The value of a strong organisational culture has never been higher, and it is something every company should be striving towards. This episode features some practical advice on how communicators can go about sharing this with its employees, while the guests also discuss their own experiences in doing so.

S1 E4 – Dr Graham Ward – INSEAD Business School

As Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Graham has a deep understanding of the importance of purpose in the workplace. In one of the first interviews of the podcast he spoke about the difference this can make in an organisation that is constantly changing and how it can help make these transitions easier.

His advice was to workshop this purpose and make it meaningful to employees. Organisations can start by asking themselves why they exist and then relaying this answer to employees and embedding it within their culture.

S1 E10 – Hannah Shepherd – Virgin Media

Hannah has worked in a variety of roles and has experience in implementing purpose into the roles of her employees. She shared some practical tips on how to do this and the benefits her organisation has seen from doing so.

Listening to employees and demonstrating behaviours to them is what has been most successful for her. She also told Craig how the use of user-generated content from Virgin Media’s employees and asking them what this purpose meant to them really allowed them to feel this.

S2 E21 – Laura Colantuono – Kraft Heinz

A strong set of values is something that can dictate how employees engage with an organisation’s culture and vision. Speaking earlier this year, Laura told the podcast about Kraft Heinz’s new set of values which was set to shape its future goals.

She mentioned some tangible examples about bringing these to life and how it played into the organisation’s purpose. Making them personal was influential in this and went a long way to moving away from simply broadcasting these values to allowing employees to effectively engage with them.

S2 E1 – Linda McCormack – Anglian Water

Having employees that take pride from performing their work and having them speak about their organisation with enthusiasm is often a result of a strong purpose and vision. This type of advocacy can bring a range of benefits and Linda McCormack spoke about how she had helped implement this at Anglian Water.

Similar to what Laura had done, Linda got the company’s employees involved in the very early stages when it came to outlining its culture. She described a purpose as a ‘north star’ which everyone should be aiming for but one that continuously drives positive change.

S1 E1 – Arafa Heneghan – AO

Matching an external brand to internal experiences is something Arafa spoke passionately about and is key to giving a sense of realism to an organisation’s purpose. Employees need to feel this in their day-to-day lives and see it across the rest of the organisation.

Living a company’s values and buying into this purpose is a two-way deal according to Arafa and helps make the workplace as enjoyable and frictionless as possible. She also touched upon how this needs to be a personal effort to help employees engage with the organisation’s purpose.

S2 E25 – Niall Ryan – Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)

The pandemic has been a challenging time for the DHSC, which means showing employees a relevant purpose and a strong vision was crucial. That task was handed to Niall, and here he outlines three main initiatives for doing this.

He spoke about how personal belonging to an organisation can help improve outcomes and allowing an employee to bring their whole self to work can go a long way to achieving this. On top of this, allowing conversation on this purpose and vision allows for it to continually improve and become more relevant to employees.

This episode is a chance to reflect on the change it has brought about while demonstrating some of the best practices we have heard for dealing with its effects. Communicators have learned to adapt and shown their worth during this difficult period, while also helping manage the newly found obstacle of maintaining employee engagement through remote methods.

S2 E22 – Kevan Hall – Global Integration

With his organisation specialising in helping businesses get the most out of remote workers, Kevan Hall knows what it takes to engage these types of employees. He has long been a leading expert in this field, and he shared why those looking to implement remote and hybrid methods of working in their company should shift their focus to outcomes. Giving employees an objective to work towards can be hugely effective when it comes to engagement.

In this clip Kevan explained to Craig how working from home was previously seen as a perk, but the necessity of it bought on by the pandemic has changed this perception. This should be the same for measuring employee performance, with outputs not showing the full picture.

S2 E25 – Niall Ryan – Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)

Helping give remote employees purpose also plays a big role in engagement levels, but this has been a challenge for many communicators. While heading the DHSC’s internal comms team, Niall oversaw the rapid shift to remote working, and he explained how instilling this purpose helped make this shift easier.

Improving the department’s employees understanding of its ‘Covid Battle Plan’ and the role they had to play in implementing it was a challenge for Niall and his team, especially as most of its workers had always worked on site. He explained to Craig the methods he used to show employees the bigger picture and even the role this had to play in implementing new staff.

S1 E9 – Ryan Tahmassebi – Hive HR

One of the fundamental questions that many organisations are still thinking about with regards to remote working is its impact on collaboration and ultimately productivity. Ryan helps organisations assess their employee’s engagement levels and HR practices and he demonstrated some interesting results from the research Hive HR had carried out during the pandemic.

He says that collaboration among colleagues has not been detrimentally affected and that work between different departments has received a boot. From his own experiences, Ryan has traditionally seen this interdepartmental collaboration score low on the surveys he has run, which potentially shows the new opportunities remote working has provided.

S1 E29 – Jen Sproul – Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC)

Employee communications has played a huge role in how many organisations have dealt with the pandemic. The Chief Executive of the IoIC Jen Sproul told Craig this is something which should not be forgotten, and the value communicators have brought to their organisations should be recognised.

Jen spoke about how internal communications is now more established than ever and those working in it can be viewed more as trusted advisors rather than simply broadcasters. She notes how remote working has had an impact on this and it has allowed communicators to gain the trust of leadership.

S2 E24 – Lisa Gwinell – Siemens Mobility

Backing up a lot of what Jen said, Lisa spoke about the value a strong internal comms team has brought to many organisations over the last few years. This is particularly the case for a crisis such as the pandemic or any other time there is a major change within an organisation.

Understanding how to manage this change is becoming increasingly important for communicators and as Lisa says, it can allow them to rise through the ranks. Good communication is intrinsically important to making the process of change as easy as possible.

S2 E12 – Kristina Vaneva – Atlantis Resorts

Throughout both podcast series, many communicators have shared some of the best practices around keeping their employees engaged. Kristina revealed some practical tips from her own personal experiences on this, specifically taking about the impact of the pandemic.

She noted how her team’s communications completely changed with regards to things like frequency and style. They opted for more empathetic methods to keep employees motivated, often relying on personal stories to do this.

S2 E8 – Tanya Pakhuta – LeasePlan

Tanya was another communicator who explained some of her own innovative methods to get the attention of her organisation’s employees. She described how challenging the pandemic was and how fast she had to adapt to it.

Her view was that it was better to overcommunicate to employees than say nothing, revealing how it led to a complete rethink of her strategies. One innovative method she was proud of was helping make leadership available to employees through daily video calls, which kept them informed during periods of isolation.

S2 E29 – Mark Dollins – North Star Communications

As mentioned previously, understanding the mechanics of change management is more important than ever for communicators. Mark Dollins emphasised this speaking off the back of his new book Engaging Employees Through Strategic Communication, which talks about how crucial this will be going forward.

He mentioned how communicators need to act as leaders when it comes to all types of organisational change. They should go further than simply broadcasting these messages to employees and should look to gain a further understanding of this discipline.

Having previously featured on the Engaging Internal Comms Podcast at the end of Series 1, Jen is returning to give an overview of what has been a challenging year for the sector. She and Craig Smith discuss the disruption and innovations that have been accelerated by the pandemic and what impact this will have for internal comms in 2022.

The impact of 2021 on IC

Jen admits the last year (2021) has been turbulent for internal comms, with the difficulties of the pandemic playing a significant part in this. However, she feels these difficulties have merited some great rewards as 2021 turned out to be a much better year than anticipated.

Membership for the IoIC has grown significantly in this time as communicators look to develop new skills and overcome these new challenges together and as a community. Jen feels the fact the organisation is a trusted source for best practices has also helped attract new members, while simultaneously offering a lot of credibility. The professionalisation of internal comms and the important role it has had to play for business over the last two years has also had a large influence on increasing membership.

The move back to some face-to-face working has been accelerating this year Jen says and is something she believes shows the power of human connection. She also highlighted the increased focus on wellbeing this year. For communicators this often means helping people within an organisation, but Jen stated these people should also be looking to care for themselves. Communities like the IoIC can help with this, as Jen explains to Craig how dialogue can help ease the burden of any obstacle.

“We are not meant for isolation,” Jen said. “As social creatures, in our DNA and our makeup, we are simply not meant for it. We are not meant to figure things out on our own and we need to express, converse and challenge.”

Jen continues by discussing the IoIC’s ‘#I Chose IC’ campaign, which was explored in depth in Episode 27 of the series. This is central to why organisations like the IoIC exist and is something Jen states is a passion for everyone at the IoIC. It also links to the professionalisation agenda, which has gained more importance this year, and will go a long way to helping attract a pipeline of strong and diverse talent to the industry.

This is helping fix one internal comms biggest issues,  namely attracting new talent to the industry. Jen recognises that a lot of those who work in this profession can ‘fall into’ their roles through natural progression. However, she feels there should be more opportunities for people to enter the industry with a focus solely on internal comms, with the campaign doing so by reaching out to university students through ambassadorship programmes.

The challenges for internal comms in 2022

When it comes to bringing talent to the industry, Jen says this will be a constant process with no end point. Furthermore, taking factors such as social mobility into account will help determine its long-term success. Therefore, there has also been a focus on attracting school leavers and not just university students to internal comms, which will be a priority for the IoIC next year.

Opening up new internship and work experience programmes to young people is something that will help with recruitment and bring more talent to internal comms in 2022. Jen wants to see more young people look at the industry as a career choice and showing them the pathway from entry to senior level is a good way to get them onboard with this.

“There is progress being made all the time in the internal comms industry,” Jen said. “But I still feel there is a lot more progress to do, because that in essence drives us towards becoming a bigger professional community of good and diverse talent.”

Looking to the future, Jen says there has been a lot of work put in from the IoIC this year to find out what is next for the profession. Dealing with challenges such as hybrid working, pace, burnout and wellbeing will be key to being successful in role in internal comms in 2022. These people-centred problems are taking much more of a focus now and it is crucial that the sector does not revert to a less empathetic style of communication that was more common pre-pandemic.

For Jen, internal comms in 2022 should revolve around community and collaboration. Helping create cultures within organisations that adapt to their people and allow for the progression of great talent. According to Jen, communicators can become natural leaders, which is an opportunity that should be grasped by those in the sector.

“If you communicate well, you lead people,” Jen said. “That’s fundamental and it is a great opportunity for our profession. The power of what we say and how we say it is really important.”

Change management is another facet that those in internal comms should be looking to have an influence on. This is constant in many organisations and is paramount to its success, but how this change is carried out is constantly evolving. The new ways of working are a good example of this, with other societal pressures and the need to ‘do the right thing’ now being considered when it comes to making transformation decisions that affect employees.

As communicators, change management is a discipline that needs to be understood and shouldn’t be underestimated. Instead of simply telling employees what change is needed from leaders, Jen wants to see a more proactive role from those in internal comms in 2022. Good listening is critical and can help enable emergent change from the ground up. This will help shift people’s roles from communicator to implementers of change.

Jen reiterates how community can have a big role to play, as talking about these problems can often lead to solutions. She says the IoIC is looking to take the topics discussed this year and turn them into action in 2022, which is a continual process of learning and development.

Hybrid working from a communicator’s perspective

The positive and negative impact of digital communication should not be underestimated when it comes to employees choosing their preferred working arrangements. Communicators need to ‘wrestle with this’ to find the best solutions for their organisation.

The pandemic has helped instil trust between workers and leaders and this has often helped get the best out of people. This progress with digital communication has also allowed people to make strides when it comes to connectivity with their colleagues. Jen says dialogue around issues in many organisations has greatly improved because of this.

On the other hand, this can influence engagement levels with employees. Many people have developed new habits with their new ways of working and this is not always advantageous. Digital communication has also brought challenges in making everyone’s voices heard.

Information overload is also another issue when it comes to these new ways of working. This links to these dropping engagement levels as communicators struggle to cut through all the other forms of digital communication employees are receiving. A solution to this can come from revaluating an organisation’s communication channels and reimaging the design process.

The impact digital communication can have on relationships between employees is also something that needs to be addressed. Jen says it can be easy to lose empathy with people when you cannot see them, but it is vital from a learning and development standpoint that people are given that exposure within their organisation and feel like they are being listened to. She again links this back to community and how it can help people deal with this issue.

Hopes for internal comms in 2022

Craig asks Jen what her biggest wish for internal comms over the next year would be. Although it is a difficult thing to nail down to one point, Jen says she wants to see an increase in that sense of pride from those in the internal comms community. These people should thrive at the idea of helping manage change and becoming a trusted advisor within their organisations.

She admits that the change she wants to see will take time but remains confident that through their community and collaboration it can be achieved. Learning from past experiences is vital and it will help communicators have a larger sense of influence and impact from their work.

Useful links

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifersproul31/

IoIC – https://www.ioic.org.uk/

Internal Communications in the Raw Podcast – https://ioic.podbean.com/

Having worked with companies such as DuPont and PepsiCo, Mark has over 30 years of experience in change management. He now sits as president for North Star Communications Consulting, which focuses on employee change and communications talent development.

Jon also has a vast background in the industry, currently operating as Chair and Professor of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, primarily teaching public relations and advertising classes. On the research side, the bulk of his work stems around health and science communication and how this can be done in a way the public can understand.

Both Mark and Jon recognised the need for a book that could be used by both practitioners currently working in communications and students looking to break through. The textbook-like format the pair have created combines their know-how with other pieces of research to investigate topics such as storytelling, competencies and measurements. The book finishes by talking about today’s podcast topic, communicating change and where the industry is heading.

The connection between communicating change and internal comms

After Craig draws upon his own experiences of communicating change in internal comms, Jon begins to look more closely at some of the reasons for why the two are linked. From the rise of the internet and social media to a shift in stakeholder and customer needs, Jon says that the comms industry has undergone a transformation in recent times. He believes this is the sector’s only constant.

“The last 20 years may have seen more change in the industry than the previous century,” Jon said.

All of this has helped accelerate the professionalisation of internal comms according to Mark, which he says is an essential part of any successful organisation. Be it a digital change, a cultural development or a shift in working arrangements, these are always occurring.

