Change and adoption
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9 min read
Key findings
Affected individuals hear first, in person, and the wider team hears in one meeting on the same morning.
Where roles are at risk, the announcement presents a proposal and opens consultation before any decision is final.
Managers of affected teams are briefed the evening before, with written answers and permission to say they do not know yet.
Because threat outweighs reasons, the announcement names dates, decision makers and what stays unchanged.
The adoption measure is the number of decisions taken under the new reporting lines without escalation.
A manager who learns about the change at the same time as the team cannot answer anything, and the manager's visible surprise becomes the story.
To announce a restructure to employees, tell the people directly affected first, in person, and brief their managers the evening before.
Then tell the wider team in one meeting that morning, send a written note within two hours, and give a date for every answer still outstanding.
Where the plan puts roles at risk, the announcement describes a proposal and opens consultation.
In the UK and across much of Europe, employers must consult on proposed redundancies while the outcome can still change.
An announcement that presents the outcome as final creates legal risk as well as distrust.
When the sequence goes wrong, the account circulating among staff within the hour differs from the one presented.
HR then spends the following month answering questions instead of running the transition.
The Announcement Sequence
A restructure announcement is a series of conversations over three to five working days, and each group hears the news from the person best placed to answer its questions.
Decision group and HR, five days before. Final structure, selection criteria, consultation plan and date, signed off together
Managers of affected teams, the evening before. A briefing with the answers they may give and the questions they must refer
Affected individuals, first thing on the day. One to one, in person, with their manager and an HR partner
The wider team, the same morning. One meeting, led by the executive who took the decision
Everyone else, within two hours. A written note with the same facts, the question channel and the next update date
Customers, suppliers and the press, as agreed. Timed so that no employee hears the news from outside
Where a union or elected employee representatives must be informed first, they move ahead of step three.
Keep the gap between steps three and four under two hours, because affected individuals will message colleagues as soon as they leave their meeting.
Choose a Tuesday or Wednesday morning where possible.
A Friday afternoon announcement leaves people with two days of speculation and no manager to ask.
Proposal Or Decision
The most common argument between HR and an executive before a restructure is about timing and tense.
The executive wants to announce the new structure as settled, because a settled plan sounds decisive and should end the rumours.
Where roles are at risk, the structure has to be presented as a proposal, with a consultation period, published selection criteria and a date for final decisions.
The conversation goes better when HR brings draft wording for both versions.
In the settled version, mark the sentences that would commit the business before consultation ends.
Then show the proposal version, which still names the new structure, the reasons and the timetable.
The proposal version gives the executive nearly all the clarity of the settled one and meets the consultation requirement.
Take legal advice for each country involved, because thresholds and time limits differ by jurisdiction and by the number of roles affected.
What The Announcement Says
A restructuring announcement has three jobs, and most announcement decks attempt only the first.
State what is changing, why, and when
Tell each person what happens to them, or when they will know
Say where the remaining answers will come from, and by what date
A presentation that handles the first job well and skips the second produces a corridor version of events, because people fill the gap themselves.
The content covers eight items, in this order.
The decision or proposal, in one sentence
The business reason, with the figure behind it
Which teams are affected, and which are unchanged
What happens to people in affected roles
Selection criteria and the consultation process, where roles are at risk
The timetable, with the date of each next decision
Where to send questions, and when answers appear
Support available, including any employee assistance line
The list of unchanged teams, reporting lines and pay arrangements is usually long.
Stating it in full removes many questions before anyone asks them.
A Restructure Announcement Email
The written note that follows the meeting uses the same order.
The example below is for a hypothetical finance function moving transaction processing from six country teams into one regional centre.
Subject. Proposed changes to the structure of the finance function
Opening. This morning we proposed moving accounts payable and receivable into one regional centre from 1 March.
Reason. One sentence carrying the figure behind the proposal, such as processing cost per invoice against the regional benchmark.
