Communication plan template for a change

Fill in the template

COMMUNICATION PLAN

Audience
What they need to know, and what they will ask
Who tells them
How and when
How we hear back

1.
   Audience: ______________________
   What they need to know, and what they will ask: ______________________
   Who tells them: ______________________
   How and when: ______________________
   How we hear back: ______________________

2.
   Audience: ______________________
   What they need to know, and what they will ask: ______________________
   Who tells them: ______________________
   How and when: ______________________
   How we hear back: ______________________

3.
   Audience: ______________________
   What they need to know, and what they will ask: ______________________
   Who tells them: ______________________
   How and when: ______________________
   How we hear back: ______________________

4.
   Audience: ______________________
   What they need to know, and what they will ask: ______________________
   Who tells them: ______________________
   How and when: ______________________
   How we hear back: ______________________

Get the editable version: this template as an Excel file with a worked example, in the Change Toolkit. Or learn to use it on your own change in the course Leading Change with Evidence.

How to use it well

These steps are practice suggestions, not tested findings.

Start from the stakeholder map. Each group on your stakeholder map becomes a row here. Groups whose view is "Not known" need a conversation, not an announcement.

Write what they will ask, not only what you will say. For each audience, list the two or three questions they will have on day one. Often these are about their own job: what changes on their shift, who they report to, whether their role is safe. If you do not know the answer yet, say so and say when you will.

Be realistic. Say what will be hard, what is still undecided and what stays the same. The research below is about realistic information, not reassurance.

Let their own manager tell them. Brief the managers first, give them the reasons as well as the facts, and let them explain the change in their own words. Then make sure they can pass questions back up.

Plan how you will hear back. Every row needs an answer to "how will we know what they think?" A question box nobody reads does not count. Name who collects the questions and when the answers go out.

Repeat it. One announcement is not a plan. Put the follow-ups in the how and when column, and at each review check the last column for what you heard.

What the research says

No study in the Evidence Library behind this site tests a communication plan template. Several studies test what goes into one.

Realistic previews. In a longitudinal field experiment after a merger announcement, employees in one plant received a realistic merger preview, a program of realistic communications, while employees in another plant received limited information. Across four collections of data, the preview reduced dysfunctional outcomes of the merger, and the effects lasted for the duration of the study (Schweiger & DeNisi, 1991, rated Medium in the Evidence Library from its abstract). There were only two plants, so it is one comparison, not a general law.

Explaining the why. In a field experiment with 173 salaried employees in one plant during an ongoing pay freeze, staff were assigned to 12 workshops, and only the last six heard an explanation, given by a researcher, of why the decision and its implementation were fair. The explanation did not change average attitudes. Its effect showed for the people the freeze hurt most: economic hardship went with lower commitment and satisfaction and higher turnover intentions only among those who did not hear the explanation (Schaubroeck et al., 1994, rated Medium after a full-text read). Because the explanation followed workshop order rather than a random draw, read it as one plant's result.

Argument quality. In an online experiment with 174 employees split into two random groups, those exposed to a change communication with high-quality arguments showed less resistance to organizational change than those exposed to weak arguments (Parra Fernández et al., 2019, rated Medium from its abstract). It was an online experiment with people recruited through social networks, not a test inside one organization's real change.

Communication during restructuring. A systematic review of 39 longitudinal studies of restructuring listed communication and provision of information among the variables that intervened between restructuring and employee well-being (de Jong et al., 2016, rated Medium from its abstract). The abstract does not say how much communication helps.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

1. Week 0
   Before you start
2. 1
   Surface both ways

   The pay-freeze experiment on this page is one of the studies the Loop lists for Surface both ways. The last column, how you will hear back, is the upward half of that part.

3. 2
   Make sense together, top included

   Naming each group's own manager as the messenger leaves room for them to explain the change in their own words, which is the Loop's first move for this part.

4. 3
   Start it close to the work
5. 4
   Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace
6. 5
   The middle’s own weather
7. Ring
   Safe to speak, and speaking changes something

Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.