7 ways to make communication count for frontline workforces
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Poor frontline communication costs businesses $80.6 billion every year. Explore how to create communication that reaches frontline teams in the reality of their working day.
Frontline workforces keep organisations running. They make products, move goods, care for customers, keep sites safe, maintain services and solve operational problems every day. Yet they are often the people who feel furthest away from corporate communication.
The issue is not that frontline teams are difficult to engage. It is that many workplace communication systems are designed around desk-based access: email access, intranet updates, office hours, regular screen time and scheduled meetings. For employees working shifts, driving vehicles, operating machinery, serving customers or moving through busy sites, that model often does not fit the reality of the working day.
IC Index 2026: The reality check paints a difficult picture. One in five frontline workers hear about major changes through the grapevine rather than from leaders. Frontline workers are over twice as likely to say they spend no time reading communication updates. And trust in executive leadership among frontline workers sits at 35%, compared with 54% among desk-based colleagues.
These are not small channel issues. They are trust, access and relevance issues.
In a recent Work Wonders conversation, our CEO Sally was be joined by Keren McCarron to explore how organisations can make communication count for frontline workforces, without adding more noise. Keren has 15+ years’ experience leading communications in FMCG and manufacturing environments, while Sally brought a strategic people and culture communication lens, shaped by her work with global businesses with large, complex frontline workforces.
During the conversation, seven themes stood out:
1. Start with the reality of the working day
Frontline communication needs to begin with how people actually work.
For many frontline employees, there is no quiet moment in the day to read an email update. Teams may be working different shifts, moving between locations or operating in noisy environments. Some may not even have a work email address. Some may have access to an app, but only through a personal device which they may be restricted from using during their working time. Others may technically have access to an intranet, but very little time or reason to log in.
That means communication cannot rely on the same assumptions used for desk-based teams. Sending an email at 9am does not mean the message has landed. Posting on an intranet does not mean people have seen it. Uploading content to an app does not mean it has become part of the working day.
The strongest frontline communication meets people where they are. That might mean digital screens in the places teams naturally pass through, printed one-page updates in break areas, short visual messages near handwashing stations, team huddles, shift handovers or manager briefings built into existing routines.
The key is to take communication into the working environment, rather than expecting people to go and find it elsewhere.
2. Use existing rhythms, not extra noise
Frontline teams are often already dealing with communication overload. Global updates, local updates, HR messages, safety notices, change announcements, operational briefs, learning reminders and wellbeing campaigns can all compete for attention.
When everything is pushed out with equal weight, people have to work out what really matters to them in their role. That is a difficult task for anyone, and it’s even harder when time is tight and shifts are busy.
Making communication count does not mean doing more. Often, it means being more disciplined about what is shared, when it is shared and how it connects to the work people are doing.
Existing rhythms are a useful place to start. Shift handovers, safety huddles, toolbox talks, pre-shift briefings and regular team check-ins already have a purpose in the working day. When communication is built into those moments, it is more likely to feel relevant and less likely to become another task people have to fit around everything else.
This also forces a useful question for communicators and stakeholders: does this message genuinely need attention from frontline teams right now? If the answer is yes, it needs to be made simple, specific and easy to pass on. If the answer is no, it may need to wait, be combined with something else or be targeted differently.
3. Support middle managers as trusted communicators
For many frontline teams, the line manager is the most trusted and immediate source of information. They are the person employees go to with questions, concerns and practical realities. They are also often the person expected to explain decisions made elsewhere in the organisation. That makes middle managers essential to frontline communication, but it also places a lot of pressure on them.
Managers are often stretched, dealing with operational demands, people issues, performance pressures and constant change. If they are given a long briefing pack, unclear messages or information at the same time as everyone else, they are not being set up to communicate well.
Supporting managers as communicators means making their role easier and more realistic. They need clear messages, simple talking points, a route for questions they cannot answer and enough context to explain why something matters. They also need permission to be honest when they do not have all the answers yet.
This is especially important during change. A manager who understands the message, has had time to prepare and knows where to send feedback is far more likely to create confidence than one who has been handed a script and asked to cascade it quickly.
Middle managers should not be treated as a channel. They are people translating organisational decisions into real conversations. They need support to do that well.
4. Stop treating tech as the silver bullet
Employee apps and digital platforms can be valuable, especially for dispersed or deskless workforces. They can make communication easier to access, help reach people quickly and create a more consistent route for updates. But technology is not the same as communication.
A new platform cannot fix a relevance problem. It cannot rebuild trust on its own. It cannot make leaders more visible, managers more confident or employees more listened to. If the content is not useful, the tone feels distant or people do not see why the channel matters, it can quickly become another place they do not go.
This is where many organisations can get stuck. A platform is introduced as the answer, but the communication behind it still follows the same habits: too much information, too little targeting, not enough local relevance and limited feedback.
The better question is not “What channel should we use?” It is “What do our frontline teams need to understand, feel or do, and what is the most practical way to support that?”
Sometimes the answer will be digital. Sometimes it will be a manager conversation, a screen, a printed prompt, a simple visual or a regular face-to-face moment. Often, it will be a mix.
5. Make listening simple, visible and regular
Frontline communication cannot only be about pushing messages out. If people do not have easy ways to feed back, raise concerns or share what is really happening, communication becomes one-way very quickly.
Listening does not always need to mean a long survey. In operational environments, simple can be more effective. Keren shared examples such as quick sentiment checks at the end of a shift, where employees can press a button or use a simple visual system to show whether the day felt positive, neutral or difficult. In the session chat, someone shared another practical idea: tennis balls and two buckets, giving employees a quick way to signal how a shift had gone as they left.
