How do you communicate a change management process to employees?

With a simple concept that gives the change meaning, a practical piece that explains the tools, such as a playbook, and repeated activities that turn what has been learnt into habit. A physical metaphor, like caring for a plant, helps the message stick.

What is an internal communications playbook?

It is a practical guide that brings together the tools, steps and examples the team needs to apply an initiative, whether that is a change, a culture or a methodology. Unlike a corporate manual, it is made to be used, not filed away.

Case study

Nestlé Active Game: internal communications to drive change management

Nestlé wanted its team’s change projects to succeed by giving people change management tools. Active Game turned that into activism: planting and caring for a plant as a way to reflect and find the courage to change.

ClientNestlé
FormatChange management

The challenge

The challenge was to help the team’s change projects succeed by giving them the change management tools to get there. Put like that it sounds simple, but anyone who has been through a change process knows where it breaks: the tools arrive in a presentation, make sense in the room and are forgotten as soon as the routine kicks back in.

The communication had to solve two things at once. On the one hand, make tools that tend to sound like consultancy jargon easy to understand. On the other, keep them alive long enough to become habits. Change is not decreed in a meeting; it is cultivated over weeks. And if the team does not feel it as their own, no methodology, however good, will move the needle.

The idea

The concept was activism through planting and caring for a plant, designed to get employees thinking and to encourage them. The metaphor is so direct it works without explanation: change, like a plant, needs someone to sow it, water it and have the patience to watch it grow.

It works because it takes something abstract into the physical world. Every employee had an object in their hands that reminded them daily that change depends on constant care. Around that idea came a playbook that organised the change management tools and a programme of activities that put them into practice. The art direction made sure everything had its own look, recognisable and attractive enough that nobody would leave it forgotten in a drawer.

What we did

Creative concept Active Game
Activism built on planting and caring for a plant
Playbook containing the change management tools
Activities to put change into practice
Art direction for every piece

Key takeaways (expert view)

If your team has to change, give them something to look after every day and a manual that explains how; the metaphor hooks them and the playbook keeps them going.

A metaphor you can touch

Explaining change with slides is easy; making it stick is not. The plant turns an abstract concept into an object you live with every day. It is a useful lesson for any brand, including a venue or event supplier trying to land a message: if the audience can take it home and look after it, the message lasts far longer than the event.

The playbook as the user manual

Emotion opens the door, but someone has to explain what to do next. The playbook brings the change management tools down to concrete steps. Without it, the activism stays a nice anecdote. With it, the campaign moves from inspiring to enabling, which is what a team in the middle of change actually needs.

Activities that turn change into habit

Change that is only communicated does not happen; it happens when it is practised. The activities give the team repeated opportunities to apply what they have learnt. For events companies, used to thinking about the day of the event, the lesson is clear: effective internal communication is designed as a season, not a one-off.

Services involved

→Live campaigns →Communications agency for the events industry →Experiential marketing