Scope. Forty-eight roles in the six country teams are affected. Reporting, tax and business partnering are unchanged.
Next steps. Everyone in an affected role met their manager this morning. Consultation runs until 14 November, and no final decisions will be made before then.
Questions. Send them to the named mailbox. Answers are published every Thursday, including weeks with no news.
Support. The employee assistance line and the HR contact for each country, by name.
The finance director who made the proposal signs the note.
A note signed by HR or internal communications tells staff that the executive is keeping a distance from the decision.
Threat And Certainty
Staff respond to a restructure announcement first as a threat to their own position.
Hilary Scarlett, writing on the neuroscience of organisational change, sets out the mechanism.
The brain's threat response is far stronger than its reward response, so a vague fear about status outweighs a well-reasoned business case.
Scarlett cites fMRI research by Hsu and colleagues on decisions made under ambiguity.
The more ambiguity people faced, the more activity appeared in the amygdala and the less in the reward system.
Certainty, in the same research, is linked to activity in the reward system.
Scarlett also notes that when leaders hold information back, people fill the gaps with gossip and rumour and see the workplace as more threatening than it is.
For the announcement, the practical step is to reduce ambiguity about the process, which means dates, decision makers and what stays the same.
Nobody can promise outcomes during a restructure, and three commitments are always available.
The date of the next decision, which is then met
What is not changing, listed in full
What is still open, and who is deciding it
Scarlett describes communication teams that guarantee a weekly update even when the update says there is no news.
Line managers can make the same promise about their own team meetings.
A date that slips without explanation adds uncertainty instead of removing it, so set only dates the business can meet.
Keep the gap between steps three and four under two hours, because affected individuals will message colleagues as soon as they leave their meeting.
The Six Questions Staff Ask
The questions are much the same in every organisation, and preparing written answers takes about an hour.
Do I still have a job
Who do I report to now
Does my pay, grade or location change
When does this take effect
Why was this option chosen over the alternatives
What happens to work already in progress
The sixth is rarely prepared, and it occupies most of the following month.
An announcement that says nothing about current projects, open vacancies and approved budgets leaves managers unsure what to continue, and work slows for a quarter.
The Manager Briefing
Briefing the managers of affected teams is the step organisations most often skip, usually under pressure to keep the news confidential.
A manager who learns about the change at the same time as the team cannot answer anything, and the manager's visible surprise becomes the story.
Brief managers the evening before, in person or by video, and send them away with four things.
Written answers to the six questions above
Permission to say they do not know yet, with the date they will
A named HR contact for the first week
One decision the team can make for itself
A manager with nothing to offer and no permission to admit uncertainty will avoid the team, and the team reads the avoidance as opposition.
Scarlett records the same pattern in senior leaders, who often disappear from view after a major announcement because they cannot answer the questions people bring them.
Where managers are themselves at risk, tell them their own news a day earlier, because a manager absorbing personal news cannot brief a team that evening.
That double load on managers persists long after the announcement, and it explains much of why change programmes stall with middle managers.
Questions Without Answers Yet
Some questions cannot be answered on the day, because the answer depends on consultation or on selection.
The honest reply says that nobody knows yet, names who will decide, and gives the date.
For example, selection for the regional roles will follow the criteria published today, and everyone affected will know the outcome by 5 December.
Avoid predicting outcomes in private conversations, because an informal reassurance to one person becomes a promise the business may later break.
Keep a question log from the first hour, publish answers on a fixed day each week, and record which questions keep coming back.
Repeated questions show where the announcement was unclear, and they tell managers what to cover again in their next team meeting.
In Person Or By Email
Anyone whose own role changes hears it in person, from their manager, with HR present.
Email alone suits only people outside the affected area, and even then it follows a live meeting for the teams involved.
For dispersed teams, a video call with cameras on replaces the meeting, and the written note follows within two hours.
Scarlett notes that people who hear something surprising stay distracted until they can make sense of it.