Small listening mechanisms like this do two things. They give organisations a more immediate sense of what people are experiencing, and they show employees that their experience matters.
The important part is what happens next. If people give feedback and nothing visibly changes, trust can fall further. A simple “you said, we did” cycle helps close the loop. That could be a monthly update showing what has been heard, what is being explored and what action has been taken. It does not need to solve every issue immediately, but it does need to show that listening is active, not performative.
How well are you tuning in to your workforce?
See if a human approach to communication could make a difference with our Human Diagnostic.
6. Respect frontline expertise in the way you communicate
One of the biggest risks in frontline communication is underestimating the audience. Frontline roles are often highly skilled, physically demanding, socially demanding and increasingly supported by technology. Employees may be managing customer expectations, safety risks, complex systems, tight deadlines or even emotionally challenging situations. Communication needs to respect that expertise.
Simple language matters, but simple should never mean patronising. Visual communication can be useful, particularly in multilingual environments, but it should not feel childish. Campaigns can be engaging, but they should not reduce serious work to gimmicks.
Respect also shows up in word choice. Office-based assumptions can make frontline employees feel forgotten, even when that is not the intention. Saying “lunch break” when people work nights, or “business hours” when teams work across shifts, can accidentally signal that the message was not really written with them in mind. Small details like “rest break” or “working hours” can make communication feel more inclusive and more accurate.
Representation matters too. The IC Index 2026 found that only 42% of employees see stories about people like them in internal communication, yet when people do see themselves represented, advocacy for the company and brand nearly doubles.
That is a clear reminder that frontline employees need to see real people, real stories and real working environments reflected back to them. Not as an afterthought, but as a visible part of the organisation’s story.
7. Lead change with what it means for people
Frontline teams are often at the sharp end of organisational change. They may be asked to use new systems, follow new safety processes, adapt to automation, change ways of working or support new operational priorities. Yet the reasons behind change do not always reach them clearly.
The IC Index 2026 found that just 49% of employees feel that the reasons behind change programmes are clearly communicated. That matters because people are far more likely to resist change when they do not understand why it is happening, what it means for them or how they will be supported.
In many organisations, change communication starts with the business case. It explains the global context, the market pressure, the strategic aim or the organisational benefit. Those things matter, but they are not always the best place to start for frontline teams.
A more useful approach is to begin with the person. What is changing for me? What will be different on my shift, in my role or for my team? What do I need to do differently? What support will I get? What is still uncertain? Once people understand that, they are better placed to connect their own experience to the wider business reason.
This does not mean sugarcoating difficult messages. In fact, the opposite is true. Frontline teams need honest communication about impact. If a change will be hard for a few months, say so. If there are things the organisation does not know yet, be clear about when people can expect more information. If there will be extra work, disruption or a learning curve, acknowledge it.
Clear, human change communication helps people make sense of what is happening. It also gives managers and leaders a better foundation for the conversations that follow.
Making complex change clearer
Explore how to make complex change clearer through storytelling, practical language and relatable examples with our guide, How to successfully communicate change.
Making communication work for frontline teams
Communicating with and engaging frontline teams means considering the workforce you actually have, not the channels that are easiest to use.
For frontline teams, that means communication that is practical, visible, respectful and rooted in the realities of their working day. It means supporting managers, listening properly, simplifying without patronising and helping people understand change in a way that feels relevant to them.
If you are trying to reach, engage or support frontline teams through change, safety, culture or development, we can help you build communication that works for the people keeping your organisation moving.
Get in touch to talk about how we could support your organisation.
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From feedback to dialogue: why listening only works when employees feel part of the conversation
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Conversation #7 – From feedback to dialogue
Part of our 10 BIG workplace conversations series. Here, we explore why employee voice needs more than surveys, and how communication can turn feedback into meaningful dialogue.
Organisations are listening to their employees more than ever. Surveys are sent out. Feedback is collected. Employee voice is measured. But many employees still feel like they’re not part of the conversation.
They hear what’s been decided and they see the actions that follow. But they rarely feel involved in the thinking behind them. And when that happens, communication starts to feel like a broadcast – something done to them, not with them.
Too often, feedback is gathered and turned into a corporate update. Results are analysed, themes are summarised and actions are shared before leaders move on. By then, employees have already decided whether speaking up was worth it, and whether it actually made a difference.
The problem is the gap between listening and response
For years, employee voice was treated as a scheduled activity. Annual engagement surveys, pulse checks and suggestion schemes gave people a way to speak up, but usually on the organisation’s terms.
That model feels increasingly out of step with what people now expect from work. Employees want to understand where the business is heading, what change means for them and how decisions connect to the values their organisation claims to stand for. They want leaders to talk about wellbeing, inclusion, sustainability, flexibility and performance in a way that feels honest and relevant to real working lives.
A one-way update does not meet that need. In fact, it can do the opposite. Corporate broadcasts can make people feel like decisions have already been made and their role is simply to accept them. Even well-intentioned messages can land badly if they feel disconnected from what employees are actually thinking.
Real dialogue does not happen just because a leader says, “We want to hear from you.”
It needs careful communication thinking behind it. Who needs to hear what? What are they likely to feel? What will they question, challenge or worry about? Where will the conversation happen? What role should managers play?
This is where many organisations fall down as they treat communication as the final step. Strategic communication needs to be involved much earlier. It helps create employee-centred narratives and practical tools that turn corporate announcements into something people can understand, question and engage with.
