Organisations try to get people to think and act differently for lots of reasons. Sometimes, change can be required and enforced from outside. And when a regulator brings in new rules, there’s often no room for manoeuvre. Get it wrong and the risks include legal action, financial penalties and reputational damage.

Authorities can get away with bluntly telling people what they must do—and what will happen if they don’t. That’s fine for imposing new rules. But when you want to encourage people to volunteer, improve awareness of diversity and inclusion, or get everyone involved in preventing financial crime, for example, more thoughtful and creative communication is needed.

Changing behaviour isn’t quick either. It takes time to persuade people to let go of the familiar and accept the new. Here’s what we’ve learned from helping global organisations to do this.

Set the right tone

How you’re going to speak to your people must be at the heart of your communication strategy. Tell, or ask? We always advocate talking to employees, not at them, even when dealing with something of the magnitude of a regulatory action following compliance failures. Be constructive—no-one likes to be told off. Explain why things need to change and what they can do to make the situation better. Empowerment wins over finger-pointing, every time. You’re going to fix this together.

Deserve attention

You’ll be competing with lots of day-to-day information. To cut through the noise you need to be creative, especially when dealing with topics that may not be front of mind for everyone. Use wit, use surprise, be provocative—whatever’s appropriate. Don’t be afraid to make people smile or to communicate hard truths that could be uncomfortable. What matters is that you get people talking.

Keep going

When the goal is to change the culture of your workplace, you need to be ready to go the distance. It’s not enough to say something once. You need to communicate and reinforce messages again and again, so a phased approach is essential. Once you’ve engaged your audience, adding more information and context over time will help to build understanding, motivation and action.

Campaign with a clear call to action

You’ve got everyone’s attention. Now you need to be totally clear about what you want them to do. There should be supporting information behind all this communication—ideally, a programme of education and training to embed the new behaviours. A campaign identity too. This will tie everything together from day one and help bring people on the journey.