For that reason the message is repeated, put in writing and checked for understanding.
Language That Damages Credibility
Four habits in restructure communication reliably cost the executive credibility.
Euphemism. Staff understand right-sizing and realignment immediately and resent the attempt to soften them
Inevitability. Describing a choice as something that had to happen removes the accountability people are looking for
Premature optimism. Talking about an exciting future while people absorb a loss reads as indifference
Borrowed authority. Attributing the decision to the market, the board or a consultant leaves nobody present to answer for it
The correction for all four is to name the decision, name who took it, and say what it costs.
Choice Within A Fixed Decision
The direction of a restructure is fixed, which leads sponsors to assume there is nothing left to offer the people affected.
Scarlett reports that the brain responds positively to autonomy and choice, and that giving people control over when and where they do things helps during change.
Four choices can usually be handed to teams without reopening the decision.
Which part of the team moves first
Timing inside an agreed window
How the new structure works day to day
Who represents the team in the design detail
Fairness And Exceptions
Scarlett reports that sensitivity to fairness rises during change, and that feeling others are getting an unfair advantage activates the brain's pain network.
Three consequences follow for the announcement.
An exception granted quietly to one unit becomes the story of the change
Unpublished selection criteria invite people to invent their own
Rules on exceptions are published before anyone asks for one
The individual meetings with people whose roles are at risk follow their own sequence, covered in how to hold a redundancy conversation properly.
The People Who Stay
The people who remain carry the workload of the new structure.
Three things decide whether they re-engage with it.
Whether the process looked fair, judged by how colleagues were treated
Whether anyone addressed the work that departing colleagues leave behind
Whether anything raised in consultation visibly changed the plan
The third is the one most often skipped.
Change one thing in response to consultation, and say publicly which point from which group led to it.
The First Month After
Restructure progress is usually reported as milestones, which show whether tasks were done and say nothing about whether the new structure is in use.
Three indicators can be collected from the question log and the HR system.
Questions arriving each week, and the share answered by the promised date
Exceptions requested, and how many were granted
Decisions taken under the new reporting lines without escalation
When people keep escalating along the old lines, the approval limits have usually not been redrawn, a problem covered in changing culture by changing the rules.
Report all three indicators to the executive who made the announcement, with any missed dates listed first.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor covers the adoption sequence in its change and adoption component, and the manager briefing structure in its stakeholder conversation toolkit.
Its template pack includes the announcement plan and the adoption tracker.
Related reading: why pilots fail to scale.
Sources
1. Scarlett, H. Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change. Kogan Page.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
How do you tell employees about a restructure?
Tell directly affected people first, one to one and in person, after briefing their managers the evening before. Then hold one meeting for the wider team the same morning, send a written note within two hours, and give a date for every open question.
What should a restructuring announcement say?
The decision or proposal in one sentence, the business reason with its figure, which teams are affected and which are unchanged, what happens to affected roles, the consultation process, the timetable, where to send questions, and the support available.
Who should be told first in a restructure?
The decision group and HR agree the plan first, then managers of affected teams are briefed the evening before. Affected individuals hear next, in person, followed by the wider team. Where a union or employee representatives must be informed first, they come before affected individuals.
Should a restructure be announced in person or by email?
Anyone whose own role changes hears it in person, from their manager, with HR present. The wider team hears it in a live meeting or a video call with cameras on. Email follows within two hours as the written record, and on its own suits only people outside the affected area.
How do you answer questions you cannot answer yet?
Say that nobody knows yet, name who will decide, and give the date. Keep a question log from the first hour, publish answers on a fixed day each week, and avoid private reassurances that the business may later have to break.
How much notice should staff get before a restructure?
Legal minimums depend on the country, the number of roles affected and each contract, so take legal advice first. In practice, managers need at least the evening before, and where roles are at risk nobody should hear a final decision before consultation has finished.
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