How to effectively communicate through change
In a talk during our GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit late last year, games industry comms veteran Cat Channon gave pointers about communication through change, and how to take into account the human impact of change when sharing information with staff, whether about layoffs, big M&A deals, or real-world calamities that might be affecting staff.
Channon has over 30 years of experience in games, most recently as EA's vice president of global corporate communications where she was supporting a team overseeing a workforce of 13,000 people across 23 locations. Over the years she's worked at the likes of Warner Bros, Blizzard as it was taken over by Vivendi,, Take-Two, NCSoft, and more, from small startups to giants of the industry, across various countries.
"What each of those has taught me is the cultural nuance that comes with communication and how it can have a huge impact on how effective your communications are," Channon said. "I know from my own experience how heavy the words can hang in [times of] change if we don't get them right."
Her talk shared what she's learnt through these experiences, aiming to guide others when communicating a changing situation.
"There's lots of different areas that [can be defined as] change," she said, clarifying the lens. "It's not necessarily just about restructuring and about redundancy, although those are the ones that most often hit the headlines."
She highlighted a number of possible definitions of change that can impact the workplace:
"With mergers, acquisitions and closures, a shift in culture can often [occur]," she said. "And that's one of the things that is most difficult to understand when you get two different languages from two different bodies, or maybe more than that, coming together. And so, how communications are portrayed by one or perceived by another might be dramatically different when you bring together two often different worlds.
"It also brings a lot of fear of redundancies and job insecurities. So how you show up, what
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