The difference can be small, but it changes how the message feels.
A standard message might say: “We’re making this change to improve efficiency and support future growth. Further details will follow.”
Or it could open the door to a more human conversation: “We know this change will raise questions. Some of you will welcome it, others may feel concerned about what it means for you and your team. We have answered the first questions here, but we know there will be more. Your manager will be talking this through with your team over the next two weeks and we’ll keep updating the FAQs as we hear what matters most to you.”
Dialogue builds trust because it gives employees a role
The biggest mistake organisations make is assuming employees resist change because they do not understand the message. Often, they understand it perfectly. They just do not feel involved in it.
That is why communication needs to invite, equip and respond. Good people and culture communication helps employees see themselves in the story. It makes the business direction feel relevant to their role, their team and their day-to-day experience. It gives managers the confidence to keep the conversation going. And it helps leaders respond in ways that feel credible, not performative.
Managers are often the missing link
Organisations cannot create better dialogue if they assume managers can do it without support. Managers are usually the people employees turn to first. They are expected to explain decisions, answer questions, handle emotion, spot concerns and keep teams focused. But they are often given little more than a slide deck and a few key messages.
That is not enough. A manager cannot lead a good conversation if they do not understand the intent behind the message, the likely employee response or what they are empowered to say. They also need practical guidance on what to do when the conversation becomes difficult.
This is where communication needs to be designed for use, not just delivery. Not just “please cascade this message”, but conversation guides, team discussion prompts, leader talking points, audience-specific FAQs, listening toolkits and follow-up content that helps managers respond with confidence.
What dialogue looks like in practice
This is where strategic people and culture communications can make the biggest difference. A strong communication approach can help organisations:
- Turn leadership messages into employee-centred narratives
- Anticipate the questions people will actually ask
- Create manager tools that support real conversations
- Build feedback loops into campaigns from the start
- Show employees what has been heard and what is changing
- Make complex or sensitive topics feel more human
- Move from one-off announcements to ongoing engagement
Because dialogue is not just a channel choice. It’s a communication approach that helps employees feel heard, respected and part of what happens next.
We help organisations move from broadcast to dialogue, designing communication approaches that bring employees closer to the conversation – especially during moments of change, uncertainty or cultural shift.
That can include:
- Employee-centred narratives
- Manager conversation guides
- Leadership talking points
- Listening campaign concepts
- Feedback loops and “you said, we did” content
- Toolkits for sensitive or complex conversations
If your organisation is collecting feedback but struggling to turn it into trust, action or engagement, we can help you design a communication approach that makes employees feel heard, involved and clear on what happens next.
From employee-centred narratives and manager conversation guides to listening campaigns, feedback loops and “you said, we did” content, we create the tools that help leaders and managers keep the conversation going.
Get in touch to explore how we could support your employee listening and dialogue strategy.
Guiding the conversations that shape inclusion at work
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Conversation #3 - The commercial imperative of DEI
Part of our 10 BIG workplace conversations series. Here, we explore why inclusion is not a conversation businesses can afford to step back from.
The debate around DEI has become noisy, emotional and, at times, deeply polarising. Some organisations have stepped back altogether, leaving employees unsure what they are allowed to say. Meanwhile, leaders have been left trying to work out how to keep making progress without getting pulled into performative messaging or political noise.
But beneath the acronyms, the commercial issue remains the same.
When people do not feel included, businesses lose out. They lose ideas that never get voiced, talent that quietly leaves, decisions that are never properly challenged and customer insight that never makes it into the room. That is why the inclusion conversation matters to businesses.
By “conversation”, we mean much more than formal communications. We mean the everyday exchanges that shape how people experience work: who speaks in meetings, whose perspective is trusted, how disagreements are handled, how decisions are explained and whether people feel safe enough to say, “I see this differently.”
Communication cannot solve inclusion on its own, but it can make those moments visible, give people the language to handle them and help organisations move from intent to action.
How communication can move inclusion from statement to action
Inclusion is often communicated too narrowly, sitting in leadership statements, strategy documents or awareness posters rather than in day-to-day communication.
That leaves a gap. If people only hear about inclusion in formal messaging, it stays separate from how they actually work. It becomes something the organisation talks about, rather than something they recognise in their own decisions and interactions.
Communication can close that gap by bringing inclusion into the places people already pay attention to – not as a one-off message, but as part of how the organisation talks, listens and behaves.
In practice, there are a few different ways that communications can support colleagues to have better conversations about inclusion:
Set a clear, consistent narrative
People need to hear the same story about inclusion wherever they encounter it. That comes from setting an intentional narrative and being deliberate about what the business is saying on the topic. Leadership updates, campaigns and everyday content should reinforce the same message, so it doesn’t feel like a series of disconnected activities.
When that story is consistent, people start to recognise it. They understand what the business is asking of them, not as a separate initiative, but as part of how they’re expected to work.
Translate inclusion into everyday language
Terms like inclusion, equity or belonging can feel abstract or carry baggage in the current debate around DEI. But as communications professionals, it’s about translating those ideas into everyday language. Instead of just defining DEI phrasing, show what they look like in practice and use words people already recognise and relate to.
That might mean replacing formal terms with plain phrasing – or explaining them through simple workplace examples rather than dictionary definitions. This matters because people are far more likely to talk about something when they understand it and feel comfortable using the same language themselves.
In Brambles’ Friends Of campaign, we translated allyship into the everyday language of friendship, making it easier for people to understand and use.
