Communication during change - the role and purpose of communication, the audiences (employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, community, regulators), the channels (town-halls, internal newsletters, intranet, direct manager briefings, media releases, customer notices), and the principles of effective change communication

What this dot point is asking

VCAA wants you to know the role and purpose of communication during organisational change, the audiences a manager must communicate with, the channels available, and the principles of effective change communication. Section A short responses commonly test the principles or audiences; Section B case studies often require you to recommend a communication approach for a scenario business undertaking change.

The answer

Why communication during change matters

Communication is the most under-rated and most under-invested area of change management, and the most frequent cause of avoidable change failure. The technical change (new system, new structure, new strategy) often works on paper but fails in practice because the people inside and outside the business did not understand it, trust it or act on it.

Communication during change serves three connected purposes.

1. Reduce uncertainty. Change creates anxiety. Anxiety becomes resistance unless it is reduced through information. Communication that explains the why, what, how, when and what-it-means-for-you reduces uncertainty.
2. Build commitment. Employees who understand the change rationale and feel involved in shaping it commit to the change. Commitment is the difference between compliant execution and active support.
3. Manage external relationships. Customers, suppliers, shareholders, regulators and the community all have legitimate interests in the change. Communication maintains their trust and avoids the reputational damage that follows from feeling kept in the dark.

The absence of communication does not produce silence. It produces rumour. The information vacuum is filled by the worst-case interpretation employees can imagine, by media speculation, by competitor positioning and by activist commentary. Every change leader who has tried to "wait until we have the full plan to communicate" has discovered that the absence of communication is itself communication, and it usually communicates the wrong thing.

The audiences

Change rarely affects only one stakeholder group. Effective change communication identifies all the affected audiences and addresses each appropriately.

Employees

The internal workforce executes the change. They need:

• The why - the strategic rationale, the burning platform, the data behind the decision.
• The what - the change itself, its scope, its scale and what is and is not changing.
• The how - the rollout plan, the timeline, the dependencies.
• The what-it-means-for-me - the specific impact on each role, team and division.
• The how-to-respond - what the employee should do, who to talk to with questions or concerns, what support is available.

Front-line managers are the primary channel for employee communication. CEO town-halls and corporate newsletters set the tone, but the day-to-day comprehension and trust live in the direct manager-to-employee relationship.

Customers

The external customer base experiences the change through service, product, price, channel or relationship effects. They need to know what is happening, what it means for them, what (if anything) they need to do, and what support is available if something goes wrong.

Customer communication during change can be a defensive act (limiting attrition through reassurance) or a positive act (using the change to deepen the customer relationship through proactive support). The better businesses treat it as the latter.

Suppliers

Suppliers may be affected by changed order volumes, payment terms, technical specifications, integration requirements or contract terms. Early engagement preserves the supplier relationship, allows the supplier to plan its own response, and avoids surprise that can damage the supply chain.

Shareholders and investors

For listed businesses, ASX disclosure rules require timely communication of price-sensitive information. Beyond compliance, investors expect the strategic rationale, the financial-impact analysis, the implementation plan and the risk assessment. Investor confidence supports share price stability through the change.

The community

Significant changes (large redundancies, site closures, environmental effects, community-service impacts) affect local communities. Community communication, often through local media and direct engagement with affected councils and groups, manages the social licence to operate.

Regulators

Compliance-relevant changes require disclosure to regulators (ASIC, ACCC, APRA, sector-specific authorities). Some changes require pre-approval (banking-product changes, environmental-impact triggers). Communication with regulators is both a legal and a relationship-management activity.

The channels

Effective communication matches the channel to the audience and the message. The main channels available to a manager during change include:

Internal channels.

• CEO and executive town-halls. Used for high-impact, organisation-wide messages. Reach is broad; depth is shallow.
• Direct manager briefings. Used for team-specific messages and the absorption of broader announcements. Depth is high; reach is local.
• Intranet, internal newsletter and email. Used for ongoing updates and reference material. Reach is broad; depth is moderate; engagement varies.
• Internal social channels (Yammer, Slack, internal forums). Used for two-way dialogue. Useful for surfacing concerns and answering questions.
• Training sessions. Used during the change stage for skill-building and absorption of process change.
• Onboarding and induction. Used during refreeze to embed the new state for new starters.

External channels.

• Customer notices (in-app, email, SMS, in-store signage). Used to inform customers of changes affecting them.
• Customer support channels (call centre, chat, in-branch). Used to handle questions and resolve issues during the change.
• Media releases. Used for community and broader public communication.
• Social media. Used for both broadcast and listening; particularly important for managing brand reputation during change.
• Investor briefings and ASX announcements. Used for shareholder and analyst communication.
• Direct engagement with affected groups (unions, community groups, suppliers). Used for the substantive consultation that goes beyond broadcast.

