Marlowe Consulting | Change Communications

What we do / Communications

Change communications and engaging the workforce

We help clients develop robust, effective communications strategies and enable their delivery through engaging, imaginative approaches which clearly articulate and support change.

Communication enables change success

The communications that accompany change programmes can be the difference between their success and their failure. Employees don’t simply want to know what’s happening, they need to understand much more about what it means for them, which is why audience-led communications are more impactful than simple push messages.

The most successful change programmes are ones where stakeholders and the recipients of the change understand what’s changing, why it’s changing, what they need to do differently because of it, where they can go for more information if they need it and importantly how they can contribute to the change.

Communication is an essential workstream in any business change programme, but all too often transformation teams are not engaging their communication teams early enough or making best use of their expertise.

Communications – and particularly the audience insight gathered by effective listening - should be central to an organisation’s decision during a period of transition.

How Marlowe can partner with you to achieve better communications

Marlowe work with communication teams and leaders at all stages of through business change. Our methodology for change communications is built around the five I’s.

Insight

We will delve deep to understand everything about your employees, segmenting them into groups not just by role and location but by their views, values and concerns. To help us get into their hearts and minds we’ll use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research including reviewing existing data such as employee engagement surveys as well as 1:1 interviews and focus groups.
We will use trusted methodologies to audit your existing communication channels and identify gaps and opportunities.

Innovate

From organisational design to cultural change, we will help you to develop your big idea – explaining why this change matters - by creating a compelling strategic narrative. We will then ensure that narrative is understood by all your employees.
We’ll build robust communication plans based on audience insight, using existing channels effectively and suggesting alternatives if appropriate.

Initiate

Our experience shows that leaders and managers are the most trusted source of information for employees, so we will work with you to train and mobilise your leaders, line managers and influencers to ensure they have the skills and confidence to help the organisation deliver change successfully.

Implement

Implementation is often where change programmes falter - with poor communication usually a key factor. To mitigate against this failure, we will provide you and your leaders with the training, tools and templates to deliver outstanding communications whilst also harnessing the power of online and offline communities and networks to gather stories and proof points to articulate your strategy, demonstrate progress and share examples of new ways of working.
We’ll create opportunities for you to listen to your people through a variety of channels which you can use to strengthen and / or adjust your plans.

Integrate

A key part of the Marlowe philosophy is to help build capabilities and as part of our handover at the end of a project we will support you in transitioning effective communications practices into business-as-usual ways of working. This will help ensure you have some core capabilities in place to deal with future change communications challenges.
We’ll also provide you with a ‘lessons learned’ evaluation (as a report or closeout workshop) which will help you to plan for future change programmes.