Equip managers to lead the conversation
Managers can guide what gets talked about in their teams, so they need practical support when it comes to sensitive topics.
A short guide or toolkit can help them bring inclusion into regular conversations without overthinking it. By including a few useful prompts and examples, they have something to lead discussions with or refer to when a difficult situation comes up.
That support is important because managers are key in helping the topic show up in regular team discussions, not just in formal communications.
Make it usable in real moments
Most people don’t need another explanation of why inclusion matters. They need to know what to say when someone is talked over, when credit isn’t shared properly or when people are excluded from a discussion.
Communication helps by putting those situations in front of people in a clear way. A short line, a memorable phrase, a video or simple example of how someone handled it gives people something to draw on in the moment.
Give people a way to contribute
People are more likely to speak up when they see others doing the same. When people talk about themselves – how they think, how they work, what matters to them – it gives others something to relate to.
Invite people to share something of their own, whether that’s a short story, a perspective or a way of working. Give them a chance to become part of the conversation in their own words. That might be through simple prompts, shared hashtags or formats employees can pick up and use to create their own content.
This approach brings inclusion closer to people and encourages curiosity towards each other. It also adds a sense of humanity and warmth that you don’t get from polished corporate messaging.
You can see this in our work with DHL on their I Belong campaign, which put employees at the centre of the story, using their own words and images to show what belonging feels like.
Making inclusion part of everyday conversation
Inclusion is already part of how people work together. The question is whether people recognise it in their own day-to-day interactions and feel able to act in the moment.
That’s where communication has a vital role. It gives people the language, stories and practical tools to notice what is happening and understand the part they can play in creating a more inclusive culture.
Because inclusion isn’t achieved through policies alone. It grows day by day, through the words people choose, the decisions they make and the moments where they feel seen and valued.
How inclusive are your communications?
Take our quick Inclusion diagnostic to reflect on how inclusive your internal communications really are – and whether your people feel seen, heard and connected. Take the diagnostic.
If inclusion is a conversation your organisation is trying to navigate, we can help. We partner with organisations to create strategic people and culture communications that connect business priorities with the everyday employee experience. We help shape the messages, moments and tools that make inclusion easier to understand, talk about and act on.
If you’d like to explore how communication could support your inclusion goals, we’d love to talk.
Cultural agility: The inclusion skill global businesses can’t afford to ignore
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
How small moments of misunderstanding can affect collaboration, trust and performance across diverse teams.
Global organisations rely on people working across different countries, cultures and backgrounds every day. That brings innovation and diversity of thought, but it can also lead to moments where people unintentionally misread or confuse each other. Cultural agility helps people navigate these moments with more awareness, care and confidence.
What is cultural agility?
Cultural agility is the ability to recognise how your own background shapes the way you communicate, give feedback, make decisions, navigate disagreements and lead a team. It also means understanding that others may approach those same situations differently.
It encourages people to reflect on how their expectations and working styles are shaped by their background – and consider how adapting their approach could help avoid conflict or misunderstandings when working with others.
Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map is a useful reference here. In her work on feedback, she contrasts the Dutch tendency to give direct criticism with the Thai tendency to avoid criticising colleagues openly or in front of others. Without cultural agility, their differing views of what helpful feedback sounds like could easily create tension.
However, despite the name, cultural agility is not only about nationality or geography. A person’s background can also be shaped by upbringing, social class, age, education, neurodivergence, lived experience and more.
It’s important to note that cultural agility should never mean stereotyping people or expecting everyone from a similar background to work in the same way. It’s a life skill that helps people better understand what others need from them, so colleagues can do their best work together.
Why inclusion needs cultural agility
Inclusion is about ensuring people can contribute fully, and that their perspectives are heard, valued and reflected in decisions. Policies help support this, but they cannot do that work alone.
That is where cultural agility plays an important and practical role. By helping people understand how background can shape different ways of thinking, communicating and working, it supports a stronger sense of inclusion for all.
Why cultural agility matters for global businesses
Across a global organisation, regular misunderstandings can quickly become business issues. A few seconds of conversation can be enough to create confusion or frustration. And when those moments happen across teams and markets every day, they can have a significant impact on business performance as well as culture.
This matters even more during periods of change. When people are navigating new or unfamiliar expectations at pace, it becomes harder for people to stay aligned. Cultural agility helps to reduce the chance that pressure or confusion turns into conflict.
The impact also extends beyond internal teams. If customer-facing colleagues misread local expectations around hierarchy, communication style or decision-making, it can affect the customer experience and weaken brand perception in that market.
This is where communication matters. Cultural agility cannot rely on good intentions alone. People need clear language, relatable examples and practical tools to understand what cultural agility looks like in real life.
Strategic People and Culture communications make that possible. They give people the confidence to spot those moments, understand what may be happening beneath the surface and respond in a way that builds trust rather than tension.
Communication turns cultural agility into everyday practice
So how do we make cultural agility part of the workplace toolkit? The first step is awareness: helping people understand what cultural agility means and why it matters. That means translating a broad, abstract idea into practical workplace language. Not theory, but real situations people recognise, such as giving feedback, joining global meetings, managing disagreements, leading hybrid teams or working with customers in different markets.
From there, communication can make cultural agility easier to practice. Manager guides, case studies, reflection exercises and scenario-based tools can encourage people to pause, question their assumptions and adapt their ways of working.
This is not about giving people a script. It’s about making cultural agility visible, practical and relevant enough to influence how people work. Done well, communication does more than explain cultural agility. It gives people the ability to act on it.
