By Anna Kominik - blogging on location from the Melcrum Change Communication Conference.

Day one of the Melcrum Change Communication Conference case studies supported the notion that leadership is a big part of the success of any change process.

All of the speakers affirmed what most communicators and managers already know: that organisational change is complex – each stakeholder group has its own part to play and the most important of these are the employees, because, without employees there can be no organisation. For the change to be successful, managers need to ensure that employees both understand and support it. It’s not surprising that for many internal communication managers and practitioners, communicating change is perhaps the most demanding aspect of their work.

Melissa Dark and Adrian Cropely (two fantastic and very talented internal communications professionals) held a highly interactive session on “the change curve”, and the stages employees typically move through during organisational change: shock, reaction, acceptance, action and commitment. In their session, small groups convened to discuss the challenges and solutions (ideas) for communicating through these stages in order to support employees and move them through the curve as quickly as possible. You can see some of the outputs of this on their blog Black Belt Dojo Australia.

Melcrum conferences are without doubt some of the best available. All too often, conferences involving PR people can become a talkfest of the usual suspects but Melcrum has a knack for bringing together a mix of meaty and interesting case studies, excellent workshops and excellent international speakers. I’m only a little bit biased as one of the workshop facilitators. The overall effect is a meeting of minds, with senior practitioners from Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand at this conference, and lots of food for thought. Really looking forward to Day Two and keynote speaker Cheryl Elliott, Seattle-based Communications Manager for Microsoft.