The Brief  

Change communications are a critical part of approaching adjustments or closures of businesses or sites. 

In the past six months, Wright Communications has been called in to support a number of businesses with closures or changes to the way they do things. 

Wright Communications consultants have considerable change communications experience, including shutting down Marsden Point Refinery, supporting M&A at Fletcher Building and change and closure programmes at a number of high profile and smaller Kiwi businesses and service organisations. 

The Wright Approach  

We approach each project with utmost confidentiality and sensitivity. While we will never underestimate the profound impact on employees and stakeholders, we also understand the need for business sustainability and the importance of taking a steady, practical approach in what is often an emotional environment.  

Our initial response is to assess the stakeholders involved, their key issues and timeframes. We prefer a discreet site visit to help us understand risk factors.  

We use a number of change communications models, including those proven to work well in industrial and manufacturing settings and for listed and Government-owned companies undergoing significant transitions. 

We also find communications models used in health settings to be helpful, using consultant experience gained in international hospitals and research facilities. 

Our principles include a gentle approach to imparting difficult news, outlining context and steps taken to investigate alternative outcomes before concluding with the critical closure or change update. We then move those impacted to focusing on next steps and support mechanisms, with emphasis on safety and wellbeing. 

We use a number of targeted channels to impart the same key messages. Repetition helps employees and stakeholders overwhelmed with emotion to comprehend useful information and next steps. 

With our contacts and networks, we have been able to advise on the best way to approach stakeholders. This has included support informing politicians, such as providing briefing documents to Government offices, setting up meetings and providing key messaging and supporting materials to those attending meetings. 

The Outcome  

We aim for minimal or balanced media coverage, employees who remain committed, trusting and engaged, and understanding, continued loyalty and support from stakeholders who could include customers, suppliers, contractors, unions, councils, Government and the community. 

1. A recent consumer product shutdown involved the most complex array of stakeholders and owners with competing interests that our consultants have ever experienced. We steered all parties through an at-times fraught environment with calmness and steadiness. We supported comprehensive event management for the announcement, providing CEO and HR announcement scripts, call centre messaging, a full media office, Q and As, social media messaging, and messaging for partners, their employees and millions of consumers. We also provided training for team managers to give them confidence supporting leadership messaging and helping emotional team members.  

Feedback from those involved highlighted our consultants’ unflappable, supportive approach, professional handling of competing interests, how smoothly the process ran and the high level of understanding and acceptance of the need for closure. External speculation was minimal and reputational damage to sensitive stakeholders was avoided. 

2. We were called in to assist with the closure of a residential facility for long-time vulnerable residents who were upset with initial communications that may have been too blunt. We set up face to face meetings with impacted families, drafted invitations, scripts and follow-up emails for leadership members, documents for families, staff updates and wall posters, we recommended a programme of visits for families and residents to other sites, and advised on ways to keep key staff until the facility closed.  

By giving families the information they needed to understand the reasons behind the closure and providing them with a picture of a new future for their loved ones, their attitudes changed from angry and combative, threatening to call in the media and run social media campaigns, to supportive, engaged and understanding. The closure remained out of the public domain and reputational damage to the client organisation was avoided. 

3. We supported on the announcement of a proposal to close a unionised manufacturing site with multiple stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, contractors and councils. We provided a detailed run sheet for the announcement day that included CEO and HR announcement scripts and follow-up emails, scripts for calls to employees unable to attend the announcement, customer and supplier emails, phone scripts, call centre Q and As and security guard scripts, internal and external website materials, key messaging for supportive industry groups who may have wished to provide public commentary, and running a full media office. We are continuing to support with detailed communications calendars, event management and document development over the next four months for a variety of scenarios including closure.  

A number of the leadership team expressed surprise at the balanced nature of media coverage, and that everything ran according to plan without challenges or issues. While one leader expressed his view that the organisation had been lucky it went well, the reality was that this was an expected outcome following a huge amount of effort and preparation from a large number of people. 

4. We have also assisted companies with unexpected and sudden changes of CEO – an occurrence that is not unusual but can be very unsettling, with the need for extra communications resource at short notice. Some of these organisations have particular risks around Government, union and peer organisation relationships. We have focused on maintaining trust between the organisations and their employees, donors, customers and communities, and avoiding reputational damage.