ENTERPRISE BARGAINING
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WORKFORCE CHANGE
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LEADERSHIP TRANSITION
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ESG DISCLOSURE
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ENTERPRISE BARGAINING | WORKFORCE CHANGE | LEADERSHIP TRANSITION | ESG DISCLOSURE |
WORKFORCE CHANGE
Communications strategy for restructures, redundancies and change programmes
A restructure communicated well does more than manage the immediate risk. It tells every person in the organisation — including the ones not directly affected — something about the character of the leadership team. Highett Partners is a specialist firm that provides the communications strategy that turns a high-risk moment into evidence of how this organisation treats its people.
Managing workforce change comes with serious risks.
When an organisation restructures, the commercial rationale is almost never the problem. The problem is the gap between what leadership intends and what employees, managers, and the market actually hear.
Workforce change is one of the highest-risk communications moments in corporate life. The decisions are difficult. The timing is often legally constrained. The audiences — employees, unions, investors, media, and the broader market — are receiving different information at different times and interpreting it through different lenses.
Without a communications strategy that accounts for all of that, organisations default to legal language that feels cold, HR language that feels evasive, or CEO language that feels disconnected from the reality employees are experiencing. None of those builds the trust that a successful transition requires.
Highett Partners provides the restructure communications strategy layer that sits alongside the legal and operational advice — translating a sound decision into a credible, human narrative that people can accept even when they disagree with it.
WHAT WE DO
Our role in your workforce change programmes.
We work across the full communications lifecycle of a restructure — providing a redundancy communications strategy from the planning phase through to post-announcement stabilisation. Our work covers three areas.
NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE
We establish the core story — why the change is happening, what it means for the organisation's future, and how the people affected are being treated. This narrative must be true, defensible, and consistent across every audience. It becomes the reference point for every communication that follows.
ANNOUNCEMENT SEQUENCING
We design the order and timing of communications across all channels and audiences — board, leadership team, affected employees, broader workforce, investors, media, and community. Getting the sequencing wrong is one of the most common and costly mistakes in workforce change. Information that leaks before the right people have been told, or that reaches different groups simultaneously but inconsistently, creates damage that cannot be undone.
LANGUAGE AND MATERIALS
What to say in a redundancy announcement. We write the specific communications — CEO all-staff messages, manager briefing guides, FAQs, ASX, and media responses — in language that is honest, precise, and appropriate to each audience. We also advise on what not to say and how to handle questions you cannot yet answer.
WHAT IS AT STAKE
The cost of getting it wrong is real and well documented.
The reputational cost of poor restructure communications is long-lasting and often underestimated. The commercial decision may be sound. However, without a redundancy announcement communications strategy, failure becomes the headline.
Talent loss
The employees an organisation most needs to retain are the ones with the most options. When a restructure is communicated poorly — with language that feels dishonest, or timing that felt ambushing — those employees make decisions quickly. The cost rarely shows up in the redundancy budget.
Industrial risk
Workforce change that is mishandled in communications regularly becomes a consultation dispute before the Fair Work Commission. The legal obligation to consult is procedural. The communications obligation — to consult genuinely, not perfunctorily — is what determines whether the process holds up.
Market and media exposure
For listed companies, the way a restructure is communicated affects investor confidence as much as the restructure itself. An ASX company restructure announcement strategy must have a clear narrative that frames the decision as strategically coherent, rather than reactive, changes how the market reads it.
"Organisations can spend enormous energy on communications to people directly affected by a restructure. The talent that quietly walks out the door afterward is almost always someone who was never on the list.”
HIGHETT PARTNERS · WORKFORCE CHANGE
Who we work with.
Highett Partners commonly work with referral and collaboration partners for workforce change communications counsel such as CHR and People Officers and General Counsel — the two roles that sit at the intersection of the legal, people, and communications dimensions of a restructure. We are engaged directly by enterprises and also often introduced through an employment lawyer, management consultant, or HR advisory firm.
We work with ASX 300 companies, mid to large private companies, and government-owned enterprises across manufacturing, FMGC, financial services, healthcare, energy and resources, transport and logistics, retail, and higher education and all sectors where large-scale workforce change is a recurring part of the business cycle or part of a one-off transformation.
Engagements are scoped and normally fixed-fee, with work beginning as early as the planning phase when confidentiality is most important. We do not own the change programme — we provide the communications strategy and counsel, and language that the organisation's own leaders deliver.
Making significant changes in your workforce?
We should talk now.
Communications strategy is most effective when it is in place before changes begin, not after they become difficult. If you are preparing for or already making changes, a confidential conversation costs nothing.
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