How to make change feel safe using communications
When it comes to change, even if you’ve made all the right change communications decisions, ultimately the success of your impending change may come down to one simple thing: safety.
If the people impacted by your change don’t feel like the change is ‘acceptable’, or ‘safe’, they may not be willing to come along for the ride… even if you’ve done all the right change management practices and comms to go along with it.
People don’t adopt change because it makes sense. They adopt it because it feels acceptable.
Before action, there’s a quieter question
Most change approaches are built around behaviour, as in: what do people know and what do they need to do?
However, before any of that happens, there’s a quieter, often invisible step where people check in with themselves to say: is this okay for me?
In fact, long before someone logs into a new system or adopts a new process, they’re running an internal scan:
How will this make me look?
What does this mean for my role, my reputation, my status?
Is there a risk here I can’t quite see yet?
Do I trust what I’m being told?
This is where acceptability lives, and if something doesn’t pass that test, it rarely matters how logical or well-explained it is.
Why “good comms” still fall flat
This is where many communication strategies unintentionally miss the mark because we often lean heavily on logic. A lot of our comms will chat about a business case, or the efficiencies we can get, or the strategic alignment for the change. Which are all important and necessary, yes, but people aren’t assessing change like a spreadsheet. They’re assessing it through a much more human lens of whether that change feels safe.
When that question goes unanswered, people don’t stay neutral. They fill in the blanks themselves with things like doubt, caution, or worst-case assumptions… meaning, what looked like resistance is actually self-protection.
At the centre of it all: psychological safety
After chatting with Dr. Samantha Rush in our latest podcast episode, we spoke at length about how her research makes clear that acceptability is deeply tied to psychological safety. Not as a broad cultural concept, but as something far more immediate: can I engage with this change without it costing me something?
When the answer feels uncertain, people hold back, they question intent and they look for what’s not being said. In comparison, when there’s enough safety, people become more open, more willing to try and to move forward, even if they don’t have all the answers. Which is where momentum starts.
What this means in practice
If you’re responsible for communication in times of change, instead of polishing the message until it sounds flawless, allow a bit of honesty in; try and acknowledge what might be difficult, and name the trade-offs while admitting what’s still unknown.
Ultimately, when everything is positioned as positive, people don’t feel reassured because that’s simply not how life goes, and all it does is make them feel wary. They will start to question: this sounds too clean… what’s missing?
The same goes for how we handle reactions. Not everyone will feel excited about change and that’s not a problem to solve. When we normalise mixed responses, we remove the pressure for people to pretend, which in and of itself, creates a sense of safety.
There’s also something powerful in reminding people what isn’t changing. In environments where everything feels in flux, pointing to what remains steady gives people something to anchor to. It reassures them that not everything is up for grabs.
Even timing plays a role. When people are overwhelmed, their capacity to process new information shrinks. Giving people space, where possible, changes how the message is received. Then there’s language, we’ve all seen what happens when organisations reach for polished labels and jargon like “transformation,” “business improvement,” “strategic realignment.”
People will see through this because they’ve heard it all before…. And when language feels like it’s trying to soften or disguise reality, your credibility will take a hit. Calling things what they are might feel less refined, but it lands with far more integrity.