The problem for managers and HR representative is they are ‘jumping in the deep end with both feet’ when it comes to learning about and practicing change management. Mark draws upon the distinction between this and change management communication. He says often those in internal comms end up being the drivers of these developments because there is no specific discipline for this in most organisations.

This is something which is becoming more prevalent now however, as HR people and managers look to become further educated in this. Communicators can benefit from this as well, as they can assess the speed and efficiency of their comms channels using the same disciplines as their change management counterparts.

“There is now an inexplicable link between the importance of change and the importance of employee communications,” Mark said.

Following on from this, he explains why change and communication are so intertwined. Mark says both should be viewed holistically as they always involve people. Communication is what drives these people to understand and believe in this change.

Training and development is another component of communicating change which is vital to making it possible. Giving employees the means to get behind a change can only go so far says Mark, with knowledge and skills being the driving forces after this. Reinforcing this change with multiple communications is also important for this, with Mark saying it is ‘the thread that binds all these efforts’ together.

Jon adds to this by discussing how research can play a role in helping the change process. Pulse surveys, both internal and external, are examples of this as they can help guide the effort and better serve an organisation’s employees. He believes that businesses are now one of the most trusted groups for communications, far more than the media. This gives them a chance to fill what Craig describes as a ‘vacuum of trust’.

Driving personal accountability

Craig draws upon some examples explaining how some of the best change he has seen is that which promotes personal accountability from employees. This is to give them a sense of empowerment and is something Mark agrees with. He admits that this does not often happen on an enterprise level. Those in management positions need to be given the tools to have those direct conversations with their employees, as broad communications on their own simply won’t be as effective.

Furthermore, these is an emotional side to tackling change that needs to be addressed. Communicators need to be connecting the efforts and activities of their teams to the organisation’s broader picture. Storytelling is a good way to tap into this says Mark, as it can help connect all the individual pieces of change to a ‘master narrative’.

The significance of storytelling

Something Jon is constantly telling his students when it comes to using storytelling as a way of communicating change is it must have purpose. Often stories can help reinforce popularity within an organisation, but this means it lacks impact when it comes to onboarding employees.

Through his work within health communication, Jon says he has noticed many organisations not truly listening to their employees and the people they serve. Finding out what these groups want is usually the best place to start when it comes to creating these stories that will really have an influence on them. These should also play into this idea of the organisation’s ‘master narrative’.

“Whether it’s an internal newsletter, for social media or for our websites we as communicators need to have content,” Jon said. “There is always a wealth of content at your fingertips if you’re willing to listen and look for it.”

How to build a master narrative

When organisations are undertaking a significant change, having a broader narrative that points employees in the same direction can improve outcomes. Creating a story for employees that shows where they fit in and how they contribute in a compelling way is something Mark has proven experience with.

From here, communicators can show their worth by showing the rest of the organisation where the company’s narrative fits in and how those across the business can use it in their day-to-day activities. Leaders should be empowered to be better storytellers and communicators should consider how this can be made possible when looking to reinforce these narratives.

Mark says communicators should always be open to improving their storytelling abilities, which will make it easier for them to use the narrative they have set up across their work. He says the most effective stories when it comes to communicating change are those with a long shelf life, as this is the guide that should be used across a change effort.

Capturing and curating the moments that embody the values of an organisation’s master narrative is a very powerful tool for communicators and has a much greater effect than other less personal methods. Afterall, as Jon says, people are interested in people, and therefore storytelling will resonate with them.

“The more that we can take a company which may just seem like a box and turn it into something that is humanised, you gain affinity with both your internal and external audience,” Jon says. “They think about you in a different way, and you get people who can then become brand ambassadors and talk to you about the good you do.”

Valuing internal comms as a critical business partner

The rise of internal comms as a valued profession over recent years has not gone unnoticed by senior leaders within large organisations. Mark admits that these people only have a certain bandwidth when it comes to learning all the aspects of a business, which is where communicators need to show their worth.

He says that those in internal comms should look to teach leaders about their work and display why they should be valued as a trusted advisor. This must be done early and often and is a topic Mark and Jon deeply explore in their book. It is something they want to see discussed in places like business schools so they can be educated on the true value of employee communications.

Jon follows on from this by saying communicators should work to help leaders achieve their goals. Working in an academic environment, he believes research can play a role in this push for value saying people always want to see proof that their plans will work to effectively engage employees.

Building capability in change and internal comms

In their book, Mark and Jon outline a competency framework to show what communicators should be considering when they are looking to build up this capability. Mark says the first place to start here is to assess how your organisation approaches change.

Adopting certain models such as the ones discussed is common, but people in internal comms should look for the ‘centres of excellence’ within a business which are leading this change. If there is no commitment to a methodology, then employee communicators should look to places like HR to find a trusted partner and create this centre.

This should be seen as an opportunity to be a leader and drive this change according to Mark. Finally, communicators should look to understand the change that is occurring and why it is important.

Useful links

Jon Stemmle LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-stemmle-6729467/

University of Missouri’s School of Journalism – https://journalism.missouri.edu/

Mark Dollins LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/markddollins/

North Star Communications Consulting – https://www.northstarcomms.com/

He is the guest on this episode of The Engaging Internal Comms podcast as he sits down with Craig Smith to discuss how organisations can use audio in their internal comms strategies.

Security and analytics are at the top of Vennly’s priorities and Brian brings a wealth of experience dealing with audio content, having previously been EVP at Cadence13 where he worked on popular titles such as Pod Save America.

His new podcast, The Drip, revolves around speaking to communications specialists and discussing the best practice in their space. The idea for this came from him noticing a lack of content which featured those putting communication strategies into action.

Synchronous and asynchronous communication

These two concepts play a crucial role when it comes to relaying information through audio. For large organisations looking to distribute this type of content, which category the information falls under can be crucial.

• Synchronous – communication that is taking place in real-time by two or more parties. Zoom calls and webinars are examples of this.
• Asynchronous – communication that is not taking place in real-time, such as an email to a colleague.

Choosing which of these to base a communication strategy on will have an impact on how it is received says Brian. He draws upon the example of employees working in different time zones, which can make synchronous communication difficult. Looking at what it means to have these shared conversations can help communicators craft strategies, as some content can still hold its value when delivered a few days after.

Making these decisions is something that Brian feels is improving by those in internal comms. Many employees can feel overwhelmed by things like emails and Zoom, which means taking a step back and looking at other ways to communicate. Choosing multiple channels to do this can be beneficial for engagement.

Effective asynchronous tools

As a lot of internal communicators now recognise, employees want to receive information in a range of different ways. This is often on demand and to with their own personal commitments. Some methods in which this can be done are more effective than others.

Email is the centrepiece of this type of communication. Almost every company in the world will use email but it is important for them to define an etiquette around it. This can be often overlooked, with employees not understanding when, how or if they need to reply.

As mentioned previously, this is where using multiple channels can have its benefits. Even though they can be used remotely and are not live, software such as Slack can help bridge the gap towards an immediacy in communication. Having a strong intranet network can also assist with this.

Posting content in various forms will have its benefits here, but some are more effective than others when it comes to asynchronous communication. Podcasts are a powerful way to deliver these organisational messages in a way that meets employee needs according to Brian.

“Audio is the ultimate on-demand medium,” Brian said. “It is one that is incredibly underrated for businesses, even though we are starting to see them adopt it more meaningfully as a way to communicate with employees internally.”

Why audio is an effective communication method

Brian starts by bringing this down to a basic level, explaining how most podcasts are consumed during working hours. He says that this is a consumer behaviour which internal communicators can take advantage of. The data shows that 83% of employees want to have their leaders communicate to them in the form of a podcast.

It also allows people to get on with other tasks while consuming the information, unlike video or text which requires full attention. Audio’s portability is where it can really stand out when it comes to engagement levels. On top of this, Brian believes audio is the most authentic form of communication, featuring no visual biases.

Organisations also have the opportunity to allow more voices to be heard using this format. The production side of podcasting is straightforward and allows communicators to quickly edit content before it goes live, making it much easier and cheaper to produce than video content.

The pandemic has increased audio in internal comms’ value in many ways, as working behaviours have changed. A lot more is happening for employees during working hours now, especially for those working remotely. This means content which is portable can often bring the significant benefits to them.

How to get audio into your organisation

For organisations looking to bring audio content into their business, Brian says evaluating the current asynchronous communication methods being deployed is a good place to start. Furthermore, organisations should look at which voices they are looking to elevate.

He stresses that those who are delivering these internal communications are not editors of content, instead they should operate as moderators. Brian explains to Craig how most large companies will have a number of willing voices who would love to help create and deliver content. Coaching these people can be helpful to some extent, but authenticity is crucial here.

On the technical side of creating audio content, Brian recommends software like Zencastr when it comes to recordings. However, using familiar tools such as Zoom can often have its benefits as there is not a huge amount of technical expertise that needs to be put into making this content.

When it comes to production this is also just as simple according to Brian. He states he learned how to do it in around six hours, saying how it can be a ‘creative release’ and fun exploring how to do this. Seeing these podcasts as ‘shows’ rather than communication channels can allow it to become more engaging and get people from other parts of an organisation to get involved.

What to expect from using audio as an internal comms channel

Brian turns to discussing his own company’s uses when looking at the impact of audio content. He mentions how his Vennly software provides a huge range of analytics which can be useful for internal communicators. This includes how much the audio content is being engaged with linked to which channel it is being shared on. Other data such as how long it is being listened too can also help shape a communication strategy.

Useful links

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlandau/

From helping employees stay connected to communicating new strategies, Kirsty has built and led the internal comms team over the past eight years for the UK’s second largest building society.

As well as this, Kirsty has been using her experience to help the IoIC as a Board Director. Furthermore, she is an ambassador and a strong advocate for the organisation’s #IChoseIC campaign, helping to show students and those who support them the possibilities of a career in internal comms.

The initial effect of the pandemic

Moving quickly was key for Coventry BS when the pandemic struck. The first stages were described as ‘crazy’ by Kirsty, as she and her team looked to keep the organisation’s near 2,500 employees informed and updated.

“People’s lives were impacted, their families’ lives were impacted from the pandemic, and we have quite a role to play in that,” Kirsty said. “Whether it’s supporting our colleagues or supporting our customers.”

Kirsty mentioned how the nature of services Coventry BS delivers made the preliminary stages of the pandemic especially difficult. Despite the country going into lockdown, banks and building societies needed to stay open, along with their call centres, as people needed to continue to access to their finances.

Like most businesses, its approach to the pandemic was a reactive one at first which made the process of setting up remote workers and assisting head office staff complex. Once this settled down, the internal comms team turned its attention to employee wellbeing.

Lessons from the pandemic to take going forward

Those working in internal comms will have learned a lot during this time. Coventry BS worked hard to keep up a sense of community for its employees and this was reflected in the lessons from the pandemic Kirsty has taken forward into their IC strategy.

Comms focused on individuals

Often internal comms teams use a ‘broad brush approach’ when reaching out to employees according to Kirsty. This often brings difficulties for those working in complex organisations such as Coventry BS. Everyone’s experience of the pandemic has been different and internal comms should reflect that.

Kirsty admits this was not recognised initially, but when it came to helping employee wellbeing it was essential. Even now people’s emotions and concerns towards things like social distancing differ, which needs to be considered.

Authentic human leadership

Seeing leaders as people rather than figures can be vital to allowing employees to take messages on board. Kirsty mentions how it is important to acknowledge how they are feeling and how they have been affected by the pandemic, which also helps build connections. Storytelling through channels like blogs and videos is a great way to do this, which can allow people to feel more comfortable with their own and others’ issues.

Wellbeing should be led by the employer

Pre-pandemic there was a lot of good work in this area says Kirsty, but since then the topic of wellbeing and mental health has been brought to the forefront. More isolated and restricted conditions have played their part and Kirsty reveals there is no hiding from the fact that organisations should be helping break stigmas and encouraging people to talk about these issues.

For those in internal comms, they can signpost where employees can get support and ensure there are enough ways for people to talk and, most crucially, be listened to. For Kirsty, it is vital to keep this going forward and is something she now feels is part of her responsibilities.

Contact with line managers

This links to the mental health lessons as Kirsty feels communication with line managers can help create a sense of belonging, which is particularly important for new starters. The shift from spending all day with colleagues to spending all day in isolation took some adjusting to. Making sure these relationships aren’t neglected is what can help drive employee engagement.

This new way of working brings challenges to new staff who may find it difficult to build relationships with their colleagues, but a strong team dynamic can help them overcome this. Going forward, this needs to be considered to keep up these connections given new ways of working.

Kirsty mentions how Coventry BS, like most organisations, are just at the start of their hybrid working journey but are taking a ‘team led’ approach to help employees balance their home and work lives.

Remote meeting etiquette is important for collaboration

Craig and Kirsty both agree that although Zoom (and alike) has been a great tool during the pandemic, it has also implemented some bad habits for employees. Hand up functions and chat boxes are great for communicating information that doesn’t quite fit the flow of the meeting, but the lack of face-to-face interaction can make it difficult when it comes to observing things like a person’s body language.

Coventry BS has begun letting staff engage in ‘hybrid meetings’ which has brought a few challenges. Kirsty says these need to be managed well for optimal communication, being as inclusive as possible. This means everyone gets the chance to speak regardless of their location. It can involve extra preparation, but this new etiquette is vital to helping build collaboration.

The value of internal comms

Undoubtedly IC has played a positive role in how organisations have reacted to the pandemic, and it is crucial this momentum is not lost. The lessons from the pandemic must be taken forward into our ongoing IC strategies. Kirsty describes it as a ‘turning point’ for the profession as it has boosted the value organisations recognise strong internal comms can bring.

Not only have they seen the importance of broadcasting messages but also the role IC professionals play in building and maintaining connections which otherwise would have been lost in the challenging circumstances. This also has an effect at a strategic level, with guidance from internal comms experts maximising organisational impact.

