By Jonathan Justus | jonnynow.com | 24 June 2026
Change is the one constant every organisation plans for — except, it seems, in how they talk about it. Gallagher’s 2026 Employee Communications Report, published in March and drawn from more than 1,300 communications and HR professionals across 40 countries, found that 61% of organisations have no formal change communication strategy, even though those same teams now rank change communication as their single most pressing need. We have learned to manage budgets, timelines and risk registers for transformation, yet the conversations that decide whether change actually lands are still left to improvisation.
The cost of that gap shows up everywhere else. ContactMonkey’s Global State of Internal Communications 2026 found that roughly half of communicators estimate their colleagues lose one to three hours every week simply untangling unclear messages. Multiply that across a workforce mid-restructure, and the “soft” problem of poor communication becomes a very hard line on the balance sheet.
Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash
The change-communication gap
A strategy on a slide is not a strategy people can feel. When 61% of organisations admit they have no agreed approach to communicating change, what they are really admitting is that announcements get written the night before, sequencing is accidental, and the people most affected hear the news third-hand. Change does not fail because the plan was wrong; it fails because nobody could explain, in plain language, why it mattered and what it meant for them. A formal approach is not bureaucracy — it is simply deciding, in advance, who hears what, in what order, and with what room to ask questions.
Why more messages make it worse
The instinct under pressure is to communicate more. The evidence says do it better, not louder. The same Gallagher research found that over-communicating can backfire: employees buried in messages were 30% more likely to lose trust in leadership and 24% more at risk of burnout, while 83% of respondents named information overload as a growing problem. Volume is not the same as clarity. A single, well-timed message that names the change honestly will outperform a fortnight of cheerful updates that talk around it. When organisations practise restraint — fewer messages, each one earning its place — trust tends to follow.
Communicating change as a craft
Done well, change communication is a discipline you can practise. Start with the “why” before the “what”: people forgive difficult decisions far more readily when they understand the reasoning behind them. Sequence the message so that those most affected hear it first, and from a human being rather than an all-staff email. Build in a way to listen back, because a change announcement without a channel for questions is a monologue, not communication. And repeat the core message in a few consistent words — not a dozen shifting ones — so the organisation hears a single, steady signal rather than noise.
Key statistic: Over-communicating during change makes employees 30% more likely to lose trust in leadership and 24% more at risk of burnout. (Gallagher Employee Communications Report, 2026)
Master Professional Communication with Elevana
Communicating change is a skill, not a personality trait — and like any skill, it can be learned, structured and improved. Elevana’s PRO Communicator programme is built for exactly this: helping professionals plan, frame and deliver the messages that move an organisation forward, especially when the stakes and the uncertainty are high.
Change is not what you announce; it is what people understand.
