Restructures & Redundancy
Consultation obligations, selection criteria, redeployment, notice and entitlements, and the individual conversations: fair, documented and defensible.
The plan is the easy part
Most change programs are well designed. The new operating model makes sense, the numbers work, the rationale is sound, and the slide pack is genuinely persuasive.
Then it meets an actual workforce. Six months on, the org chart has changed and remarkably little else has. People have found the workarounds that let them keep operating the way they always did. The new process is followed when someone is watching. The leaders who were meant to drive it are quietly waiting to see whether it sticks.
Change fails in execution, not in design. We work on the execution.
You might be dealing with
- A merger, acquisition or contract transition bringing two workforces together
- A project moving into operations, with a completely different set of demands
- An operating model change: new structure, new reporting lines, new accountabilities
- A new system or process that people are technically using and practically avoiding
- A culture problem that a previous program was supposed to fix
- Growth that has outpaced the way the business is organised
- A change program that stalled, or was quietly abandoned, and needs restarting
- Leaders who agree with the change publicly and undermine it privately
What's included
- Change strategy and planning What's actually changing, for whom, and what that requires of them. Impact assessment across roles, teams and sites, sequencing, and a realistic view of where resistance will come from.
- Stakeholder and leadership alignment Change fails fastest when the leadership group isn't genuinely aligned. We work with your leaders to surface the disagreements before implementation rather than after.
- Communication What is said, to whom, in what order, by whom, and through which channel. Including the messages leaders find hardest, and the plan for what happens when there's nothing new to say.
- Leader enablement Your managers carry most of this. Briefing them properly, including preparing them for the questions and the pushback they'll get, is usually the highest-leverage investment available.
- Integration support Where two workforces are coming together: terms and conditions, structures, ways of working, and the cultural differences that are always larger than the due diligence suggested.
- Embedding and reinforcement Follow-through after go-live. Checking whether the change is actually happening, addressing where it isn't, and reinforcing the behaviours that make it hold.
- Measurement Agreeing in advance what success looks like and how you'll know, so the program can be judged on something other than whether it was delivered on time.
How we work
- 01 Understand The business case, the constraints, and what's really driving the change.
- 02 Assess impact Who is affected, how, and what each group needs.
- 03 Plan Sequencing, communication, leadership, risk, measurement.
- 04 Enable Briefings, materials, coaching for the people delivering it.
- 05 Implement Through the difficult period, with adjustment as reality intervenes.
- 06 Embed Reinforcement, follow-up, and honest assessment of whether it held.
Most of the leverage sits in planning and sequencing. Bring change support in before the announcement. Book a call
Experience behind this service
Kelly has led people and change through acquisitions and integrations, a demerger, and major project-to-operations transitions, including as HR change lead on a global acquisition integration, and through the mobilisation, start-up and integration of a major LNG facility into a wider operating business.
She has also built organisational capability and cultural frameworks for a newly listed company in the period immediately following a demerger, when everything is unsettled at once.
Why change fails
- Nobody says what's actually changing for me. Organisational rationale doesn't answer the only question most people have, which is what Monday looks like.
- Leaders aren't aligned. If two members of the leadership team describe the change differently, their teams will notice within a week, and the more comfortable version will win.
- Communication stops after the announcement. The announcement is the beginning of the communication task, not the end of it.
- No reinforcement. Without deliberate follow-through, people revert to the old way within a few months. The change exists on the org chart and nowhere else.
- Success is never defined. Programs judged on delivery rather than outcome are always declared successful, which is how organisations end up running the same transformation twice.
Change in operational environments
Rosters and swings mean a workforce can't be assembled in one room, so information reaches groups at different times unless it's sequenced deliberately. Production pressure means the change competes with output, and output usually wins unless leaders are explicit. Crews are tight-knit, so news moves faster than any plan. And contractor, labour hire and direct workforces sit side by side with different arrangements and different levels of loyalty to the outcome.
We plan for these conditions from the start.
Common questions
When should we bring in change support?
Before the announcement. Most of the leverage sits in planning and sequencing, and by the time a program is visibly struggling, options have narrowed considerably.
Isn't this something our leaders should do themselves?
Largely, yes, and our aim is for them to. The work is in giving them a plan, preparing them properly, and holding the process together while they deliver it. Change run entirely by an outsider doesn't hold once the outsider leaves.
How is this different from your restructure support?
Restructures are about reducing or removing roles, where the critical work is consultation, selection and process. Change management is about the organisation working differently, where the critical work is communication, leadership and adoption. Many situations involve both, and we scope across them.
How long does a change program take?
It depends entirely on scope. What's consistent is that the embedding phase takes longer than anyone plans for, and it's the phase most often cut when the program runs late.
How do you measure whether it worked?
By agreeing what success looks like before starting, behavioural, operational or financial, and checking against it afterwards. Vague success criteria are how unsuccessful programs get declared complete.