Kirsty says those in the profession have always known their importance, but the pandemic has highlighted this to leaders and that is something she says that can’t be lost going forward. This links to her involvement in the #IChoseIC campaign, as now is a great time to help attract new people to the industry.

Final thoughts on IC lessons from the pandemic

A ‘learning mindset’ is something Kirsty feels a lot of people in internal comms possess and this has been very beneficial during the last 18 months. From this, she feels that any lessons from the pandemic need to be acknowledged and taken into account to help improve engagement and the working lives for all employees. This will ultimately help people feel a sense of belonging to the organisation they are working for.

Useful links

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstybowen/

Andrea Scarpulla is the latest guest to sit down with Craig Smith for the Engaging Internal Comms Podcast. Bringing over 15 years of experience in corporate communications to her current role at DHL Americas, with the company as a whole operating with more than 380,000 staff across 220 countries.

DHL specialises in bringing fast and efficient logistics to organisations across the world, helping them trade securely and sustainably. As Head of Internal Communications, it is Andrea’s job to help employees based in the Americas engage with the organisation’s messages, but this can be challenging with such a diverse workforce.

Andrea helped establish an internal podcast for DHL Americas which gained such popularity that it was rolled out onto other platforms and made available to the public. It covers a lot of general business topics which are very relevant to the 21st-century workforce.

Andrea tells Craig Smith how the methods and initiatives she has used make this engagement possible and how those in the profession can use all types of data to measure the impact of their work.

Why is measuring the impact of Internal Comms important?

Looking to see how well internal communications have been received by employees can be an afterthought for those in the industry. Some often feel the true impact cannot properly be measured, but this is something Andrea contests.

She feels that data can indicate how engaged employees are across an organisation. Andrea says the creation of some form of metric for measuring the impact of internal comms, allows leadership to see which messages are being best received and ultimately being put into action. However, she does acknowledge that there is not a ‘one size fits all method’ for measuring the impact of internal comms as each organisation is different and measurement should be tailored to suit different types of employees.

How to measure internal comms impact

There are a range of tools those in internal comms can use to help determine if they are being successful in sharing company messages. Some are simpler than others, but all can indicate what influence it is having.

• Email analytics – Andrea outlines this as her most basic measurement tool, one she uses on a day-to-day basis. This includes things like click-through rates and the amount of time spent on a page, showing her which information employees are engaging with the most. Despite this, she notes that open rates are often not as useful, as a click-through shows an employee is wanting more information on a topic. Views, likes and comments are also great for deciding which trending topics are driving engagement.
• Intranet – Tools like Yammer can provide vital data for those looking to measure the level at which their content is being engaged with. It is easy to see how many people a post has reached, with both likes and comments displaying what employees are taking on board. Andrea outlines this as a great way to start conversations, particularly when it comes to running internal campaigns and connecting workers to both vision and purpose.
• Internal communication surveys – One of the more sophisticated methods of measurement according to Andrea, surveys can offer a great insight into what employees want to see from their internal comms teams. Things like pulse surveys can help illustrate what topics relate to employees, while more in-depth research can offer a broader range of data.

Acting upon internal comms data

While listing her favourite tools, Andrea consistently outlined the need to put the data collected to use. However, just quantitative use of numbers and statistics alone isn’t enough to discover what employees want. In the past, Andrea has held focus groups on the back of her surveys to complement this and ‘fill in the gaps.’

Presenting this data to an organisation’s leadership can be a great way to map out the future for its internal comms strategy. If employees have said they want to receive more visual or audio information for example, then the data collected is what can be used to justify this change.

“Sometimes it is a matter of wanting to do these surveys to capture the trends year-on-year and to see how our workforce is changing,” Andrea said. “We’re dealing with different generations in our workforce and the way they want to receive information varies.”

The trends employees want to see

With this diverse workforce in mind, Andrea admits that her approach to communications needs to be flexible for different types of employees. Through her most recent research and using tools like surveys, she has noticed some changes in the ways DHL staff are looking to receive information.

The most notable change for Andrea is a desire to be communicated to through visual means. Infographics and photos were most in demand in her most recent survey, as well as video content. All this links to the main strategy Andrea is currently working on, which is an attempt to cut back on text.

Andrea has underlined some challenges with this change of approach. When leadership need certain messages translated a visual approach may not always be appropriate. Furthermore, she notes that it can consume more of her time and this strategy may not be the most relevant for offline and frontline employees.

The challenges of communicating with non-office based staff can also be relevant for remote workers and this puts an emphasis on the work of HR representatives and supervisors to help overcome this. One solution that DHL has introduced is an employee app which gives these workers access to the company’s intranet content. To help gain more feedback from this part of the business Andrea has run competitions in the past which give employees the chance to win a prize if they complete a survey.

How to get started when measuring impact

Having proven how data around internal comms can boost performance through her work, Andrea shares with Craig several tips those in the industry can take away from this episode to help them get started in this field.

1. Platform – Before any IC data can be put into practice, a reliable platform where it can be recorded is needed. PoliteMail is one software tool Andrea knows can help perform this, but she is using another tool called Bananatag in her current role.
2. Know what to measure – Finding out the messages that are most important to the company’s leadership and stakeholders, as well as what employees want to see is important.
3. Trial different methods – Andrea stressed how essential it is to not repeatedly deliver these messages in the same way. This could be experimenting with video or audio content to see what is received best, using data to back this up. She highlighted Canva as a great platform to help create visual content such as infographics.
4. Become creative with delivery – How messages are displayed to employees can often dictate what impact it makes. Techniques such as storytelling and people-focused content are often better received, as well as things like clickable subject lines.
5. Analyse your data – Utilising all the above should provide those in IC with a host of different metrics on how their messages are being received. Taking the time to sit down and investigate which aspects are performing well is the most crucial part when it comes to determining impact.

Useful links:

LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-scarpulla-99120531/

Niall Ryan is the latest guest to feature on the Engaging Internal Comms Podcast, as he speaks to Craig Smith about his work at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). This government division has taken centre stage over the last few years and has been crucial to its management of the pandemic. Internal communications has been at the heart of this and Niall is a key contributor through his role as Head of Internal Communications and Engagement.

Having previously held similar roles at companies such as ASDA, Harrod’s and Liberty, Niall brings over 20 years of internal comms experience to the DHSC, which previously did not have a team operating in this role. When the pandemic kicked off, the department’s influence grew significantly, which led to a huge increase in the number of staff. This highlighted the need for an internal comms team, which Niall helped establish.

Giving these workers a purpose and showing they are contributing to something bigger is a key philosophy of the DHSC. Niall tells Craig how his work has helped implement this, sharing techniques and tools that can be useful to those in a similar role. Bringing people together through organisational purpose.

Being at the heart of the pandemic

With this influx of staff on the back of the pandemic came a range of new challenges for Niall and his newly formed team. The country’s eyes were fixed on the DHSC as people looked for guidance, which put it under further scrutiny. The group’s primary objective is to help people live longer and healthier lives according to Niall, which was brought to the forefront in March 2020.

The department’s main focus was immediately switched to the creation of a ‘Covid Battle Plan’ and it was Niall’s job to help communicate this to all new employees. Its main challenge here was bringing people on board with this strategy, to make sure it progressed and was rolled out smoothly. Because of the urgency of the situation, this had to be communicated very quickly, with processes like inductions being condensed and accelerated. The DHSC’s internal comms teams outlined the key things they would need to achieve if they were to do this. Niall tells Craig about the three main points he needed to help communicate to each member of staff:

1. The DHSC – What the organisation does and how it will play a role in helping manage the pandemic.
2. Their role – What their job entails and how to best do it.
3. How they contribute to the ‘Covid Battle Plan’ – Making sure those who are involved in its implementation feel they are contributing to this and that their work is making a difference

These three factors contributed to engaging their people through organisational purpose.

Getting workers on board

Like many organisations, the DHSC utilised the opportunity for remote working during the pandemic. The lack of face-to-face interaction can always bring new challenges to those involved in internal comms and it certainly did for Niall and his team, especially when it came to getting staff on board with its ‘Covid Battle Plan.’ He says one of the crucial parts to this was breaking down this plan and explaining to each member of staff about their specific role. Here each person’s impact would be communicated to them, and they were shown how they would be contributing to it.

The main success for Niall here is that it gave employees ownership of their work, particularly for remote workers. Staff knew how their work was helping people, which was a major factor in the journey of helping deliver the Covid Battle Plan. This again comes back to the department’s main purpose mentioned previously.

Niall does recognise the importance of doing this job correctly as he says, like any government department, there is a high level of scrutiny on their work. This meant it was vital staff were not only on board with its values, but they also had any barriers removed so they could do their job.

Tools, techniques and channels

When Craig asked Niall about how he successfully implemented the plan, his immediate reaction was to talk about how pivotal the department’s intranet became. He says a huge amount of work had to be done to improve this, therefore it became a key platform. Updates to content and information helped guide staff, which eased the newly discovered pressures for remote workers.

Another channel that assisted was new forms of communication introduced to the DHSC. Remote communication became key to this, particularly when it came to relaying messages and guidance from the organisation’s leaders. Decision makers needed to ensure their policies were being taken on board by every member of staff.

One of the key factors here for Niall and his team was allowing staff to communicate with the department’s leaders, such as Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, through daily video calls. This created the chance for regular remote dialogue through software such as Microsoft Teams, all of which was linked back to the idea of showing employees both the organisation’s direction and purpose.

Measuring impact

This daily communication with the DHSC’s leaders needed to have an impact on employees understanding of both their organisation’s purpose and their own performance. One of the ways Niall and his team measured this was by looking at the level of engagement each of these daily videos had. He said it eventually led to leaders being asked up to 300 questions per call, which showed their willingness to get involved with the organisational purpose.

Analytics of course played an important role in measuring this success, with relation to newsletters and other content on the group’s intranet able to show what staff are taking in. However, a more unusual technique that he used was what he calls ‘spotlighting.’ This form of storytelling involved Niall and his team speaking to members of the DHSC and presenting themselves and their role to the rest of the organisation.

For Niall this made sure that people were not getting lost in the group were given the chance to not only demonstrate their contribution, but also provide them with a voice. Different subjects were used for different topics, which helped create a sense of collectiveness among staff while also facilitating conversations about people’s work business wide.

Reflections from the pandemic

While the last 18 months have been a unique time for anyone involved in internal comms, Niall acknowledges that he has learned things which will serve him well in the future of his role at the DHSC. The three words he has repeatedly highlighted through the episode were purpose, impact and feedback, which all link to organisational purpose. To finish, he reflected with Craig about what he has learned as well as what he will be taking forward in the months to come:

1. Reinforcing purpose

For Niall he says one of the main things he feels has worked during his time at the DHSC is helping employees understand what impact their work is having. This has been particularly crucial during the pandemic and is something he is committed to continuing to make sure all staff understand the group’s function and role for its people.

2. Create an environment for conversation

This has been particularly prevalent in Niall’s effort to spotlight some of his colleagues as well as his efforts in connecting workers with the organisation’s leaders. This allows people to find out further about what they are contributing towards whilst also giving them an opportunity to be involved in decision making.

3. Gaining feedback

Critical for success in any organisation, Niall says the response from those he is working with has been one of the main factors in measuring his success.

“What has sharpened my focus is the need to make purpose and strategy relevant to individuals to showcase how they are making a difference in what they deliver,” Niall said. “It’s not about leaders sitting down and deciding how we go forward, it’s how we bring that to life for our employees.”

Useful links

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallryanjones/

In this week’s episode Craig Smith sits down with Lisa Gwinnell, Head of Internal Communications at Siemens Mobility, to discuss how those in the internal comms sector can become an important part of any large organisation. With over 14 years of experience at Siemens, Lisa helps the company’s 4,000 UK-based employees communicate efficiently and effectively.

Like a lot of those involved in internal communications, Lisa admits she fell into the sector after originally studying for a marketing degree and joining Siemens Mobility’s marketing team. However, after moving to this industry she took it in her stride and is now set to graduate with a Masters in Internal Communication Management from Solent University this year. She is also helping secure the future of the industry, being a certified member of the Institute of Internal Communications.

Siemens Mobility has specialised in providing sustainable and reliable transport for several years now and with over 30,000 employees located across the globe, internal communications have become key to the company’s success. This episode presents some reasons why this may be the case, with Lisa and Craig discussing what this means for the future of the industry and how it can raise its profile across the board.

What does it mean for IC to have a ‘place at the table?’

For internal comms to earn its ‘place at the table’ it will consist of a lot of small wins, but for Lisa she sees those in the sector being involved in the important decision making at large corporations as critical. She believes those involved in internal comms should be seen as ‘trusted advisors’ who can add value to these meetings by both expressing professional opinions and representing employees.

Being involved in these decision-making processes can add a lot of value to the sector, while also proving a different perspective for businesses to look at. Lisa believes because employees are the people that will be the target of these messages across corporations, it is vital someone represents their needs.

The events of the last year (the COVID-19 pandemic) have only demonstrated how important internal communication can be, with important messages needing to be transmitted company-wide for both safety and business purposes. Comms professionals should no longer be seen as just ‘a pair of hands’ for doing posters or emails, but as vital contributors who are there to deliver both impact and outcomes. This is something Lisa echoes:

“Over the last year is the most valued I’ve ever felt because of having a seat at the table as an internal communicator,” Lisa said. “It’s something I had put a lot of value on before, but even more so now.”

The importance of IC in a crisis

Most in the industry will agree that the pandemic has accelerated the importance of internal comms for large organisations. Lisa says the sector has always been crucial when it comes to implementing change, which has been pivotal to many companies to allow them to adapt to new ways of working brought on by this crisis.

These crises are not just limited to those like the pandemic, but also those driven by other sources of change. Internal comms has always played a key role in overcoming these obstacles. Connectivity is at the heart of this, which has only been highlighted as workers were forced to leave the office and shift to remote working. This is another reason Lisa thinks the profession deserves to be recognised more.