Making inclusion work in practice
Cultural agility helps inclusion move from awareness to everyday behaviour. It supports people to recognise when their usual way of working may not fit the situation, and to adjust their approach to build stronger working relationships.
For global businesses, that matters. It shapes how teams collaborate across markets, how leaders communicate, how quickly change is adopted and how customers experience the organisation.
For People and Culture communications, the opportunity is to make cultural agility feel less like an abstract concept and more like a practical skill that quickly becomes second nature.
If cultural agility is becoming more important for your organisation, we can help make it practical and relevant. We partner with organisations to create strategic people and culture communications that help people work better together across teams, markets, cultures and lived experiences. We turn important workplace skills into communication that people can understand, relate to and use in their day-to-day work.
If you’d like to explore how communication could support cultural agility in your organisation, we’d love to talk.
The cost of workforce whiplash: why change isn’t sticking
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Conversation #2 - Workforce Whiplash
Part of our 10 BIG workplace conversations series. Here, we explore why change isn’t sticking and how communication can help people make sense of what comes next.
Change isn’t new. But the volume, complexity and pace of change today is.
From pandemics to cyber-attacks and AI acceleration, organisations are operating in a constant state of transformation. There’s little time to stabilise before the next shift begins – placing increasing pressure on change communications to keep pace.
The result? A workforce experiencing whiplash.
Exhausted by continuous initiatives (in many organisations that can mean as many as 8-10 concurrent large scale change programmes), employees aren’t resisting change – they’re saturated by it. What leaders interpret as disengagement is often a signal that too much is happening, too quickly, without enough clarity or cohesion.
The adoption gap
Organisations can mandate change. But they cannot mandate adoption. And this is where value is lost.
There is a growing gap between the change organisations design, and the change people adopt. Between strategy and behaviour, investment and impact.
Closing that gap isn’t about more communication, or sometimes even clearer communication. It’s about better narratives, more human and emotionally intelligent communication, rooted in behavioural neuroscience.
Creating simple but impactful stories around the change helps give leaders the chance to inspire the workforce, managers the confidence to lead it and employees the opportunity to see themselves in the future being designed.
Communication is the infrastructure that makes change work
Too often, communication is treated as a downstream activity – something that supports change once it’s already defined.
In reality, communication determines whether change is understood, believed and adopted. It influences what people believe about the change, how relevant it feels, whether they trust it and whether they act on it.
Many organisations struggle to translate change into something meaningful and memorable. Messages fragment. Priorities compete. And without a clear narrative, people are left to interpret change for themselves – often incorrectly, or not at all.
When we design change communication, we give equal importance to what isn’t changing as to what is. This creates stability, reduces anxiety and helps people focus on what they actually need to do differently.
But even with clarity, change won’t stick unless people can make sense of it for themselves.
How to successfully communicate change
Change communication needs to do more than keep people informed. Read our free guide to explore how to support people through uncertainty, strengthen trust and help change land. Download the guide
Change is a story problem
As humans, we’re wired for stories. At work, those stories shape how we see ourselves and our place in an organisation:
- “I’m valued here because…”
- “I know what’s expected of me because…”
- “This change will affect me by…”
Change disrupts those stories. It shakes them up – like a snow globe – creating uncertainty about what still holds true and what no longer applies.
This is where communication becomes critical. Not just in explaining change, but in helping people rebuild their understanding of it.
Effective change communication doesn’t just describe what’s happening, it helps people to:
- See themselves in the future state
- Understand what’s changing – and what isn’t
- Rebuild a clear, stable sense of “how things work”
That’s what closes the gap between change and adoption. It’s our role as strategic people and culture communications experts to determine which stories need to change – and which can stay the same.
Making it real
Leaders play a crucial part in making this real. They don’t just communicate change, they model it. If they can’t clearly explain what it means for their teams, adoption breaks down fast and uncertainty cascades quickly through teams.
Transformation only works when people can see the future they’re being asked to step into. That means restructuring the stories they tell themselves and painting a clear, credible picture of what comes next, in terms they recognise and believe in.
That’s what turns change into action.
AI can’t navigate the human reality of change
While AI can help generate content, creating the right story requires human understanding.
We understand how change feels, how trust is built and how messages land. In change communication, authenticity isn’t optional. It determines whether people believe the message and act on it. That’s why we focus on how communication lands, not just how it reads. We bring judgment, experience and real-world insight to create stories that resonate and drive change.
If change isn’t sticking in your organisation, the story likely needs rewriting.
Our Risk & Resilience whitepaper explores how to build communication that helps people make sense of change – without overwhelming them. Explore here
Helping DHL Group develop a global strategy narrative
When DHL Group introduced its 2030 company strategy, employees understood the message from day one. We:
- Reframed the strategy around employee realities, giving it a clear human angle
- Built a narrative that showed what would stay the same versus what would change
- Equipped leaders with simple, practical messaging
The result: A stronger sense of shared direction across the business, with a complex strategy made clearer, easier to relate to and more meaningful for all employees.
Read the full case study to see this approach in action.
If you are investing in transformation but struggling to see adoption, we can help close the gap between strategy and behaviour.
As strategic people and culture communications experts, we work with organisations to build change narratives, leadership communication and employee campaigns that help people understand what’s changing, why it matters and what it means for them.
Get in touch to discuss how we could support your change programmes.
When employee experience becomes business risk
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
How strategic people and culture communications can help organisations reduce risk by building trust, clarity and confidence earlier.
