Corporate Intranet

In today's business world, change is inevitable. In order for organizations to be successful and stay competitive, they must be able to adjust to change, which is very difficult to do because of various barriers. The three main barriers to organizational change are lack of change readiness, poor leadership and poor communication. For the purpose of this article, we will be only discussing the barrier of poor communication.

In order to implement any kind of change there needs to be good communication. Communication needs to be collaborative among employees going every which way-up, down and across - every employee must be included. If employees don't feel like they have been communicated to properly, they will most likely not follow the change agent or leader. If leaders in fact want to lead, they need to communicate and include its followers in every step of the change process. Employees are more likely to get on-board with the change process if they participated and contributed to the plan.

Communication also needs to be simple. Communication that is overly complex frustrates and confuses employees in the change effort. Employees are very likely to "tune-out" whatever is being said by the communicator. The change initiative should be communicated in manageable and achievable chunks. If change initiatives are too big, employees will feel over-loaded and not have the confidence that they will achieve the goal or objective. Or, for example if an organization adopts ten different change initiatives at the same time and runs in ten different directions, the employees may feel overwhelmed and confused. Nothing meaningful happens in these situations except that work feels chaotic and very disorganized.

Communication also needs to be communicated clearly so all employees understand what the change entails and the reason for the change. For example, an organization might decide to redesign jobs in a unit to foster job enrichment. Employees in this unit would receive many benefits by this job redesign, but if they are not told why they are making the changes, the employees may make false assumptions and resist the change! Communication can be done, for example, through town-hall meetings, company newsletters or the company's Intranet. Employees need to understand why the change is needed and how they benefit from it.

Communication also needs to be open and honest. Leaders need the reputation of being open and honest. Any information that is covered up will eventually get out. The more openly leaders speak about problems, the more trust the leader will earn from its followers.

Change is inevitable and organizations need to be able to adapt to the change in order to be successful and competitive. Organizations that have a good communication processes will communicate collaboratively, simply and honestly.