How did IC obtain its place at the table?

Lisa recalls crisis meetings at Siemens Mobility from March 2020 as one of the key factors in helping her promote the importance of internal communications. When she found out about the potential impact of what was to come for the company, she admits ‘muscling her way in’ to these talks to help stake a claim for internal comms. She feels her presence added value to these discussions, something she would like to see replicated across the sector.

This was her thriving on an opportunity to not only help the business but promote internal comms as a business partner. In relation to Siemens, she says there was already a demand for clear communication. Furthermore, she said she wanted to be ‘bold’ when invited into strategic discussions, saying it is crucial for all those in the industry to make an impact rather than just taking notes and being polite. The value she helped add was taken on board, helping her earn the trust of those involved and led to being invited in more daily meetings and being involved in other key decisions.

Lessons from the pandemic

Lisa’s efforts to help promote the importance of internal comms at Siemens Mobility has not been easy by her own admission, but one thing it has helped her do is learn and improve her own performance. She reflected on the last year and a half to Craig.

The working world has drastically changed in this time, with new ways of working taking centre stage. This attracts a new type of person, meaning communication with them needs to fit different demographics and be flexible to suit them Simply grouping workers into both remote and office means these messages being translated will not have as much of an impact according to Lisa. She believes her best results have come when she has reached out to people on a personal level, which what will allow the sector ‘stand the test of time’ and help organisations thrive.

Push for professionalism

One of the main reasons Lisa says she fell into internal comms is because she recognises that the industry is a specific niche and is not a career people often think of. She drew upon the analogy of asking children what they want to be when they grow up, saying none of them ever think about working in this sector. Jobs in HR and marketing are often seen as more appealing and well-known, but as Lisa has demonstrated, where most IC people often start out.

Lisa also recognises that a lot of internal comms work is done in the background, which is why it can potentially be undervalued at times. One gap she feels is holding the profession back is the lack of entry positions available. The talent that can fill these roles will hold the key to helping both its professionalisation and keeping its place at the table.

Furthermore, Lisa says that most companies only recognise the importance of internal comms when it is not around. This needs to change if the industry is to achieve this professionalisation, something she has been working on through her Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) membership.

The IoIC is keen to improve the recognition of the sector and get more people into the industry and this is something Lisa is keen to promote. She wants to help debunk some myths of the industry and allow those involved to shout about their work. You can read some of the blogs on the IoIC website here

“In my early days I often got referred to as the person who sent the emails out,” Lisa said. “That is still true, but I do a lot more than that now. Intrinsically internal communications people don’t shout about what they are doing but taking a moment to get your head up and look around you is something on my mind for the next few years.”

Tips on getting a place at the table

Although many internal comms professionals have seen their importance rise recently, this won’t have been the case in every organisation. Because of this, Lisa has outlined some tips she believes can help those who find themselves in a similar situation and are looking to demonstrate their importance to their company:

1. Always be open to new ideas and new ways of working – don’t accept that just because things have always been done a certain way that this is the best way.
2. Implement a ‘growth mindset’ to your work to make sure you are improving every day.
3. Build on your knowledge – utilise the huge range of recourses available, be it e-learning courses or speaking to others in the sector.
4. Reflect on your work and look at how you can further develop both professionally and personally.
5. Observe different perspectives from people across the organisation.

Useful links

Lisa Gwinnell LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-gwinnell/?originalSubdomain=uk

Craig’s interviewee for this week’s episode is Neil Jenkins who is an award-winning internal communications director and leader. Neil and Craig discuss employee communications in large complex organisations. Neil has over 20 years of experience across FMCG, technology, manufacturing and engineering in organisations such as Siemens, Vodafone, Coca-Cola, BT and, more latterly, Iron Mountain. Neil is passionate about using the power of communication to get the best out of people, connect them to their organisations and build reputation and trust from the inside out.

Neil is based in the UK near South Buckinghamshire and in normal circumstances would work in the office in central London several days a week. He’s hoping to get back there towards the tail end of the summer. He’s also looking forward to seeing people again, talking face-to-face and reconnecting.

About Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain are an information management company, celebrating their 70th anniversary this year who began life as Iron Mountain Atomic Storage. They started out at the height of The Cold War when organisations were getting quite worried about how to protect and store precious things such as records and artefacts that mattered to them. Their founder, who was a mushroom farmer, had invested in an old iron ore mountain just outside New York City and spotted an opportunity and started storing records etc for their first customers back in the 1950s, hence the name of the business.

Iron Mountain’s first sales office was in the Empire State building, but they have grown rapidly since then, now they are present in about 58 countries, have around 225,000 customers, are a $4 billion company in terms of revenue and serve about 95% of Fortune 1000 companies, with about 25,000 employees.

They are now increasingly digitising records as well as storing them and coming up with innovative solutions to help clients get more out of the information that they store for them which could be to improve their own operations or the experience of their customers.

Within Iron Mountain they have different divisions, there’s an entertainment services division which stores original music recordings, a fine art division which stores precious paintings. Some of the ways they store things and serve their clients is interesting.

How to communicate to a diverse workforce

The workforce at Iron Mountain is very diverse and truly global but with a large presence in the US which is their home market, and headquarters now in Boston. However, half of the workforce is now outside of North America. They have people in very different roles with half of their employees in front line operational roles such as driving trucks to take records from their customers to storage facilities and back, taking care of those storage facilities and there’s also a large commercial team and people working in support roles too. As Neil says

“When you add to the mix cultural diversity, different backgrounds and the experiences that people have, the way we communicate to people needs to cut through in a very consistent tone of voice.”

Wherever you work in the world and whatever role you have you are hearing from the company and hearing people communicate to you in a consistent way. They have developed some tone of voice guidelines which they are now embedding within the business, for employee communications, and really focus on three key things –

1. Always remember we are people talking to people, we don’t want our language to be too corporate or full of jargon.
2. We want to be straightforward in what we’re saying which sometimes means not making employee communications too long but also means getting to the point and being transparent.
3. We also want some personality in the message as people are from different backgrounds, different parts of the world so it’s important that they own the communication.

These are the guiding principles which are helping make their employee communications and messages a little bit more human and personal. These principles are linked into the culture of the organisation and particularly around taking ownership and inclusion and teamwork. The organisational values also talk a lot about integrity, making sure the message is transparent, adding value to their customers so when the business is communicating internally, they need to remember their audience. Their prime core value is safety and security, and you may not see an obvious connection with tone of voice but again it’s not easy to understand if it’s not straightforward to read. Iron Mountain are looking to connect to their values as they are important to them as a business, their people respect them and more and more of their people are living them.

Communication during the pandemic

During the pandemic safety and security have been top of the list for employee communications. This has been the same whether you have stayed in your workplace because you have an operational role serving customers or whether you had to move very quickly to a virtual way of working that you may not have been used to.

Iron Mountain have spent a lot of time making sure that people understand what guidelines to follow wherever they work and whatever they do, understand how to stay safe doing that and how to stay connected and continue to work as much as possible. They’ve tried to make employee communications as frequent, if not more frequent, than they were before the pandemic. They have leaders who travel frequently around the world visiting customers and employees and with them not being able to do that, it was a case of ramping up their virtual visibility and doing a lot more online. They did things like hosting online Q&As and making sure there was a constant connection to give employees the reassurance that they have a stable business, they’re resilient and here are the steps that we’re taking to make you, our people and customers safe.

Helping people to understand that Iron Mountain were continuing to be at their customers side was important as they relied on them during the early days of the pandemic. In the UK they helped the NHS store PPE equipment and create space at hospitals for extra beds. In the US they had customers who needed to process welfare and unemployment benefits much more quickly as people were being furloughed in different states. So, Iron Mountain played a vital role in helping those organisations continue their own operation and do their bit to address and face the pandemic. It was the frontline teams who helped Iron Mountain’s customers to do this, so they really focussed on these teams, not only in making sure that they understood what they needed to do during this period of so much change, but also recognising the enormous effort it took and celebrating that. This was a really unifying experience for the company, it really brought people together whether they worked remotely or in an operational role and helped create a stronger bond which is something they want to build on going forward.

The future of the workplace

Flexibility and choice are the principles Iron Mountain are using to get people back to the workplace, putting the employee at the heart of the decision making. As an organisation they have said there is no expectation on any of their people that they need to return to the office where they worked before the pandemic. This will give them some time to step back and think about what they want the workplace to be for the future of their organisation and enable them to best serve their customers. They also need to think about their own employees and the experience they have of working for them, which if it’s good should make a positive impact on the customer experience they want to deliver.

Already some of the senior leaders are talking about the workplace as now being the place where you connect, where you collaborate, where you learn. The last 18 months have shown us that we can do ‘work’ from anywhere and maybe the office of the future is where you come together to make those connections and to learn and collaborate. People will need to think about whether the office is set out to enable this new type of working to take place and if it isn’t what needs to be done to enable it to happen. People’s individual styles of working may have changed and this needs to be recognised, it will not be a return to how things were by any means, and this could be progress.

Ensuring quality communication with offline employees

About 65-70% of employees are frontline at Iron Mountain which is a significant proportion, and they are often offline. This means these employees may not have regular access to email or other technology so effectively engaging them and keeping them informed is a challenge. Neil has a few ways that he finds are important for communicating with them:

• Equipping the line manager is key as most of the frontline staff will look to them for information and to ask questions. Line managers therefore need a good understanding of where the business is heading and how they and their teams fit in. They also need to feel confident to communicate and do it effectively with their team. Get communication right with the line manager and you’re on to a winning formula. This is a focus for them at Iron Mountain.
• Digital channels are also a way to reach frontline teams particularly where most people have a mobile device. However, you need to make a choice about how you do this and what you share but don’t expect it to become the primary way of communicating. It’s about your workforce’s choice as to how they use it. As communicators it’s about making the content and the experience as compelling and relevant as you can.
• Make use of what’s already there, so at Iron Mountain they have a lot of electronic scanners that frontline staff use for scanning barcodes on boxes prior to transportation and they have the capability for carrying videos so they can be used as a communication channel. Also make use of more traditional forms of communications such as bulletin boards and digital signage.
• Meaningful and relevant content is probably the most important thing, making sure the employee sees where they fit in and contribute and using a tone of voice that makes sense in a style they’re used to.
• Understand your audience, their working day, how much time they have to take a look at what you’d like them to and develop your plan around that.

If you take these issues into account, Neil believes you should have a better outcome when communicating with offline employees.

Craig agrees with Neil about how important the line manager’s role is in ensuring good communication with frontline employees and if you want to know more listen to series 1 episode 22 of the podcast where Craig talks to Chris Coburn about the importance of a line manager.

Skills and behaviours for internal communicators

Neil thinks as internal communicators we need to be closer than ever to the needs of the business and really get under the skin of what the business is all about, how it operates, how it may need to change in the future and really understand what is on the minds of the leaders we support. Neil thinks top of the list is to understand what keeps them awake at night, what their big challenges are and how they see the future. While other skills are essential and a bit more foundational, demonstrating business acumen is going to continue to be important. Connected to that is that if we are going to continue to work in a virtual way in the future, we need to understand how to make connections and build relationships in a more virtual environment. It may not be as easy to pop your head round someone’s door or grab a coffee with them to get to understand them a bit more and what they’re working on, so we need to find ways to do this virtually and make the most of the times when we are together in person.

Storytelling is also something Neil feels we need to build on and it’s going to be increasingly important as an emotional way of connecting to our people. As communication has evolved through this pandemic there seems to be more of a focus on emotion and it’s not been a rational 18 months by any mean! We need to recognise and embrace how we communicate and bring to life what it is that we want our people to know and do in a way that helps them connect and feel like they belong. Storytelling is a very powerful way of doing this and something we need to continue to do.

As communicators, data is something that is available to us, but we probably don’t make enough of it to really understand our business or our audiences or how people are feeling. There are many ways we can make use of the sheer amount of data that’s out there, we need to tap into the areas of the business that own these data sources so we can demonstrate how we are making plans based on this data.

Summing up effective employee communications in large, complex organisations

The reason Neil enjoys what he does is that it is all about people and helping them feel connected to the organisations they work for. As communicators the more we can make our employee’s experience engaging, enlightening, interesting and fun then we’re doing our jobs. Organisations are seeing the value of that and the difference it’s making to their own reputations. This is where building trust from the inside out really comes from, get it right with your own workforce then they’re going to talk positively about your organisation.

Key take-outs from this interview:

• A consistent tone of voice is important for employee communications in large, complex organisations
• We will be returning to a different type of workplace so think about how that should look
• Reaching offline employees – line managers are key but ensure compelling, meaningful and relevant content, use lines of communication that are already there
• Know your audience – develop your communication plan around them
• Skills and behaviours for internal comms – understand what is on the mind of the leaders, use storytelling and data

Useful links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilcjenkins/

Our interviewee this week is Kevan Hall who helps organisations and individuals to engage remote, virtual and hybrid workers through his company, Global Integration. As well as being a speaker, consultant and trainer, Kevan is the author of books such as ‘Leading Remote and Virtual Teams’, ‘Making the Matrix Work’, ‘Speed Lead’, and ‘Kill Bad Meetings’. Kevan manages his own team at Global Integration with people in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Global Integration has 400 clients in over 50 countries and has trained over 150,000 people.

Kevan has a background in large multinationals covering International HR, Operations Management, Strategic Planning and People Development. Prior to the pandemic Kevan was often at Heathrow Airport as he travelled a lot, but he is currently based at home 40 miles west of London.

Why and how Global Integration came about

Kevan describes how he started the business, as is often the case, when he had a problem that he couldn’t find a solution to. About 30 years ago while he was working for Mars, everyone was working across cultures, working virtually, in a matrix structure and there wasn’t any training that reflected this apart from some cross-cultural training. After discovering he couldn’t buy any training in this area, he left Mars and 27 years ago set up the world’s first remote and virtual teams training programme which also included working across cultures. As you work on virtual teams someone will always say ‘by the way I have two bosses who hate each other, and they’re not aligned’ and this is how Kevan got drawn into matrix working solutions. What connects Kevan’s work is ways of working, and more recently, agile and digital ways of working have come onto the agenda.