When employee experience starts to break down, the risk is not always immediate or obvious. It might begin with a misunderstood discussion, an unclear expectation, a rushed email or a manager avoiding a difficult conversation. On their own, these moments can seem small but over time, they gather weight.
That was the focus of a recent Work Wonders conversation, where our CEO Sally Pritchett was joined by employment solicitor Alex Harper and HR consultant Paul Cliff to explore how workplace issues escalate in practice. The discussion took place against the backdrop of the new Employment Rights Act 2025, but the message was broader than legal compliance. Poor communication and weak employee experience can increase legal risk, but they can also affect trust, productivity, engagement, innovation and performance.
Five themes stood out from the conversation:
1. Small issues can quickly become bigger risks
Employee relations issues rarely begin as formal complaints. They often start much earlier, through a series of missed opportunities to build understanding, reduce tension or address something before it grows.
When concerns are not acknowledged, or conversations are handled poorly, frustration can build quickly. Add inconsistent messages from different managers and trust starts to weaken. By the time something escalates into a formal process, it is rarely about one isolated moment. It often carries the weight of what has gone unresolved before it, absorbing time, energy and leadership attention. Long before formal risk appears, people may already be more defensive, less engaged or less willing to speak up.
This is where workforce communications need to work harder earlier. Not by adding more noise, but by helping organisations create clearer expectations, more consistent messages and better visibility of the ways to raise concerns before they reach crisis point.
2. The danger zone is when people stop talking
One of the clearest themes from the conversation was that escalation often begins when people stop talking properly.
Sometimes managers feel underprepared. Sometimes they worry about saying the wrong thing. Sometimes a difficult conversation is avoided until the issue becomes harder to resolve.
When communication stops, assumptions take over. People begin to protect themselves, trust starts to drop and the tone can become more defensive. What could have been a good conversation can quickly turn into a formal process.
Formal processes matter and need to be handled carefully, but this is often the moment where communication becomes overly scripted, cold or detached. That can make a difficult situation feel even less human, when what people often need is communication that is clear, respectful and consistent.
For internal communication and HR teams, this is an important space to support. Managers need more than support with policy; they need the confidence, language and tools to communicate appropriately in moments that feel sensitive or uncomfortable.
3. Trust is shaped by everyday communication
Workplace trust is shaped through everyday communication: the way decisions are explained, the tone managers use and the comments that go unchallenged.
That is why poor communication can become business risk. A rushed message, a careless comment or an email written in frustration can carry far more weight later than anyone intended.
This is not about expecting everyone to communicate perfectly all the time. It is about being more deliberate about the communication culture being created across the organisation. Workplace culture communications can help set clearer expectations for how people communicate, while giving leaders and managers a better understanding of how their messages land, not just what they intended to say.
Done well, it reinforces the behaviours that help people feel heard and respected before trust starts to break down.
4. The risk landscape is becoming more complicated
The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds important context to this conversation. With changes to employment rights and the potential for more employees to access formal routes earlier, organisations need to pay close attention to how issues are handled from the start.
AI is also changing the nature of complaints and grievances. As Alex highlighted during the session, something that might once have been a short email can now become a much longer and more difficult to unpick document. The underlying concern may not be clearer, but the issue can become more time-consuming and complex to manage.
There are other pressures too. Many organisations are managing constant change, restructuring, financial pressure and shifting employee expectations. In that environment, people can already be operating with lower trust and higher sensitivity. Change communications have a critical role to play here, helping employees understand what is happening, what it means for them and where they can find support.
When communication is unclear or inconsistent during periods of pressure, the gap between intent and impact widens. That is often where risk starts to grow.
Human capital risk is rising
Explore why people and culture communication should be at the heart of risk strategy.
5. Where strategic people and culture communications makes the difference
If poor employee experience is becoming business risk, the answer is not more communication for the sake of it. It is more intentional communication, designed around how people actually experience work.
Strategic people and culture communications can help organisations reduce risk by building trust, consistency and understanding earlier. That might mean developing communication programmes that set clearer expectations around behaviour, equipping managers to communicate difficult messages with confidence, or helping to shape HR communications so complex topics are clear, fair and human.
It can also mean creating campaigns that reinforce the culture an organisation wants to build, from respectful communication and psychological safety to inclusion and accountability. Done well, communication helps people understand what is expected of them and how the organisation expects people to work together.
This is not about replacing legal or HR process. It is about strengthening the communication conditions around them, so fewer issues escalate unnecessarily and people are better supported before formal risk appears.
How well are you tuning in to your workforce?
Check where a more human approach to communication could make a difference with our Human Diagnostic.
Reducing risk starts earlier than you think
When employee experience becomes business risk, it is rarely because of one moment. More often, it is the result of missed signals, avoided conversations and communication that did not build understanding early enough.
For HR, people and internal communication leaders, this creates an important opportunity. By investing in better workforce, HR and culture communications, organisations can reduce risk while improving trust, performance and employee experience.
If you are seeing trust, communication or employee relations issues start to affect performance, we can help. We specialise in strategic people and culture communications, helping organisations build clearer, more human and more consistent communication across the workforce.
Get in touch to talk about how we could support your organisation.
For more insight-led sessions like this, join Work Wonders.
Watch the webinar: When employee experience becomes business risk
6 years of Great Place to Work certification, and why culture can’t be left to chance
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Explore why workplace culture needs consistent attention and how communication helps turn it into business value
We’ve been certified as a Great Place to Work® for the sixth year running, and it’s a milestone we’re proud of.
