A passion for change

By Kelly Dyer, Editor of Strategic Communication Management, Melcrum

One thing that came across very obviously to all those present at Melcrum’s Change Communication conference last week was how passionate many of the speakers were about their organizations and their level of involvement within them.

From a program of excellent presenters, I’m thinking in particular of the keynote speaker Carol Kinsey Goman, president of Kinsey Consulting Services in the US, and Terry McKenzie senior director, global employee communications and communities at Sun Microsystems.

Both struck up an overwhelming rapport with the 130+ delegates and spoke animatedly and honestly about their experiences of change. In fact, they were so honest that they both referred to past family episodes that had affected their professional opinions and views on change in the workplace.

Kinsey Goman, for example, shared with the audience an anecdote from her childhood about witnessing first hand how companies at that time dealt with making staff redundant. Her father lost his job after a considerable number of years with the same employer, yet this seemed to count for little when he received the news of his imminent departure written on a slip of paper in the same envelope as his wage slip. The subsequent events that impacted her family life resulted in Kinsey Goman growing up with the philosophy that “no matter how massive the change that is inflicted on a person, one thing you can never alter is the power of the human spirit.”

This provided a marked contrast with the communication plans that were put in place for employees of London's Heathrow airport in the run up to the opening of Terminal 5. Tom Everett, T5 live communication consultant at BAA, spoke with great enthusiasm on the various methods used to keep employees up to date and involved with its progress. These included having T5 live t-shirts printed, creating a Facebook group and training team leaders to make films that were shown to their teams during a special T5 induction day day. “There’s a palpable feeling of community at T5 which I’ve never experienced elsewhere,” said Everett. So impressive were the schemes and programs available to the employees that Mackenzie later commented that she found herself “drooling in envy” at the budget that Everett had!

This seemed to strongly indicate that society has progressed a long way since the days experienced by Kinsey-Goman and her father. Never again would an employee have to learn such big news through such humiliating methods, I thought. But I was wrong. A couple of days ago I heard about a British company which laid off a number of its employees in France. How did they inform their staff of the news? By text message. It seems some organizations still have a way to go after all.