“It’s all about helping people to succeed, we’re not about reporting lines and structure and technology, we’re about leadership and collaboration in large complex organisations.”

The pace of change to remote working

In early 2020 if you had said to someone in a large multinational you wanted them to put together a project to get 40% of their people working from home, they would’ve said it would take at least two years and yet it turns out you can do it over a weekend! When you really have to do it, the level of change you can enact can be startling. In 27 years Kevan has found the number one objection to remote working is consistently managerial attitudes to control – managers not wanting to have their people out of sight. Kevan thinks the pandemic has caused an unprecedented global experiment which has shown that people are incredibly adaptive, trustworthy and productive when they work from home. Hopefully, this will have killed the historical objection to home or hybrid working.

The future of home working and hybrid workers

When we look back at the last 18 months, we have to separate out what’s been about working from home and what’s about the pandemic. Working from home used to be a perk but recently it’s been about the experience of surviving the pandemic, looking after your family, home schooling and working which is very different to the previous experience of home working. It is therefore important to separate out the two.

Outputs are a useful measurement of success in the remote working environment, but outcomes are even more important. People have targets and generally hate to be micro-managed so giving empowerment and flexibility is the way forward. The ’problem’ then can be that people overdeliver and forget to take their holidays rather than underdeliver.

Kevan suggests that working from home now has an element of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ as companies look to bring employees back to the office. The companies that have always struggled with home working have a culture of presenteeism, for example investment banking and the trading floor. Senior managers are keen to get everyone back to the office as they firmly believe (as it’s been their experience) that that’s how you build culture. If you’re a great investment bank there will always be enough people in the world who will want to work on your trading floor, you will find enough talent as you pay fantastic money. But when you go further down the organisation you will need to recruit IT people to support that. Kevan is already hearing from clients around the world that in the global talent market flexible working is now baked in and being able to work in somewhere like Vienna or Silicon Valley is no longer the great attraction it used to be. It is going to be really interesting to see how this plays out.

Kevan has people in his team who 18 months ago wouldn’t have wanted to work from home but now they’re doing it they’ve got used to it and this does lead to inertia. There will probably be resistance initially to coming back into the office, then there might be enthusiasm as everyone has a lovely time catching up and going out for lunch and then it will settle back. Kevan wouldn’t be surprised if people were coming into the office 2-3 days a week as a preference over time as office working is re-established. This would then provide enough variety and community for people. It could be that Monday and Friday become the usual working from home days, creating this blended approach to work and therefore hybrid workers.

Kevan thinks that:

“The humanisation of leadership, the focus on wellbeing, the sense that all of us are in the same boat and the levelling up that has happened by communicating through video has been very welcome.”

He hopes that these things remain on the leadership agenda.

The main comms and engagement challenges organisations need to face

We are moving from a situation where we’ve given our people emergency toolkits to cope to saying this is now a sustainable long-term way of operating. It would almost be a tragedy to have gone through this experience to just return to the old ‘normal’, we need to reflect on what’s been good. In the area of comms and engagement, as far as Kevan can see from his clients, this has improved and people like the flexibility and autonomy of working from home. They’ve appreciated access to their senior leaders and have felt closer to them due to communication via video. Maybe there’s something to seeing a full-size face on a screen rather than sitting at the back of a town hall of 200 people, it’s almost more face-to-face.

Craig and Kevan discuss the fact that the pandemic has almost taken away the pressure for everything to be perfect from a communications perspective, it’s now okay to be in your living room with your t-shirt on and the dog in the background! It’s much more authentic and sustainable. It also helps you find out things about your team which you might not have known beforehand, which is healthy.

Kevan is talking to clients a lot about hybrid meetings and asking what was better about virtual meetings? People often say they like the discipline – they start on time, people raise hands and don’t interrupt. The introverts like to use chat so everyone gets a chance to ask questions and if they don’t get answered during the meeting, they could come back to them later.

Moving to hybrid working

We really need to get our heads around hybrid working and therefore hybrid workers. How many days people come into the office is taking up about 90% of the conversation but really we should be asking ‘what is the office good for?’ and ‘when would I use that resource?’. Surveys are showing that the office wins out over remote working in only a small number of areas such as use of speciality equipment, socialising, culture building and informal learning. These are the things we need to organise for when we are in the office. How do you organise the communities, networks and informal connections to make sure vital information travels better than chance when people bump into each other?

We need to bring people together with some structure about what we want to talk about and how to make best use of that time.

We can learn from other people too; China is six months into hybrid working and Kevan has asked his clients about what is working and what isn’t. He says people are spontaneously saying things like ‘we’re having a company Thursday’ and everyone comes in one Thursday a month. In the afternoon there are no meetings so they are all in the same place and can get together.

There are so many moving parts for hybrid working that the danger is that teams are putting their blinkers on and only looking at their own way of working and not more broadly across the whole organisation. There is a need for this reconnection and there will be a certain element of trial and error and the new way of working will need to evolve.

While a certain amount of planning is needed, the last 18 months have taught us that we don’t have to plan to the nth degree, we won’t be gambling the business through experimentation and failing fast. We just need to amplify what works and hopefully this will carry us forward into finding a way of hybrid working that suits the majority of people.

How do you recognise the different groups of workers and the contributions they make?

The people who haven’t been able to work from home definitely need to be on the agenda and Kevan says he has picked up some tension around them particularly during lockdown in the UK. For one of his clients the HR people weren’t allowed to go on site where the people they were supporting were working. They rightly asked why it was okay for them to be on site but too risky for HR.

Naturally everyone thinks they have had the toughest time – if you continued to work you felt like you held the company together, people working from home put in long hours and had all the distractions, people on furlough literally had nothing to do. Kevan thinks some repair is needed with all of these different messages and feelings going around.

When we can get together there is maybe a desire to acknowledge and process what happened and to allow people to talk about their experience.

Leaders will also have left a leadership legacy during this period. Some won’t have done it very well at all and they will have a lot of ground to catch up. It will be important to get out of the silos and mix but as ever there will be a trade-off between coordination and flexibility. People are talking a lot about flexibility and giving people choice, but you are trying to run a business so at some point the manager may say they need you to come to a certain meeting. People may have different views about that so there will be a reset necessary in these situations.

Making hybrid working work for everyone

There are certain objections, because of proximity bias, that if you don’t come into the office you have less opportunities and career progression and this was certainly well established before the pandemic. People at headquarters tended to get promoted because they’re in people’s minds and are visible. We can either accept this as a problem or we need to change our processes. We need to make sure that things like succession development and visibility are handled equally for people who are physically present and those who aren’t. This is a bigger challenge but if we want to make a hybrid culture work we have to solve this issue. Also, in all of this we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that being able to work remotely is a skill and also requires development.

The challenges of integrating teams into a hybrid way of working

As the pandemic has shown people are very adaptable so there are a number of issues. Firstly, people take things for granted very quickly, they may have got a dog, taken on caring responsibilities or even moved country so there may be some tough conversations about re-establishing what being at work means. People may have used furlough or flexible working in a different way to what we thought. If you’ve been working from home and you’ve had more autonomy naturally you going to be a bit more resistant to control that you don’t think is adding value. A senior Danish client of Kevan’s went to his first meeting in a while and was outraged when he returned, he’d driven for an hour and a half to get there for a completely pointless and badly run meeting and then drove back again. He decided he wasn’t going to do that anymore! People aren’t prepared to put up with some of the stuff that used to happen in corporations. Kevan says he’s looking forward to the revolution and how this may be a positive thing.

There is also an anxiety about coming back to work, using public transport and being in an office again. Governments have been guilty of pushing up anxiety as a way of getting people to follow the guidelines on social distancing etc so there could be some work on re-socialising some people. There may always be a level of risk, maybe similar to flu, but we have to live with it and it will take a while for people to come to terms with this.

When we’re back in the office it’s going to be about getting into that culture of consideration and tolerance for other people. Kevan’s heard comments about people talking very loudly on calls and other people not being able to concentrate, so noise levels have been an issue. A lot of people are concentrating on the individual work patterns they want for themselves and their teams without necessarily considering their other colleagues. Teams will have to sit down and make some trade-offs of their flexibility in order to support others. People will have to find a middle way which we might have fallen out of the habit of doing over the last year.

It may only be once we’re fully out of lockdown that we ask ourselves ‘what have we just been through?’ and realise the adaptations we’ve had to make to our working life. It’s important that employers now have a more genuine and acute interest in mental health and wellbeing and that it continues into the future.

Kevan says he is aware himself that even though he’s done face-to-face training for the last 30 years and has been running webinars through the pandemic, the first time he stands up in front of a group he’s going to have to relearn some things. You have to give yourself permission to be human and not expect to be on your A game right from the start, it will take time and some people may adapt more quickly than others.

Final thoughts

What we’re seeing is a roadmap of skills that are needed for this hybrid environment. Firstly, some people are saying they know how to manage remote working and they know how to manage face-to-face so put it together and it will be easy but managing both modes is harder than managing one or the other. We need to focus on the details of this so right now the priority for organisations is equipping leaders to manage a conversation around flexibility with their people. A lot of leaders are uncomfortable about this as it’s a new type of conversation.

The second point is hybrid meetings and Kevan thinks this is where the rubber’s going to hit the road. How do we run a meeting when eight people are in the room and four are joining remotely? A lot of international teams have worked this way and usually the meetings were terrible, the people joining remotely didn’t feel included. So, we have to find a way of doing this successfully and making sure it’s sustainable.

Thirdly, we need to get into the leadership side and there’s a really good chance that every team containing managerial and professional people will be a team of hybrid workers so every soft skill you have will be exercised in a hybrid environment – the way you present, the way you facilitate a meeting, the way you lead people, team building.

So, there’s quite a lot that will be different, it’s not 100% different but it will be 10-15% different. We will have to adjust all of our leadership and collaboration practise and Kevan thinks people are underestimating what a large piece of work that will be, but all of these are important considerations when engaging virtual, remote and hybrid workers.

Useful links

Podcasts, videos and articles at www.global-integration.com

LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevanhall/

In this episode, Craig Smith talks to Laura Colantuono about the challenges of sharing company values with 16,000 employees. Laura is a multi-skilled communications manager with experience in large matrix organisations and fast-paced environments. She is International Internal Communications and Employer Branding Manager at Kraft Heinz and currently based in West London.

Kraft Heinz are one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world and produce some of the world’s most beloved products. They have a portfolio of over 200 iconic and new brands including Heinz Baked Beans. While Kraft Heinz is headquartered in the US and has 38,000 employees globally, London is the HQ of the international business. This zone comprises of Continental and Northern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan East with 16,000 employees.

Keeping employees connected and engaged

Laura’s team’s role at the central hub is to keep all employees connected and informed through effective communication. This ensures clarity and consistency across the zone and to do this they work very closely with the corporate team in the US and the extended internal comms teams responsible for the local execution across the business units. Kraft Heinz have thousands of employees based around their various offices and 40 factories which leads to a very diverse workforce with different cultures, languages and needs and this is what makes Laura’s role so special and never boring.

Laura and her team have to be very strategic, and this requires lots of planning and ensuring effective stakeholder relationships. They have to make certain that the global campaigns and priorities are really embedded in the zone and that local plans are delivered in a timely fashion with a common narrative which is based on the company’s vision, purpose and values. Laura’s team also have to set up their own international internal comms strategy and plans which are aimed at driving their zone priorities, bringing the business strategy to life and engaging their employees. It’s a challenging but very interesting role and as Laura comments:

“You need a deep understanding of your audience and local needs to develop and implement campaigns that matter and to ensure communication is inclusive.”

 It’s also important to showcase the great work they do in each country.

The importance of purpose and values

Last year was an important turning point for Kraft Heinz, they welcomed a new CEO and saw through the first wave of the pandemic. They also introduced the company’s enterprise strategy and an exciting new purpose which is ‘Let’s make life delicious’. There are six core beliefs which make up their values and a new vision which is to sustainably grow by delighting more consumers globally.

Together all these elements serve as a north star for the company. They remind their employees not only individually, but also as a team, why the work they do matters. The purpose is the reason to exist, they are a company of food lovers, and they provide their consumers with products they love and trust.

Driving the purpose and bringing it to life are six core values which also define the shared culture. Each of the values starts with ‘we’ which is an important shift from ‘me’, and one Laura particularly loves. It represents the commitment that their people make to each other and to their consumers around the world. There’s now more of a collaborative emphasis which better fits the company’s culture.

The six new Kraft Heinz values

The new Kraft Heinz values are:

1. We are consumer obsessed – we put our consumers at the centre of everything we do.
2. We dare to do better every day – this represents the journey of continuous improvement.
3. We champion great people – the company is only as great as the quality of its teams.
4. We demand diversity – the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives make the company stronger, interesting and innovative.
5. We do the right thing – by way of our consumers, employees, partners and the communities we serve.
6. We own it – there’s a strong ownership culture at Kraft Heinz, treating the business as if it were their own.

With a new CEO and a strategy to deliver the new values they asked the question, ‘what is that thing that will take us where we want to go?’. The values describe behaviours and how to bring the purpose to life rather than being static single words.

How to bring your values to life for your people

It’s all very well having your new values but how do you go about sharing your company values with 16,000 employees in the middle of a pandemic with many people working remotely? This was quite a challenge and they needed to move away from driving awareness to driving inspiration, so they decided to make it personal. They launched a cross markets campaign with a video teaser and call for nominations in July 2020 which ran until January 2021.

To help plan the campaign it was crucial to help tie each value to an important moment within the business such as Pride month for ‘we demand diversity’ and appraisal season for ‘we champion great people’.

