Engaging Internal Comms

The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith explores the topic of Employee Alignment with Lindsay Uittenbogaard. Employee alignment is often viewed as a consequence of employee engagement. In reality, alignment is a precursor to engagement. Alignment is crucial to employee engagement. Lindsay explains that without alignment and a clear view of the strategy on how to collaborate and implement it, employees will not be engaged. However, she also puts forward that employees may be aligned yet not engaged. When employees understand the vision, the strategy, their team’s purpose, and how they can implement it, engagement is achieved to advance the organisation’s mission through their role.

Craig Smith talks to Victoria Bond about measuring organisational culture. Victoria is passionate about helping organisations to better measure and understand what their employees are thinking and feeling, thus finding ways to help their leaders to respond to that feedback in real time. Victoria points out how management often focuses too heavily on profits and sales, when it’s the engagement of its people that can truly make the difference, especially when merging or introducing potential investors, or acquisitioning. When focus is not solely placed on sales and profits, and instead attentive of people engagement, the culture that cascades throughout the organisation strengthens the spine of the company. This adds exponential value to a company’s investors and potential buyers.

The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Costanza Tobino about using humour in internal comms. Costanza’s work experience ranges from marketing to internal communications and employee engagement. Costanza has led numerous communication projects involving change integration, mergers, acquisitions, executive leadership, product launches, corporate social responsibility, learning and development, and community engagement. Her biggest interests are in powerful communications, video, new technologies, and humour, which is what Craig will be discussing with Costanza in this podcast.

Craig Smith talks with Executive Vice President at 2Logical, David Naylor, about the subject of Motivational Intelligence. The original concept of intelligence was quantified in the form of an IQ back in the 1600s. This is still used to measure mental ability. Additionally to IQ, David explains how emotional intelligence (EQ) is essentially the human being’s understanding of emotions and how these emotions influence behaviour. Further to this, David explains how psychological researcher Dr Carol Dweck discovered a third type of intelligence, motivational intelligence, which consists of two types of mindset that we explore in the interview.

Craig Smith talks to Dureen Anwer, who is the senior Corporate Communications Manager at NHS organisation NEL, a role that involves both employee engagement and external corporate communications. Dureen has followed a phenomenally successful career path. After moving to the UK from Pakistan, she moved up from the role of communications officer to a senior IC role within five years. Dureen has worked in several organisations including the NHS and Herefordshire Council. Dureen identifies self-belief is a key requirement for an individual to reach their goal. Added with the willingness to embrace change, willingness to invest in a long-term career path, and remaining positive and passionate about what you’re good at, you will confidently steer your way into a successful career in internal communications.