Getting Your Message Right: Communicating Effectively with Employees

Getting Your Message Right

Communicating Effectively with Employees

Alison Davis and Jane Shannon

You’ve just given a presentation to senior management about your new program. Your PowerPoint deck was appropriately detailed: 44 slides explaining why the program is needed, how you designed it, and what it contains. And your hard work paid off, because the meeting went well; management approved the program, giving you the go-ahead to implement it.

Now it’s time to communicate with employees. And here’s the first thing you should do: Close the PowerPoint file and take out a blank sheet of paper. Why? Because the way you structured your message to “sell” your program to management is very different from how you need to frame your message for your ...