Each month they celebrated the unique ways that employees were living and breathing the values, the campaign had three core elements:

• Crowd sourcing – employees were invited to nominate a person who exemplified the values, an internal judging panel shortlisted up to four candidates a month. Local teams were relied on to translate and contextualise monthly nominations and drive engagement, this allowed local teams to shine in front of the rest of the zone.
• Storytelling – the selected candidates were interviewed and stories, sometimes videos as well, were created and featured across all the internal channels.
• Amplifying – the stand-out stories were featured in special moments across the business such as quarterly town halls, externally on the companies LinkedIn page and also used as an employee branding asset.

Using storytelling to share values

Craig commented on a previous podcast episode where he talked about how useful storytelling is to illustrate values. He calls it operationalising the values, giving people a working example, otherwise they’re just abstract.

Laura agrees that storytelling is very important and makes the values ‘real’ to people. They chose this approach as their diverse workforce is such a great asset with unique backgrounds and different work experiences. Their people are very passionate about what they do and they wanted to recognise this great work by telling their stories.

They started with ‘we demand diversity’ in July 2020 and the first story they featured was a colleague working in HR. She told the story of how she felt really valued and cared for during her maternity leave especially as she was hired when she was already pregnant. She had a fear that interviewing while pregnant would affect her negatively. Instead everything worked out well. She loves the company and joined with great excitement. Laura is glad she felt that way and that they were able to share this powerful story.

It is important to show, in a tangible yet engaging way, how these values are embedded in the company culture and will be a guide going forward. To do this they had to give a broad definition of the values in a simple way, to show how they exist in real life examples and connect them back to the purpose. Laura thinks that what worked really well was also connecting them to a specific moment in the business to make them real. In the end they had 20 personal stories to share and these employees are now very important ambassadors and will continue to help with the engagement around purpose and values.

The ambassadors are the people they go to when they want to sense check or go more deeply into each value. Kraft Heinz had a large global convention in February and they had an amazing video with all of the ambassadors showcasing how they live and breathe their values at a global level. All of them were featured explaining this in their own language which linked to diversity and inclusion.

Telling stories is now part of what they do especially within internal comms and engagement. They have an annual internal comms plan, and the values are literally across all the months, all the plans and this is what they do now to bring the values to life.

Kraft Heinz recognise their employees based on the values on a regular basis and this could be zone, quarterly, town hall or local town halls, there is always a segment dedicated to values. Laura says it’s great to see the number of people recognised because they embed the values in everything they do. Craig agrees that this storytelling is a really powerful way of reminding people what is important.

Key learning points for sharing your values

Laura explains that what worked at Kraft Heinz was to really clarify the purpose first:

• the ‘why’ – the reason you exist and why you do what you do
• the ‘how’ – how you bring the purpose to life, the core values that underpin the way you behave
• the ‘what’ – the products and the service

Once the values are defined, make them personal as this worked well at Kraft Heinz, don’t pick words that will soon become wallpaper, connect them to particular real-life examples of how the values are embedded in the culture. Involve employees, ask and listen and showcase how they live and breathe the values. Use their voice, their face and their story. This will really resonate with people and inspire others to do the same.

Kraft Heinz got really good feedback and engagement on the intranet. They made it a consistent campaign across all markets, translating the stories into local languages, using all the different digital channels, town halls and meetings.

Craig compliments Laura on the fact that they didn’t use the pandemic as an excuse to either defer the campaign or lower their expectations instead they went for it which shows integrity and determination. Laura agrees that it was important, after launching the strategy, to give clarity on the company’s direction, on what they want to achieve so that was really powerful to do through a pandemic. It helped make people feel proud and excited to be working at Kraft Heinz during very difficult times.

If you would like to read any of the stories Laura has mentioned which illustrate the Kraft Heinz values, you can access them via the Kraft Heinz LinkedIn page here

If you’d like to download The Big Picture People’s own storytelling approach for sharing values, you can find it here.

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-colantuono-44b83440/

In this episode, we speak with Jen Grogono about podcasting as an internal comms channel. Jen is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of uStudio Inc., uStudio deliver a new generation of media technologies for clients, transforming training and communications using podcasts, on-demand video and live streaming. Jen’s early work in digital media has been recognised through industry awards and noted in business publications like the New York Times, Fortune, and Wall Street Journal. Jen is based in Austin, Texas.

uStudio have a platform which they built to help businesses adapt media and it’s their belief that over time businesses will look more and more like media organisations in terms of their communications. uStudio have developed an application (website and mobile based) that feels a lot like a Netflix experience and helps organisations communicate in a show episode format. Jen explains:

“Using audio and video strategically for internal comms, training and HR is something we believe is important and meaningful in terms of having an effect and allowing workforces to be more aligned with their organisations.”

Why podcasting is a great channel for internal communications

As a communication method, Jen thinks ‘voice’ was lost for years with the use of emails, pdfs and powerpoints. People had forgotten that the voice carries so much more meaning than the written word. A study has shown it is actually 500% more effective at conveying meaning so if you’re not using this you are missing out on one of the best ways at getting your message across and making sure it’s heard and retained. New technologies like Clubhouse, Zoom and remote conferencing are making us think about how to take advantage of their technical capabilities.

A lot of the work uStudio does is around helping organisations find their voice and use it in their internal comms and the most acceptable format for this is often podcasting. It’s a really simple way to organise information with series and episodes and research by uStudio suggests it’s by far the preferred mode for employees to receive information. In some big organisations, not everyone has a company email address but everyone has a phone so you can take advantage of this to convey your messages. Podcasts are a flexible way for people to absorb your messages and can be consumed while commuting, exercising or doing other tasks.

Prior to the pandemic about 70% of consumers used the mobile app for listening to podcasts but this flipped to 70% using the web application once less people were commuting. Working from home also enabled people to listen to the podcasts while working which many found useful.

How to set up and develop an internal podcast

Jen has developed a useful resource called “The 6Ps of podcasting: A quick & easy start-up guide for the corporate podcaster” to help set up podcasting as an internal comms channel. The 6Ps are:

• People
• Programming
• Production
• Publishing
• Promotion
• Performance

1. People

If you’re just getting started or even someone who has been podcasting for a while, Jen recommends you look at ‘people’ from a few different angles:

• Firstly, who is in the team who’s actually going to produce the podcast? Do you need someone who is writing an editorial calendar, or someone who is doing the recording, or someone to host the show? You need to gather and assemble the team who are going to record and publish your podcast.
• You also need to look at who the executives are within your organisation who you can get onboard early. Having them behind you will help you make better progress and get the podcast off the ground.
• Finally, you need to think about your listeners. You need to find 10-15 people who are a good representation of the organisation who can give you feedback on the content. They can help you understand how your podcast is being received.

There’s a useful Venn diagram in the guide which shows how the various ‘people’ interface with each other.

2. Programming

You need to think about the techniques you can use for programming for this new medium:

• What are the shows, how long are the episodes, who are the people that you are targeting?
• Do you have different channels for your different audiences depending on the spoken language?
• Even though it will be ‘on-demand’, how many episodes will you need and how often will you put out new episodes?
• Which parts will remain consistent, and which will change every week?

It’s often easiest to emulate the genre and format of an existing podcast such as one on the BBC or The New York Times Daily. Make sure you write a programming brief with the list of shows, purpose and format.

3. Production

This is about choosing and organising the actual recording aspect:

• Do you want it to be a very high-end recording with high-end editing?
• Are there intros and outros?
• Is it original music or something from a music library that has a royalty free license?

Software such as Squadcast and Zencastr make recording of podcasts simple using a laptop or phone. There is an unbelievable richness of tool choices these days. You need to decide if you want to do it yourself or get a professional company to do it for you.

4. Publishing

You need to have a plan about how your publishing is going to work and which tools you are going to use to upload your podcasts. Publishing internal podcasts is different to external podcasts which are often uploaded to a website and are in the public domain. Internal podcasts need to be uploaded to a secure site which employees have access to. The uStudios app can be downloaded from Apple and is a secure way of broadcasting your podcasts. You can add your own corporate logos to it and make it unique to your organisation. If there’s a lot of training content on your podcast, the app allows you to bookmark the episode so you can come back to it and you can also create a playlist like Spotify. The app also allows organisations to get data about the consumption of the podcasts which is very useful.

5. Promotion

Promotion is often overlooked but very important. If no one knows a podcast exists you probably won’t get many listeners! If employees don’t have company email addresses you need to think about how you will promote the podcast and get people to download the app. Organisations have used the CEO to promote it and talk about their favourite episode. The uStudio app allows you to download ads which can be incorporated on the company intranet. Some companies have given away free airpods to the first 100 downloaders or they’ve developed loyalty programmes for people who’ve listened to a certain amount of content. Promotion is especially important in the early part of rolling out a podcast. As Jen says, “it’s about selling the unknown through the known”.

6. Performance

This is often the hardest ‘P’ for organisations to get to grips with as there is so much information about message consumption in this medium. For example, if you can see not only how many people hit play on an episode but also how many people listened to the entire episode, this tells you a lot about how engaging your message is and how well it was delivered. It’s important for internal communicators to think about having access to this information and what they would do with it. You can see who has accessed the podcast and when and who hasn’t listened to anything. Podcasting tools often allow you to see information about likes and shares. This is all information which isn’t readily available if you use email or written communication to deliver your message. Jen doesn’t think that as an communicators people are entirely sure what to do with this information yet. Maybe it will help give us a better understanding about the length of programme people enjoy and whether the title influences how many people listen. Jen is looking at benchmarking some of this data across the different industries and sizes of organisations which may help determine what good episode engagement looks like. For example, they may be able to tell a pharmaceutical company the ideal length for a podcast training episode. They can also use the dashboard from their app to tell individual communicators what’s working and what’s not. While knowing what to do with this data is still in its early stages it’s really interesting and valuable.

Craig asks Jen about the ability to comment on podcast episodes and Jen explains that the way the app is set up is more like Netflix and Spotify. It’s more of a curated environment as there’s often not time for an organisation to be looking at and modifying people’s comments. If you want to open up the commenting ability it is possible, but then you may find you have to start competing with the loud minority and you’re not really breaking through all the ‘noise’. Jen says not many of their customers want to do this but are happy to have the ability to comment privately or to send a message to the host. It’s also possible to embed surveys in the show notes for people to complete and ask people to complete them in the podcast.

How do we know if podcasting works?

We have to communicate, it’s not an option, so choosing the way that is going to be most preferred or well received is obvious. Jen’s advice is to use all the channels at your disposal and use them the way they’re intended to be used. Don’t try and send a six-page email when maybe a podcast episode or a pdf might be more approproate.

We communicate for a reason, we want people to think something, or feel something or do something. Starting to measure how well a particular piece of communication causes that think, feel, do response is something we can do once we can understand the data available. Jen thinks it’s an exciting time as we can also look at what happened to productivity and sales within an organisation after introducing podcasting. Internal communicators will be able to get in on the data discussion!

Final tips

Just do it and get started, don’t try and make it perfect. There’s no question you’ll look back at your first podcast and probably smile because you will have moved so far and so fast. But it’s an exciting thing to do and fun to get started with a new medium and a new tool and it just takes hold.

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jengrogono/

https://ustudio.com

https://twitter.com/jengrogono

In this episode, Craig talks to Farrah Ekeroth about innovative employer branding. Farrah is Employer Brand Lead and Co-Chair of Women’s Network at EY and has driven the development and execution of EY’s employer brand strategy across 18 countries, developing creative campaigns and championing new ways to engage recruitment audiences.

Farrah currently works from home in South London, but for the interview she came into the EY offices in Canary Wharf where things are gradually beginning to open up again after the Covid pandemic. EY are one of the big four professional services organisation with about 300,000 people across 150 countries. One of the biggest misconceptions people have about EY is that they’re just an accounting firm, while that is a large arm of the organisation, they are so much more than that. They have people specialised across tax, management consulting, strategy and transactions as well as colleagues working across the core business services.

Farrah works within the EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) Financial Services Region where they specialise in serving their financial services clients across 18 countries. Farrah’s role is to lead on EY’s employer branding efforts, to be attracting and retaining that talent within the business.

The rise of employer branding

Employer branding is a topic which is highly relevant when it comes to employee engagement and employee experience but when Farrah started working on this type of marketing seven years ago, it wasn’t quite as mature as it is today. It was very much focussed on the recruitment/attraction side of things and looked at what channels and content to use, in fact they were known as the Social Media Team. This name really didn’t do justice to the real value that employer branding brings to an organisation.

 “When it comes to retaining your people there needs to be harmony with the brand messages that are being put out in the external world and the actual lived experience people have once they enter your organisation.”

You can’t over promise and under deliver as this has a direct impact on whether you retain that talent.

EY have always recognised that they have a brand that’s out there whether they are consciously building and developing it or not. As they have started to move into new areas such as digital and technology, they need to recruit a different skill set to the talent pool they have traditionally used, they need to recruit people with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) background so there’s a lot of work being done around attracting this new talent. The leadership team recognises that unlike many other industries or sectors EY don’t sell a tangible product, they sell their people, services, their insights and expertise so it’s hugely important that they attract the right talent and use employer branding to help achieve this.

Initiatives to help employer branding

At the heart of EY’s employer branding there has always been the employer value proposition. The learning and development EY offer their people has always been very important and the EY badges and EY Tech MBA are really great examples of some of the more tactical programmes that they’re running.

EY badges

The EY badges programme was launched a few years ago to help recognise that the world of work is moving at pace. While the organisation is bringing in new talent they are also investing in their people and helping them upskill themselves so they can future-proof their careers. The EY badges are essentially digital credentials that cover a number of topics and themes such as technology, purpose, diversity and innovation so there is content in there for everyone regardless of the area of the business that someone is from.

There are different levels of badges so once you have completed a certain number of hours and practical experience, you can earn your bronze badge and then progress up through the three levels. It’s a multi layered programme that’s flexible depending on the person and their other commitments. A lot of work goes into updating the modules and content every four months to make sure it’s relevant.

It’s been a very successful and well received programme across the business and last month they reached the milestone of awarding over 100,000 badges worldwide which shows how popular it has been.