Our focus on culture didn’t start six years ago, but Great Place to Work is how we now hold ourselves to account. It gives us independent feedback, benchmarking and a clear view of how our people really experience work.
As our CEO Sally Pritchett puts it in her latest article, culture isn’t created in the easy moments. It’s built when people are under pressure, when things go wrong, when tough decisions need to be made.
What Great Place to Work recognises
Great Place to Work® Certification™ is based entirely on what employees say about their experience. It measures how consistently people experience a high-trust workplace, not what’s written in a strategy or stated in a set of values. It’s a global benchmark, with more than 10,000 organisations across 60 countries applying each year, and it’s not easy to achieve, let alone maintain.
As Sarah Lewis-Kulin, Vice President of Global Recognition at Great Place to Work, puts it: “Great Place To Work Certification is a highly coveted achievement that requires consistent and intentional dedication to the overall employee experience.”
Why culture is a business decision
Maintaining a strong culture takes consistency, ongoing attention and a willingness to tackle the difficult stuff, not just the visible or easy wins. And that’s part of why it too often gets deprioritised. There’s still a tendency in some organisations to treat culture as a “nice to have” and as something that sits alongside the real drivers of performance. The evidence says otherwise.
Research from Great Place to Work shows that:
- 85% of employees in certified organisations report giving extra effort (The Culture Dividend)
- organisations with high-trust cultures are 25% more agile (Great Place to Work Effect)
- 76% of employees in high-trust cultures feel empowered to innovate, compared to just 2% in low-trust environments (Great Place to Work Effect)
- more than 8 in 10 employees in Great Place to Work certified organisations are willing to go above and beyond for their organisation (Great Place to Work Effect)
These aren’t soft outcomes. They are the conditions that drive performance.
When people trust their organisation, they speak up earlier, collaborate better and take ownership of their work. Decisions improve. Problems get solved faster. Innovation becomes part of how work happens, not something talked about in isolation. Culture shows up in results.
Where communication comes in
Culture doesn’t sit in a document or a set of values on a wall. It’s experienced day to day, in how people are spoken to, what they hear from leaders and how consistent that experience feels across the organisation. That’s where communication plays a central role.
Not just in what is said, but in how clearly people understand what’s expected, how connected they feel to the bigger picture and how confident they are to contribute.
The organisations we work with are often dealing with the same challenges:
- change that moves faster than people can absorb
- teams that feel disconnected from strategy
- mixed messages from different parts of the business
- too much communication, not enough cut-through or prioritisation
These aren’t just communication issues, they’re culture issues too. And they have a direct impact on performance.
Turning culture into a business advantage
If there’s one thing this milestone reinforces, it’s that culture and performance are not separate conversations. If you want your people to deliver their best work, adapt to change and stay committed over time, culture needs to be part of your strategy.
And communication is one of the most powerful tools you have to shape that.
If you’re thinking about the culture in your organisation, or where there might be gaps between what’s intended and what’s experienced, we’d love to have that conversation.
Introducing the B Corp Agency Alliance
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Making it easier to find (and work with) agencies doing great work
The B Corp Agency Alliance is a new collective of like-minded independent agencies with a broad range of skills and strengths, working together to make it easier for you to find the right partner.
If you’re looking for an agency, the Alliance gives you a starting point you can trust. A group of agencies that not only bring different specialisms, but are also already working together, sharing knowledge and collaborating to deliver stronger outcomes.
What unites these agencies is their foundations in ethical practice, sustainability and commitment to being better businesses.
This collaboration isn’t just a directory of agencies; it’s an active community working together to raise standards. Tackling the changing nature and expectations of the industry, and some of the toughest challenges businesses are facing, from responsible AI use and reducing digital waste to making sure communication not only cuts through the noise but doesn’t add to it.
Finding the right agency starts with shared values
In a crowded, noisy agency landscape, finding the right partner shouldn’t feel as hard as it does. And yet for many marketing, internal comms and corporate comms teams, we know it does.
There are thousands of agencies to choose between (with around 25,500 independent agencies operating in the UK alone), all with different strengths, specialist experience and ways of working. Alongside those differences in specialism, agencies also have different values, and when you’re picking a partner, that really matters.
The best work happens when the relationship is good – chemistry and trust power creativity and performance. Choosing the right agency goes beyond size, location and services; it’s highly personal.
Needs and challenges are also moving fast. As we all use AI more each day, in-house skills are evolving and along with it the capacity and capability needed from agencies is changing.
The B Corp Agency Alliance brings together a connected group of agencies you can explore with confidence, knowing they share values and a commitment to doing good work, in the right way.
Explore the B Corp Agency Alliance
Website and digital marketing specialists
Creative events
Strategic branding, internal communications & advertising
Strategy, paid Search, paid social, SEO & GEO
Translation and localisation partner
Digital studio
Digital marketing
Creative technology delivering digital tools & platforms
Digital products
B2B growth consultancy
Strategic design
Multimedia production
Strategic people & culture communications
Creative design
Personal branding advisors
Web experience design & development
All members of the Alliance are certified B Corps and therefore meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability, and share a commitment to creating a positive impact for workers, communities, customers and the planet. Find out more about the B Corp movement here.
What makes mergers work: people and culture communication after the deal
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Mergers don’t fail on strategy. They stall when people don’t know how to operate in the new organisation. Here’s how THRIVE helps close that gap.
Mergers and acquisitions promise growth, efficiency and new capability. But the real challenge begins after day one, when people and cultures need to come together. How do you help people understand how to operate in a new organisation?