A common mistake is to over-rely on broadcast channels (the email blast, the intranet article) and under-invest in direct two-way channels (the team meeting, the manager conversation). Broadcast informs; conversation builds trust.

Principles of effective change communication

1. Be early and continuous

Communication should start before the change is announced (in the unfreeze stage) and continue through change and refreeze. Silence is interpreted as bad news. Continuous communication keeps the workforce and the customer base ahead of the rumour cycle.

2. Lead with the "why"

Employees and other stakeholders accept difficult change more readily when they understand the reason for it. Lead with the rationale (the data, the threat, the opportunity) before the detail (the structure, the timeline, the impact).

3. Be honest about the bad news

Acknowledge the real costs of the change (redundancy, disruption, customer-experience friction, supplier impact). Messaging that contradicts what people can observe is the most damaging single communication failure. Credibility is built on honest acknowledgement of difficulty.

4. Be two-way

Provide channels for employees, customers and other stakeholders to ask questions, surface concerns and contribute to the change. One-way broadcast is informative but not engaging. Two-way dialogue surfaces problems early and builds commitment.

5. Equip front-line managers

Front-line managers are the most important communication channel for employees. Brief them in advance of broader announcements, give them talking points and Q&A material, and back them with executive support so they can answer questions confidently.

6. Match the channel to the message and audience

A redundancy decision deserves a manager-to-employee conversation, not an email. A regulatory disclosure requires ASX announcement, not Slack. A customer-experience-affecting change deserves in-app and direct messaging, not a buried website notice.

7. Repeat

The core message must be repeated many times across many channels before it lands. The communications discipline of "you are sick of it before they have heard it" applies.

8. Be consistent

Across audiences (employees, customers, investors, community) and across time, the message must be consistent. Inconsistency is detected, remembered and used as evidence of dishonesty.

9. Build feedback loops

Survey employees, monitor customer support themes, track social and media sentiment, and listen in investor briefings. Use the feedback to adjust the communication plan and the change plan.

Worked Australian examples

Telstra T25 (effective communication)

Telstra CEO Vicki Brady established a quarterly all-staff briefing cadence from the start of the T25 strategy reset in 2022. The cadence:

• Began before the detailed restructure was finalised.
• Communicated the why (legacy fixed-line decline, 5G opportunity, cost discipline) before the what (workforce restructure of approximately 2,800 announced in 2024).
• Used multiple channels - all-staff sessions, divisional briefings, manager cascades, internal news, investor briefings.
• Was two-way - employees could submit questions, executives answered live.
• Was repeated and consistent across the multi-year strategy period.

The discipline kept the workforce ahead of the rumour cycle through a difficult restructure period and supported the strategic execution.

Qantas customer-service crisis (communication failure and recovery)

Qantas through 2022-2023 illustrates what happens when communication does not match the customer reality.

During the post-Covid restart, customer-service performance collapsed - cancellations, lost luggage, refund delays, call-centre wait times of hours. The corporate communication initially under-acknowledged the scale of the problem. Media releases focused on operational metrics that did not match customer experience. The ACCC subsequently launched proceedings over the sale of tickets for already-cancelled flights ("ghost flights"). The mismatch between message and experience damaged brand trust significantly.

The recovery from late 2023 under successor CEO Vanessa Hudson included more direct acknowledgement of the failings, public apology, board-level accountability, executive departures, remuneration adjustments and substantive operational improvement. The communication shift was material to the trust-rebuilding work.

Atlassian open-by-default culture (structural communication)

Atlassian's "open company, no bullshit" cultural value translates into structural communication practices that support change. Board materials and strategy decks are widely shared with staff. Co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar answer questions on internal forums. The transparency means that when specific changes are needed (new product direction, restructure, acquisition), the communication builds on a foundation of trust rather than starting from cold.

The structural approach demonstrates that change communication is not a one-off effort during a change project; it is built into the operating model.

Common communication failures

The most common change-communication failures are predictable and avoidable.

• Waiting for the full plan before communicating. The full plan never arrives. Communicate the direction, the milestones, the uncertainties and the next steps; do not wait for perfect detail.
• Outsourcing communication to corporate comms. Communication is a leadership responsibility. Front-line managers, not the comms team, deliver the message that lands.
• Confusing announcement with communication. Sending an email and posting an intranet article is not communication. Communication is the dialogue that lands the message and surfaces the response.
• Inconsistent messaging across audiences. What is said to investors must be consistent with what is said to employees and customers. Inconsistency is detected and remembered.
• Treating bad news as a PR problem. Bad news communicated honestly with action is recoverable. Bad news denied or minimised becomes a credibility problem that outlasts the original issue.
• Stopping communication at announcement. The communication during change and refreeze is at least as important as the announcement. Most changes fail in the implementation phase, in part because communication has tapered off.