EY Tech MBA

Last year it was recognised that with the new strategy that was rolled out across the business there was a really big focus on technology and digital, so they introduced the EY Tech MBA. Farrah believes it is unique and a first for the industry to offer a MBA programme that is free to all of their EY people regardless of who they are, where they’re from, their rank or country. It was important to EY that everyone had access to executive education. The learning and experiences that they offer through the MBA are no different to those you would get through a traditional MBA programme. People need to complete badges and essays to explain how they’ve applied their learning and also a project which helps to address a business or social impact challenge. The MBA is awarded through collaboration with The Hult International Business School, so it’s recognised externally. The programme is flexible and very future focussed which people have appreciated.

These are two fantastic propositions for any organisation to offer to their people.

Counsellors

EY also uses ‘counsellors’ within the organisation who have a different role to someone’s line manager, they look more holistically at someone’s career. They look at where someone would like to be in 12-18 months and what support they can offer to ensure that they get there. They advocate for and represent people at any discussions around performance and how someone is progressing through the organisation. The counsellor has a really important role in someone’s career, and they recognise the lived experience that their people have at EY. It is also not uncommon to change counsellors as someone’s career progresses as aspirations may change and everyone is very open to it. Farrah herself has had two or three counsellors over the last seven years. Counsellors are provided with a lot of training, so they are aware of the skills and attributes that they need to be exhibiting throughout their relationships with the people they counsel. The counsellors themselves are also really useful communication conduits and change agents and provide an invaluable network within the organisation.

Measuring the impact of the initiatives

Many of these innovative employer branding strategies can take years to fully embed within the organisation and sometimes it can be difficult to see the direct link between the strategies and the impact they’re having on retention and hiring. EY have a number of datapoints and tools that they use across the organisation, for example “Our People Pulse Survey”, which is done at regular points throughout the year. It was previously done on an annual basis but during the last 12 months it’s been done more frequently to gauge how people are feeling and experiencing the organisational culture.

During this survey questions are asked such as:

• Do we provide an environment where you feel free to be yourself?
• Are we meeting your learning and development expectations?
• Do we give you the flexibility to balance your work and personal commitments?

It was through the data acquired via the surveys that they realised their people were looking for more tailored learning and development offerings and the response was to offer EY Badges and EY Tech MBA.

The survey also helps to assess if there are areas of the employee experience that are being done well such as equality and diversity and learning and development, but it also highlights areas where there might be gaps. One area highlighted recently is for more work around mental health and many organisations have found this particularly in response to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Another way to measure the impact is to look at the numbers of people taking up the learning and development programmes. It’s also possible to see which areas of the business the badges are popular in, and which areas of the business may need more support.

The role internal communicators play in building the employer brand

Farrah has found a lot of value by collaborating closely with the communication and engagement teams. When she first joined EY she was amazed at the number of different programmes, events, initiatives and campaigns that were being run internally within the business, but they weren’t being communicated into the external space. This felt like a missed opportunity as potential new recruits would be even more excited about becoming part of the brand if they knew about these initiatives.

Over the years Farrah has had more conversations and worked more closely with the communications and engagement teams and they have regular check-ins to find out what is happening across the 18 countries that EY operates in. There are often fantastic local initiatives taking place that Farrah might not be aware of, so the comms and engagement team are the eyes and ears on the ground and keep Farah informed of the various campaigns that are running. For example in Ireland they have a fantastic well-being programme where people benefit from x,y and z, so there are stories here that can be crafted and repurposed for EY’s external audiences which could be on the careers website or social media for example.

For employer branding, EY have a strategy around employer advocacy (which is a topic that has been covered in a previous podcast – Employee advocacy and pride | S2 E1 ) and the role their people have in telling their brand story externally. They wouldn’t have been able to launch this programme if it wasn’t for the communication and engagement teams as they knew the people they needed to get onboard across the various countries to spread the word organically. They were really helpful in identifying individuals and stories that could be featured across the external marketing.

Personally, Farrah is in awe of some of the communications her colleagues create internally, she learns a lot from reading the materials they produce as they are wonderful storytellers and know how to produce beautiful copy and design. Often this can be taken and easily shared in the external marketplace. She says “the communications and engagement teams are one of the key stakeholders across the wider EY hierarchy”.

Farrah says that at EY they recognise as an employer brand that when someone joins the organisation, they’re not always going to stay with them, they may go on and even join some of EY’s clients. Interestingly EY has a wide community of “boomerangs”, where people do come back so it’s important to think about your alumni in your employer branding as this also has a role to play within your retention. It’s important that you’re providing this good experience as ultimately some of this talent may go on to work for EY’s clients, so you want your people to advocate for your organisation.

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/farrahekeroth

FarrahEkeroth (Personal Twitter)

ey.com/en_gl/careers  (Careers at EY)

instagram.com/eyfsocareers/  (Instagram)

twitter.com/EY_CareersFS  (EY Twitter)

In this episode Craig Smith talks to Paula Leach who is Founder and Executive Coach at Vantage Points Consulting about leading employee engagement. Prior to setting up Vantage Points Paula spent over 25 years working in global multinational, large complex public sector and high growth entrepreneurial settings including FDM Group and The Home Office. Paula has had a wide-ranging career partnering with leaders to bring out the best in their people. She has held Executive level positions herself and as a Chief People Officer has coached, advised and mentored at the very highest levels. Paula is also the author of “Vantage Points: How to create a culture where employees thrive”.

Paula is based in Orpington which is on the south east border of Greater London. Vantage Points work in partnership with leaders who are high achieving and really want to make a difference in this new complex age. Paula says

“One of the most important aspects for anyone in a leadership position is that you have the ability to go right up close to where people are working, you have lots of different ways of being able to create perception. Using these different vantage points is the real opportunity for the leader.”

Paula works with leaders as an executive coach on an advisory basis, leveraging the different “vantage points” to make the most of the whole landscape to create space for reflection, great forward decision making and all the other aspects that a leader needs to have the space to explore. Paula says it’s also about knowing that these vantage points exist for you and this is the background to the name of her company.

The employee experience investment continuum

Paula is hugely passionate about employee engagement and says it is often the differentiator between organisations.

In Paula’s book she describes a model called “The employee experience investment continuum”. Imagine you have a line, the continuum, and you have an employee, and the line represents how much that employee costs your business, not in terms of salary or benefits but in terms of the experience the employee has, you can decide whether you invest that money proactively or reactively. Investing proactively means things like:

• creating a sense of belonging for somebody
• creating a sense of trust
• creating a sense of community
• investing in someone’s development

This investment shows that you value someone’s contributions. All these things might cost money, but you are proactively prioritising these things in your business. In Paula’s experience as a HR professional, if this money isn’t invested proactively, it will be spent reactively in employer relations cases, low morale, sickness absence, possibly tribunal cases and lower productivity.

The key thing is that if you spend the money reactively then there is a multiplier effect. Not only are you spending it on the things already mentioned but also on things like sickness absence starting to become endemic, this is the multiplier effect. There is also a multiplier effect on the other side and if you invest proactively in people, you will get it back in spades with discretionary effort as people feel valued and included.

During the pandemic of 2020/21, organisations who have cumulatively invested in their people were able to draw that down when they really needed it. They already had this co-creation communication mechanism with trust and creativity in the bank. They were able to ask for something back during the difficult times almost like an insurance policy.

The employee continuum and the cumulative effect it produces are about the tangible return you can get by engaging your people.

Two key roles for leaders

In her book Paula talks about how the greatest skill for anyone in leadership is to take what is complex and create simplicity. Paula has had the privilege of working alongside many different leaders in a variety of organisations all at different levels and the one consistent thing she observed was that amongst all the complexity there was only really two jobs that a leader needs to focus on. If you ever feel overwhelmed or that your week is running away from you, remember you have two things to do:

1.Create clarity

The creation of clarity is the ability to answer the following questions:

• Where are we going?
• Why are we going there?
• What does it look like when we get there?
• What’s the work that we need to do in between?

As a leader you need to make sure that this clarity exists in its simplest form. A repeatable message is the best message.

2. Get out of the way

Getting out of the way is about creating space, to curate a set of resources and inspiring people to do the work. It’s also about supporting and enabling them and be in service of them.

If a leader only ever does two things, then it should be these two things.

Leadership is a difficult thing to take on and none of us will be perfect at it every day from the start. The main thing is to try and be intentional about what you’re aiming to do as a leader. It’s also about mindset and what comes first, does being a leader come first? If so, then those two key roles become easier. People often fall into leadership roles accidentally to progress their career and haven’t given much thought to the actual job of leadership and this is one of the key reasons Paula wrote her book. It’s not uncommon for people to find themselves in a leadership role based on their technical ability but ironically this technical ability will be used less and less as they progress as a leader. This means people are often unprepared for their leadership role.

The fundamental work of leaders is self-awareness and working on knowing yourself is a constant process. You need to be able to understand your preferences and notice when you are playing in your field of preference.

The vantage points for leading employee engagement

The responsibility of any leader is to move something from A to B, this could be a standard operation or a massive transformation, in order to do this you are creating clarity and getting out of the way. The vantage points provide you with the ability and observational information to do these two jobs. You have to have symmetry to provide clarity and get out of the way, too much of one or the other will cause problems.

There are five different vantage points:

1. In amongst

This is about doing the job from the perspective of observation and seeking to understand it.

2. To the side and around

This is still very much at the level of the work but watching what’s happening.

3. From high above

This is about looking across all the things you are responsible for and seeing the connections and hand offs between different people. What’s working and what’s not working?

4. From high out and beyond

This could be seeing what’s happening in another department within the organisation or maybe what your competitors are doing.

5. Inside

This is the space for reflection, for decision making, listening and processing other things. It may feel indulgent but is the most essential vantage point.

The most engaged teams aren’t just problem solving as they go along, they’re innovating and creating new solutions. They are collaborating without the need for the leader.

True engagement is to understand where we are going and why, and as a leader you are responsible for creating the space and conditions for everyone to thrive. This is the link from leadership to employee engagement and everyone is a leader in some respect, you are the leader of your own life and these vantage points will be relevant to you.

How can internal communicators use these points to influence leaders?

Paula believes that hierarchy was created to organise resources in the pursuit of getting things communicated or getting work done. Hierarchy is not at its best when it creates a power imbalance. Are we acting as a parent and adult or as a child in the role we play within the organisation? If you want to influence a leader to lead more equally then one of the ways to do this is to step up yourself as an adult and not blame that leader but show them compassion. It’s also important to show up with a proposition or a solution rather than a passive view as this can alter the dynamic and you can change leadership from the inside out.

Rather than performance management, a great adult to adult conversation can help share expectations about what needs to get done and what we need from each other to be successful. It would be great if the leader instigated this conversation but if they don’t, you could instigate it instead. There’s then a chance that if it goes well then it will create ripples of impact across the organisation. You can be the change you want to see in others even if you’re not far up the hierarchy.

All the vantage points can be looked at from any perspective, we can all be aware of them in our work whether in a direct leadership role or not as we are all transforming something in the work that we do.

Summing up

There is simplicity in the idea of creating clarity and getting out of the way and the symmetry of the five vantage points covers off all the areas we need to be aware of and how they exist within an organisation. It’s important not to reside in one of them all the time which does sometimes happen.

At the back of Paula’s book (Vantage Points: How to create a culture where employees thrive), there is a practical toolkit with 12 different tools. These tools help you as a leader to turn these concepts into a way of working. There’s also a troubleshooting section to help you with questions answered by Paula.

Later this year Paula will be launching The Vantage Points Foundation which is to support young women and inspire them in the career they want to pursue. Already up and running is a Facebook group called Leadership Space which is free and for anyone in senior leadership, or aspiring to senior leadership, to join and be a part of a group of like-minded people. In the group there’s micro coaching, thought-starters and discussion around the resources in the book.

Useful links

 Instagram:  @vantagepointsconsulting 

 Facebook Group is Leadership Space:  (1) Leadership Space | Facebook

 Website:  www.vantagepointsconsulting.com

 FREE GUIDE:  5 days to grow your leadership impact:  https://leadership.vantagepointsconsulting.com/

 Linkedin Profile:  Paula (Ratcliff) Leach (FCIPD, MBA) | LinkedIn

In this episode Craig Smith talks to Matthew MacLean about creating an internal podcast. Matthew enjoys working in sound design and audio production and has a background in audio drama. He also likes to help others master the craft of podcasting. Matthew co-presents Podcraft… a podcast which teaches the entire Art of Podcasting, from launching your show, to growing a legion of fanatical fans.

Matthew is based in Dundee on the East Coast of Scotland and for the last five years has worked for a company called The Podcast Host, a podcasting hub online which has been around for the past 10 years. Colin Gray is the founder of the company which started as a website with a lot of ‘how to’ content initially and after Matthew joined it made sense for him to start doing some of the podcasting. Now Matthew’s job is predominantly keeping on top of the content with a bit of writing and getting other people to produce articles. The other side of the business is Alitu which is a podcast making app which cleans up your recordings, produces your podcast and can also be used to upload it. Craig confirms what a great tool Alitu is as he uses it for his podcasts!

The benefits of podcasting as a communication channel

While Podcraft and The Podcast Host are really geared around independent podcasters, podcasts are a really interesting medium for corporate communicators to use to engage their people and get messages across to them.

Matthew thinks one of the benefits of creating an internal podcast for audio communication is better attention and engagement because people are fatigued with the bombardment of information they receive on a daily basis. Trying to get people to sit down and look at something is tricky as there are a lot of things competing for people’s attention and they don’t necessarily have time to read through a long email and digest it. Podcasts on the other hand can be listened to when you’re doing other things which makes them more effective and engaging. If you want your employees to listen to a podcast don’t ask them to sit down while doing so, you can encourage them to listen to when they’re out for a walk or doing a menial task which doesn’t require their full attention. It feels like a more productive way of consuming information.

