Five workstreams, one story people could repeat
How we gave a large global manufacturing business one clear story for a year-long improvement programme, so every colleague could see their part in it.
A change programme is only as good as the telling
A large global manufacturing business embarked on a year-long improvement programme spanning five connected workstreams, from operational processes to colleague capability and training. The programme team recognised early that successful change would depend on colleagues understanding not just what was changing, but why it mattered and where they fitted into it.
Five workstreams means five sets of leaders, five sets of milestones and five ways of describing the same ambition. Left alone, colleagues hear five programmes rather than one, and decide it is somebody else's job.
The workforce is also split between office-based colleagues and production colleagues who are not at a desk, so anything that lived only in email was going to reach half the people who needed it.
Make it one programme, owned by everyone
Bring five workstreams under one banner so colleagues heard a single, coherent story.
Reach every colleague, not just the ones with a laptop, and give them a way to feed back rather than only receive.
Build something that could run for a year without going stale, and that the internal team could keep running after we stepped back.
We planned it before we published it
Mapped the audiences properly
Five distinct groups, from the production floor to the steering team, each needing something different. We wrote down what each one had to feel, know and do before a single message went out.
Built a stakeholder plan with teeth
For every group: what they need in order to act, and what could stop them. Naming the risks up front is what stops a plan quietly failing later.
Agreed the key messages, and the words
One set of messages everyone could repeat, with a deliberate rule that they be free of jargon and acronyms so they landed on the floor as well as in the boardroom.
Gave the programme a look
A programme identity so colleagues recognised the messaging instantly, with a colour per workstream so people could tell at a glance which part of the change they were reading about.
Picked the channels for the people
Eight channels chosen against the audience rather than the habit: video, email, internal news, a daily brief for production colleagues, screens across the workplace, a monthly blog, a monthly video update and live sessions with anonymous Q and A.
Ran it to a calendar
A week-by-week plan with an owner, a purpose and a channel against every message, tracked to completion so nothing drifted.
What colleagues walked away with
What it took
In our words
Change Communications
Helping your people understand what is changing, why it matters and what to do next.
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