesses such as Ernst & Young, GSK and latterly Johnson Matthey. Over the past five and a half years, together with colleague Mike Pounsford and Kevin Ruck, Howard has led work focused on how organisations listen. Following four ground-breaking reports, a book, entitled “Leading the Listening Organisation” was published by Routledge in December 2023. Howard was President of the UK chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for two years (2019-21), and Chairman of Wealdstone Football Club (2007-16).