In this episode we look at Facilitating change through effective communication.
Sean Nolan is Chief at Blink, a new category of enterprise software that enables companies with a large frontline workforce to dramatically improve and modernise their business by moving to more engaging, fluid and efficient ways of working. Sean has worked for organisations like BskyB and was also co-founder of Tomorrow Communications where he worked with clients such as easyJet, Fidelity, RBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Standard Bank, Vodafone, EE, Sony, Cisco, Sky, Ladbrokes and the MOD.
When Craig was first exposed to internal communications, it wasn’t as an internal communicator, it was as a line manager. One of the things he learned in his first role as a line manager was very much that employees first and foremost want answers to the questions that are important to them. Their primary goal, their primary motivation is to understand key things like, what am I going to get paid, what shifts am I going to work, what is my holiday entitlement?
Those were always really key messages that people would want to find out for themselves and would move heaven and Earth to find out. What Craig learned from one of his first line managers in that role is the mantra ‘the core is bore, be vocal with the local’. In essence this says that most employees will avoid anything to do with corporate information in favour of things that are really important to them or things that affect them or their immediate colleagues. One of the things that Craig’s always been really interested in is how that now translates into a more modern digital world.
Craig’s experience was from a long time ago when we used to rely solely on printed media such as newsletters and notice boards for communication. There was also a lot of face to face communication as well, which Craig still thinks has a huge part to play. But now, as we transition into a digital world, how does that still play its part? Craig thinks one of the challenges that we’ve got as internal communicators, as we become more and more tooled up with apps and devices and technology that allows us to communicate to our employees around the clock, around the globe, around the world, no matter where they are, is that we don’t necessarily think about what they need and how we communicate that to them. The psychology of what it is that we’re trying to communicate to them needs to be tied into what’s important to them. We need to empathise and respect what’s important to our people.
So in today’s interview, Craig wanted to really explore that dilemma, how do we communicate change effectively to our employees using technology or using the modern tools that we have at our disposal? It’s also important to remember that there are some fundamental things that we need to be aware of as communicators, we need to be acting as trusted advisers, experts within our organisation.
Craig’s finding a lot of the push to use new technology is not necessarily coming from internal communicators, it’s coming from elsewhere in the organisation. So today’s interview is with someone who’s actually created one of these very useful tools that organisations can use from an internal communications perspective. It’s coming however from an enlightened perspective, which Craig thinks ties in with the premise that people want to be communicated to with what is important to them and then they’ll will give you the time to listen to the messages that you’re looking to get to them, even the more corporate side of the messages. So that’s what we’re going to be looking at in today’s interview and we hope you find it an interesting conversation.
Useful links:
Sean’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seannolanlondon/
Blink’s website: https://joinblink.com/