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How to communicate bad news

How to communicate bad news

Managers are often the best people to communicate with employees, but few relish the task, whether the news is good or bad.

In a discussion with a group of managers, we each contributed one "must do" for communicating information to employees.

Commence the communication early in the week and early in the day.

Avoid last thing Friday.

And particularly avoid announcements last thing Friday that there will be a major announcement first thing Monday.

Provide the briefing early in the day when people are at their freshest and less involved with other tasks.

Provide a broad outline, and then allow them to ask questions to fill in the details.

Don't overload with information.

Speech is a very inefficient way to communicate accurate detail.

By giving an outline and allowing them to ask questions you are providing the sort of information that is important to them.

Written information as a follow up can be used very effectively to provide the more precise details.

Be available to answer questions

Make yourself and others in authority available to answer questions as they arise, either in person, by phone or in follow up meetings.

Rumors take on the force of fact in the absence of accurate information.

It may sound as though communicating with employees will take up a significant part of a manager's job.

If you accept our definition of a manager as "someone who achieves results through the work of other people" then communicating with those people is not optional - it is the core of a manager's job.

Provide the information as soon as practical, even if all of the details are not yet finalized.

Even with cut-backs, at any time there will be a number of employees considering leaving, or perhaps not accepting offers for positions elsewhere.

Some of the pain may be alleviated by announcing at a time when it is identified as inevitable, even though the full impact has not yet been realized.

I know of more than one case where a new employee has been hired after a decision to lay off in that classification.

The decision had been made, but the information was not made available to those carrying out the recruitment.

The reason was that the time was not right yet.

There is never a good time for bad news, but the longer it is delayed the more painful it will be.

Make periodic announcements of Good News too!

A manager should announce both good and bad news.

If you are the source of good news then you will be much more credible if and when any bad news comes.

Tell the employees before the media

You have a far better chance of communicating the message you want heard if you do it personally.

I don't know how to make this complicated.

The media is for informing the general public.

You need internal methods to talk to your people.

This is simply the list a group of us came up with based on our experience. I would be interested to hear your additions, deletions or observations.

John Sleigh has been applying adult learning principles to training design and workplace communication projects since 1988.

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