Communicating Change at Walmart

Walmart vs. Publix CEO speech Dear employees, dear friends and colleagues, Many of you have been with this company for many years, so change is not something that should frighten you. As you know, we have been through this before, and, although the technicalities may have been complicated, the change process itself never was. The reason for this is simple: there is something that will never change in this company, and that is the set of values which we embrace and to which we all adhere.

So, as always, me coming up here to announce the implementation of a change process in our company over the next period of time will not cause panic with any of you. However, as you all know, in order to remain competitive in this dynamic global market, change is something we sometimes need to implement. Change makes us adaptable and able to be more efficient in tackling the challenges our company and we ultimately face. Today's business environment continues to develop at an accelerated pace.

Technology plays a significant role in supporting commercial, business, financial and human flows. Many companies are outsourcing their production in order to obtain economies of scale. Creativity and innovation become key components of transformational processes that move things forward. To these trends, we need not only to adapt, in a reactive manner. We need to be proactive and fill in our leader shoes in order to drive change on the market. Driving external change is linked to our internal change processes and this is what we need to implement today.

We need to drive the change process in our every department and down to every operational segment. My door is always open for any additional questions you may have and you can reach me either directly at my office or by email or phone. Your department managers will explain the operational details of the change process to each of you, both during department-wide meetings and in one-on-one meetings. Thank you, once more, for your continuous commitment to the company and for all your work in ensuring its success.

Real world The company used the Internet, among other communication instruments, to communicate change to its employees. There were several important elements to be taken into consideration here. First of all, the Internet was not used as the primary form of communication to employees. Given the importance of change and the need for employees to adequately understand what the change process implied and how this affected them, the CEO had a meeting with all the employees and gave a speech that described what the change was all about.

However, there were a lot of details about the change process and the Internet was successfully used to communicate all these components. There were several approaches in this sense. Department managers with explanatory emails followed up the CEO speech. Employees were encouraged to reply and ask for additional details and any questions they may have had. A newsletter was circulated every week.

It gave not only explanations about the change process, but also regular updates about where the process was, how well it was coming along and what the perspectives in the short and medium term were. The focus was, again, not only to have the employees involved, but to empower them, to make them believe that they were part of the process. This approach also helped them embrace change better and be able to handle it in their every day activities. The Internet also facilitated the creation of a forum.

The forum allowed employees to interact with managers, but also with one another. This was important, because managers would routinely.