Trust During Organisational Change: When the Plan Meets People

By Joanne Lockwood

National Inclusion Week has come and gone. We have heard this year’s theme: Build Trust. Navigate Change. I think those four words become much more interesting once the week is over.

The events finish. The messages stop. People go back to work. Then a leadership team announces a change to how that work will be done.

That is where the theme gets tested.

Perhaps the organisation is bringing people back into the office more often. Perhaps it is introducing a new digital system, changing shift patterns, merging teams or redesigning a service. The reasons may be sound. Leaders may have thought hard about the budget, the timetable and what they hope to achieve.

But I have a question before anyone calls the plan inclusive: who has been able to tell you what it will feel like to live with it?

Elevation flattens

I often think about the difference between looking at a journey from above and making it on the ground.

From above, the route between A and B looks almost straight. You can see the destination. You can draw a line, set a date and tell everyone where they need to be.

At ground level, there is terrain. Hills, rivers, awkward crossings and paths that disappear just when you need them. What looks like a small adjustment on a plan can be a substantial obstacle in someone’s working day.

I call this elevation flattens. The higher you are above the everyday experience of a decision, the easier it is to miss its contours.

Take a change to working arrangements. One person is figuring out childcare. Another is looking at a journey that is manageable twice a week but exhausting four times. A disabled colleague knows the proposed workspace does not meet their needs. Someone else depends on a predictable routine to manage their health. A colleague with less authority in the team may spot the flaw first and feel least able to name it.

None of those people is necessarily opposed to change. They are telling you where the terrain is.

When leaders describe every concern as resistance, they throw away information they need. Worse, they teach people that the safest response is to say nothing and quietly work around the problem.

The plan can look successful from above while people carry its costs out of sight.

What does it cost to speak up?

I hear organisations say they want people to be honest. I believe many of them mean it. But an invitation to speak is only the beginning.

What happens to the person who says, “I think you’ve missed something”? Do they get a curious question or a defensive reply? Does their manager thank them for raising it, then go away and find out more? Or are they remembered as the person who made a straightforward change difficult?

That is where psychological safety becomes real. People do not weigh up a poster about speaking up. They remember what happened the last time somebody did.

They also watch what happens to other people. A colleague might be able to absorb the consequences of challenging a decision. Someone on a temporary contract, new to the team or hoping for promotion may feel they cannot. If a person has already had to explain an access need, correct an assumption about their identity or fight to be taken seriously, asking them to do it again carries a different weight.

So I would ask leaders to be careful with the question, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?” Sometimes the answer is that nobody thought it would make a difference. Sometimes people knew it might make a difference to them—and feared that difference would be unwelcome.

You cannot ask people to speak up while making them guess the price of speaking.

Listening while the door is still open

I have seen a familiar pattern in how organisations talk about change. A decision is made. A polished announcement goes out. Then people are invited to a listening session.

At that point, what exactly are they being asked to influence?

I am not suggesting every decision can be made by committee. Leaders have responsibilities, constraints and difficult choices to make. Sometimes the destination is fixed. Sometimes the budget really is what it is. People can cope with an honest boundary more readily than an invitation that implies they have a say when they do not.

Tell people what has been decided, what is still open, and why. Ask about the practical effects before the implementation is locked down. Make room for those who will live with the change to help design how it works.

That may mean using more than one way to hear from people. Not everyone will challenge a senior leader in a town hall. A team conversation, a confidential route, a staff network or a representative may surface something the open meeting did not. And if you ask the same few people to explain the impact of every proposal, notice the extra work you are placing on them. Their insight has value; their time does too.

The question is not merely, “Did we give people a chance to comment?” It is, “Could their knowledge still change anything?”

Belonging is felt in the process

We often talk about belonging as a feeling. It is one. But feelings are shaped by what an organisation repeatedly does.

I feel a stronger sense of belonging when I can bring a reality into the room and know it will be taken seriously. When I do not have to make myself smaller or simpler so that a plan can stay neat. When someone with power is willing to say, “We had not seen that. Let’s look again.”

That does not mean I expect to get my preferred answer every time. Fairness is not the same as universal agreement. I can understand a hard decision better if I can see that my perspective was considered, that leaders are honest about the trade-offs, and that they will check what happens once the change is live.

The opposite also teaches me something. If my concern is welcomed in the meeting but disappears from the decision, I notice. So does everyone else. People learn whose experiences count and whose are treated as awkward exceptions.

This is why I talk about Positive People Experiences. They are built into the way decisions are made, explained and adjusted. They live in the everyday moments when somebody raises a concern, a manager responds, and a team sees whether the organisation means what it says.

Trust needs a return journey

One of the simplest ways to damage trust is to ask for people’s views and never tell them what happened next.

Perhaps you changed the proposal. Say so, and explain what you heard. Perhaps you could not make the change people wanted. Explain that too. Perhaps an impact is uncertain. Name what you will watch for, who owns it and when you will revisit the decision.

I would rather hear a clear, respectful “we cannot do that, and here is why” than be thanked for my honesty and left in silence. Silence makes people fill in the gaps themselves. It can leave them wondering whether they were heard at all.

Closing the loop also means looking beyond the launch date. A change can work well on paper and create problems once people start using it. Ask who is doing the extra work. Ask whether people have found workarounds. Ask who has stopped contributing, or has stopped raising concerns because the effort feels pointless.

The test is not whether a launch was smooth. It is whether you remain willing to learn from the people living with the result.

A question for the next change

If you lead a team or programme, I would take one live decision and ask four questions before it goes any further:

1. Who might experience this differently from the people who designed it? Think about disability, race, age, class, neurodivergence, caring responsibilities and the power people hold at work. Do not assume that one person can speak for a whole group.
2. What can people genuinely influence? Be specific about what is fixed and what remains open.
3. How can someone tell you about an impact without putting themselves at unnecessary risk? Offer routes that work for people with different roles, communication preferences and levels of confidence.
4. How will you show what you did with what you heard? Give an answer, an owner and a point at which you will check again.

These questions will not remove every difficult choice. They will make it harder to pretend that a tidy plan tells the whole story.

National Inclusion Week gives us a useful prompt. The work that follows is less visible. It happens when a deadline is tight, the budget is under pressure and someone tells you that the route you chose has an obstacle you cannot see from where you stand.

I believe trust grows when we make it safer to say that out loud, and when people can see their words affect what happens next. Inclusion is a verb.

Inclusion asks us to move closer to the ground, understand the terrain and, where we can, change the route together.

So as you navigate the next change, ask yourself: who is carrying its uncertainty—and what would they tell you if they trusted you to listen?