When two businesses combine, they bring different cultures, expectations and ways of working. Leaders are often ready to move forward, having spent months shaping the deal. Employees, on the other hand, are still working through what the change means for their role, their team and their future. Uncertainty builds, assumptions fill the gaps and behaviours don’t shift in the way the organisation expects.
The challenge is not simply to communicate what is changing. It is to help people understand how the new organisation works, what is expected of them and how they fit within it.
Our proprietary THRIVE methodology provides a practical way to focus that effort, helping organisations build fairer, healthier and happier workplaces by elevating how they communicate with their people. Working through the six interconnected pillars – Talent, Human, Roadmap, Inclusion, Values and Experience – enables communication to act as the golden thread after a merger or acquisition.
Talent: recognising that the deal has changed for employees
A merger changes the psychological contract, whether it is acknowledged or not. While leadership may be focused on future opportunities, employees are often reassessing what they are part of and whether it still works for them. Career paths may feel less certain, expectations may shift and what once felt stable can quickly become unclear. If that shift is not addressed directly, people will draw their own conclusions about what the change means for them.
Communication needs to:
- Clearly acknowledge what has changed, not just what is staying the same
- Set realistic expectations about what employees can expect going forward
- Reduce ambiguity before people fill the gaps themselves
Human: understanding how people are experiencing the merger
Mergers are often communicated as structured, logical processes. In reality, employees experience them as uncertainty, ambiguity and, at times, loss of control.
While communication may focus on sharing updates, it can miss the underlying concerns people are working through day to day. The questions that matter most are often the ones not being asked openly.
Communication should:
- Surface the real concerns and questions people may not be raising openly
- Create opportunities for two-way dialogue, not just top-down messaging
- Reflect the reality of what people are experiencing, not just the intended narrative
How well are you tuning in to your workforce? Check where a more human approach to communication could make a difference with this diagnostic.
Roadmap: making the integration feel navigable
One of the most common frustrations for employees after a merger is not knowing what is happening next. Day one communications can create momentum and excitement, but they rarely provide enough detail for employees to understand how the change will unfold over time. In the absence of that clarity, people fill the gaps themselves, often with assumptions that don’t align with reality.
Communication needs to:
- Be explicit about what is known, what is not yet clear and what is still evolving
- Break the journey into stages so people can see what changes now and what comes next
- Reinforce progress regularly so the integration feels active, not static
Inclusion: recognising that not everyone experiences the change in the same way
Communication during a merger does not land evenly across the organisation. While some employees feel informed and included, others may hear later, receive partial information or rely on second-hand updates. This is often more pronounced for frontline teams, part-time colleagues, night workers or those temporarily away from the business. Over time, these gaps can lead to very different levels of understanding and trust.
Communication should:
- Reach different audiences in ways that work for how they access information
- Close gaps where some groups are hearing later or less clearly than others
- Create space for questions and feedback across all parts of the workforce
Values: making sure shared values are understood the same way
It is common to identify shared values early in a merger, and on the surface they often appear aligned. However, the way those values are interpreted and applied in practice can differ significantly. Without exploring those differences, organisations risk assuming alignment where it does not fully exist. This can show up later in decision-making, behaviours and expectations.
Communication needs to:
- Translate values into clear, observable behaviours
- Highlight where interpretations may differ across legacy organisations
- Reinforce what “good” looks like in the new organisation through real examples
Experience: aligning what people hear with what they feel
Culture is shaped less by what is said and more by what people experience day to day. In a merged organisation, there are often many signals that still reflect the previous identity. Team structures, ways of working and informal practices can all reinforce a sense that little has changed, even when communication suggests otherwise.
Paying attention to these everyday moments, and ensuring they align with the intended direction, helps communication feel credible and supports integration in practice.
Communication should:
- Align messaging with what employees actually experience day to day
- Call out inconsistencies between what is said and what is happening
- Make the new organisation visible through practical, everyday moments
Where communication turns alignment into action
Mergers do not succeed because leadership is aligned at the top. They succeed when that alignment is clearly communicated and understood across the organisation.
This is where HR and internal communication teams play a defining role. Not just sharing updates, but translating the deal into everyday reality. Helping people understand what has changed, what is expected and how to operate within the new organisation.
If you are preparing for a merger or working through integration, we specialise in strategic people and culture communications, helping organisations translate the deal into something that works in practice for their people.
You can explore the THRIVE methodology here or get in touch to talk through how we can support your integration.
Whitepaper: The resilience gap
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Why people and culture communication sit at the heart of risk strategy
Risk is shifting. Organisations are navigating a far more volatile and emotionally charged environment than even a few years ago. While many have invested heavily in operational, financial and cyber resilience, a different and less visible risk is growing: human capital risk.
The rise of human capital risk
Employees are experiencing sustained change, increasing pressure and rising scrutiny. Engagement is declining, managers are overstretched, and reputation is shaped in real time by employee voice. Resilience is no longer only about systems and controls, but about your workforce’s ability to adapt, stay engaged and move forward with confidence.
This whitepaper explores the resilience gap – the growing mismatch between the pace of change and employees’ capacity to absorb and adapt.
Inside, you’ll find:
- The six interconnected people risks reshaping business resilience
- Why resilience breaks down under sustained change
- A clear case for placing people and culture communication at the core of risk strategy
If you are responsible for people, culture, risk or transformation, this paper will help you connect employee experience with organisational resilience in a practical and strategic way.
Building organisational resilience through communication
Complete the form below to download your copy of the whitepaper.