Another advantage of the podcaster having 30 minutes to an hour of someone’s time in quite an intimate way is you can make the content longform unlike a blog or a YouTube video.

Is podcasting the right medium for my audience?

Firstly, you have to make sure you give your listeners the opportunity to consume your podcast in allotted time rather than asking them to listen to it in their downtime. You can’t expect people to spend their evenings listening to it. You might also experience pushback depending on the line of business that you’re in, some people will always come up with reasons they can’t listen and in the early days, you might just have to except that. You won’t get 100% uptake, but you can aim for 80 or 90% and that will be good enough.

Where do I start with podcasting?

Before buying tools or software you need to have a think about why this is something that is going to be interesting or useful to the people that you want to reach. This applies to whether it’s a private podcast for one or two people or a podcast that could potentially reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of listeners. What do you want people to do with the information you give them? Answer these questions to build the right foundation and the rest are relatively simple things i.e., how do I upload the podcast, which microphone do I use? Another important factor is can you turn up consistently and keep the podcast going?

Internal communicators are used to designing messages around what they want people to think, feel and do differently after they’ve interacted with the communication campaign, so podcasting is essentially no different but on a more intimate level. You do however have to think about how people are going to follow through on an action when they might be listening to the podcast while commuting or out walking. You need to be mindful of these limitations and not give people too many actions to follow-up on in each episode but maybe break them down into bitesize chunks.

Getting the correct microphone and set up is more on the transactional side of things and there is a link to useful information about this here. Getting the right set up should cost under £100 so it’s a low barrier to entry.

Tips for sustaining an internal podcast

To get the real benefits from the podcast it has to be a long-term venture. The first 20 -50 episodes are just the beginning and people may not like to hear that but it’s true. So, you need to be serious about setting aside a bit more time than you think you’ll need.

Use this time to think about:

• content and what the next few episodes will be about
• what the jobs are we need to do to get those episodes recorded
• editing the episode, will we do it or get a freelancer to do it

It doesn’t need to be at the same time every week, and this is often an unnecessary barrier that people put in their way, it just needs to be a similar amount of time that is dedicated to the task. This will give you the best chance of getting the podcast up and running.

You may decide to outsource the production of your podcast leaving your role as creating the content and structure. It could cost as little as £30-£40 per episode for production but you need to speak to the producer and find out what they will do for that. Will they clean it up a bit and make it loud enough or will they chop out mistakes and rearrange parts? This takes a bit of time to set up and obviously there are monetary costs but editing the podcast may not be the best use of your time and outsourcing it could be the best solution.

Who should you get to host your podcast?

There is no right answer to who you should get to host your internal podcast. Every organisation is different, you might have a member of staff who everyone thinks will make a natural host and then find that they’re not. It’s not an easy job so stay openminded about who you use. The role someone has doesn’t necessarily reflect on how interesting they will be as a host, but you probably want to get the senior leaders involved at least. During the past year many senior leaders have become more used to broadcasting messages in various ways and because of this now appear to be more accessible to employees so, having them on as an interviewee is always a good option. If they never get involved, it might signal to the employees that they’re not committed and it might devalue the podcast.

Growing and retaining your podcast audience

Launching a podcast is a slow burn so what metrics should you be looking at to measure its success? Obviously the first thing is numbers, how many people have access to the podcast compared to how many are listening to it? Each episode will have a particular purpose and at the end of it there may be something you want people to do e.g., sign up for an event or volunteer opportunity so you can gauge what percentage of people are coming forward. If it’s low you probably need to sit down and see if there’s something different you need to do, maybe approach people who listen to the show and ask for their honest feedback. They may be able to give you suggestions for what you can do better or things they’d like to hear about. Podcasts are always work in progress. They will adapt and change over time and this should be seen as a good thing. There will be a certain degree of trial and error and you can’t expect it to be perfect from the start.

The type of platform to use to host your internal podcast

When creating an internal podcast, you want as many internal listeners as possible but there may be things you don’t want external listeners to hear so there’s a number of good media hosts who offer a private podcasting feature, for example Castos and Captivate. These hosts do a good job of making the podcasts secure.

Useful links

Matthew has just launched a book, “The Podcast Growth Book”, which is available on Amazon. This has some great tips and ideas for growing an external podcast audience which will also work for an internal audience. One thing Matthew highlights is making sure your podcast episodes have interesting titles and not just Episode 1.

Matthew’s podcast “Podcraft” has been running for about 8 years and has seasons that cover topics such as equipment, monetisation and growth. Each episode is action-focussed and aimed at giving practical tips and guidance.

The website, https://www.thepodcasthost.com, also has excellent information which is really easy to find and is a very useful resource. It has a search function so you can type in a question or a few key words to find articles.

Summing up

• Don’t put barriers in your way, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the best microphone or recording software.
• Don’t get stuck trying to produce the perfect podcast from episode 1 just get on and launch it.
• Answer the questions ‘why are we doing it?’ and ‘why will it be useful and interesting to people?’.
• You will make a few mistakes and that’s fine – “The worst podcast is the one that never got started”!

This week Craig Smith talks to Eoin Weldon about the challenges of communicating with offline employees.

Eoin is Internal Communications Manager and Communications Business Partner, UK and Ireland at Merck Group. Prior to this role, Eoin has 10 years in house and agency experience and has held internal communications roles at Tesco and Vodafone. Eoin is currently based in Cork, Ireland where Merck have a big membrane manufacturing operation but like many people at the time of recording, he has been working from home during the pandemic. The interview relates to all of Eoin’s career experience and not just his experiences at Merck.

Merck is a leading science and technology company that operate across life science, healthcare and performance materials, with over 56,000 employees. Eoin works within the life science operation who help solve problems within the industry by collaborating with the global scientific community. Merck’s promise is to accelerate access to health for people everywhere. They are a key supplier and collaborator for many of the global pharmaceutical companies.

Identifying offline employees

Typically, offline employees are not desk based or sitting in front of a laptop so getting the right message to them is more of a challenge as they may not have access to digital channels such as Yammer, Slack or email. The number of non-desk employees differs across different industries, for example Tesco has frontline employees stacking shelves so they may have access to apps on their mobile phones but in certain manufacturing industries you’re not even allowed to take your mobile phone into the workplace. Eoin explains that

“Firstly you have to identify who your offline employees are, what their profile is and how to get that message to them.”

At Merck’s Cork site 70% of the employees are desk based but there are also different profiles with people working in labs and people on the manufacturing floor who may have 12-hour shifts. These people are working in highly pressurised environments often dictated by customer demands, so you have to think long and hard about how you get that message across to them.

You also have to remember that there will be a demographic of your employees who are not ‘tech savvy’ for many various reasons and they might not be comfortable with online communication.

Ways of communicating with offline employees

It’s important to remember that you have to communicate with your employees on their terms and think about how they consume their information.

“A lot of companies globally rely on newsletters and social enterprise tools to communicate with employees.”

Eoin is an advocate of ‘back to the future’ communication, using noticeboards and snap frames on the back of toilet doors or behind the hand driers. They are still an effective way of getting your high-level messages across.

You also have to empower your line managers and supervisors to get those key strategic messages and company updates across. Everyone is flooded with information so you have to be tactical about the information you want to filter down so you don’t overload them. You need to be concise and brief.

You need to capture people’s attention, but this is only one element of communication. It has to be supplemented with options of how they will consume the information be it a plasma screen in reception or notices on the canteen tables, Yammer or the company app on the intranet. It’s giving employees a variety of channels to use but making sure they all have up to date information.Eoin says it’s about getting “the right information to the right person at the right time”.

It’s important:

• to know your audience and how they’re getting their information and then you can build your plans around that.
• to get the balance right across the platforms you use be it physical newsletters, noticeboards, intranet or email.
• that the offline employees have a choice about the type of communication they use.

The use of content and tone to engage with offline employees

When Eoin worked at Tesco, they had a physical newsletter that they created once a month which blended corporate information with human interest stories. People were always keen to send in photos and stories about charity fundraising, weddings, babies and other celebrations. People need a reason to open the newsletter and reading about what their colleagues are doing seems to work. Despite it being a traditional form of communication, it really helped getting conversations started and improved engagement.

At which point do you take offline employees off the frontline for communication purposes?

Eoin explains this isn’t something you can do every week as you have deadlines to meet, and you can’t just shut down production lines so at Merck it’s something that is done successfully every quarter. Everyone gets together for an hour long ‘town hall’ meeting which is recorded so employees who are off site at the time of the meeting also get a chance to hear what was said. The meeting is usually a blend of company updates and performance along with human interest stories. They use examples of how the products they make at their site contribute to the safety of the end user such as patients. It helps people to feel proud of working with a company that makes a difference.

The role of line managers and supervisors

Line managers and supervisors are pivotal in the role of communicating with offline employees. It’s often something that doesn’t come naturally to these people so it’s important that you provide training and opportunities for them to upskill in this area. Their role is vital not only in cascading messages down but also feeding back up to senior management what the reactions to the communications are. Without this two-way communication a situation can arise where senior management sit in their offices and assume everyone understands what your strategy is.

Eoin’s experience is that line managers are always keen to upskill in this area as they recognise what an important role they play. It also helps them in their day-to-day work of getting messages across, giving and taking feedback and constructive criticism and generally making them better communicators and managers.

Summing up

• Need to identify your offline employees
• You need to know your employees and the access they may have to consume information
• Don’t assume everyone likes to be communicated to in the same way
• There’s value in some of the ‘old school’ channels of communication e.g. newsletters (listen to our interview with Amy Holmes from Marshalls in Series 1 Episode 5 Using traditional comms channels effectively)
• You need to invest in your line managers capabilities as communicators

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoin-weldon-50a47423/

https://twitter.com/eoinweldon

In this week’s short episode Craig Smith from The Big Picture People gives a recap of the five tools for sharing your values we’ve discussed over the past few weeks.

They are all free to download from the resources page on The Big Picture People website at www.thebigpicturepeople.co.uk.

Bringing meaning to work is the first resource we shared which helps you look at your employees and what they need from their work. It also looks at where they derive meaning from work, this is really important when it comes to employee engagement. This is a personal reflection exercise.

Determining your values is the second resource which looks at your organisational values. This is useful if they haven’t already been documented or can be used to establish if they are the correct ones. It can also be used to look at your own personal values or those of your team.

Assessing your values is a tool for reflecting on how fit for purpose your organisational values are. Are they instrumental and relevant to your strategy and direction of travel as an organisation? Are they helping you make better decisions?

Using stories to illustrate values is specifically designed as a team exercise and helps to get your people used to talking and sharing examples of your values in action. It’s all about using stories to bring your values to life.

How to better live your values is designed to be used with a team and helps to get them to identify examples of your values being delivered. It also helps identify areas where there are gaps to fill and what you should do more or less of to better deliver your values.

All of these tools are designed to take you to a point where you can identify your values, pressure check them for being fit for purpose but also start to embed them within your organisation.

The reason we’ve been sharing these resources with you is they are all tools and techniques we use when working with our clients. It helps our clients make sure that their values are more than just a set of words on a piece of paper, more than just a bunch of abstract concepts, it makes sure they are embedded within the organisation and everyone can relate to them.

While we’re taking a break from these short episodes for the time being and will be focusing on our fortnightly interview shows, we will be bringing you some more tools and resources in the near future. We hope you’ve found these episodes and resources useful and we’d love to hear from you at info@thebigpicturepeople.co.uk. Or you can leave us a message on our comments form at engagingic.com which is our podcast home page.

We will be returning to our fortnightly shows next week where we interview Eoin Weldon from Merck about the challenges of communicating with offline employees.

In this interview Craig Smith talks to Anna Kilmurray about creating a strong employer brand. Anna is Chief People Officer at ClearScore which is one of the most exciting growth scale-ups in Europe and she is based in Barcelona. Anna was one of the first six employees at ClearScore and they now employ over 200 people.

Prior to working at ClearScore Anna’s career was mainly in senior marketing roles and we will explore the transition from marketing to CPO later in the conversation.

ClearScore’s mission

Anna describes ClearScore’s mission as helping millions of people around the world to get better access to financial services and to make finances easier and simpler to understand. When Anna joined Clearscore in 2015 what she loved about the company was its audacity about this mission which was set out right from the start. Finances are really complex and people find them daunting or boring. Anna thinks they are one of the most important things we need to deal with as they affect so many things such as quality of life and choices. Anna says

“I love the goal of trying to simplify and make finances better for ordinary people”

From the beginning the ambition for ClearScore was to take this mission around the world, they have built the brand from nothing and now have over 13 million fully registered users. They also have 30% spontaneous brand awareness which as Anna says is incredible. She is really proud of the way the design team demonstrate so much passion, the product teams use their skills and thoughtfulness, the quality of engineering choices that the tech teams are making and the overall ability to move quickly. ClearScore have now reached a size where they can influence the industry and create better products for their users.

How to get to CPO from a marketing background

Craig asks Anna about her experience of moving from a successful career in marketing to CPO and she agrees it’s an interested and unexpected path. Prior to joining ClearScore Anna had 15 years’ experience in marketing, brands and CRM so Anna’s initial responsibility when she joined ClearScore was to set up the marketing team. She spent the first few years building up the brand by establishing clear messaging, setting up internal marketing channels and creating personalised CRM for their users. They launched ClearScore into two more markets during that time and Anna was involved in the creation of a product called ‘Coaching’ which is a personalised chat feature for checking your credit score when you make a financial decision.

Anna says this whole experience was an intense and exciting period of her career. During a period of maternity leave Anna spent some time reflecting on her choices and deliberating where she was spending her energy, which is something she has done at various points throughout her career. Anna spoke to her CEO about doing something to broaden her exposure and her experience and together they came up with the idea of her pivoting and taking on the role of Chief People Officer.

Anna loved the idea as it was something outside of her personal comfort zone and also an area she is hugely passionate about and which she spends her free time reading and learning about. It gave Anna the energy to come back with a new remit and she is able to rely on her team of professionals with the relevant skill sets and experience.

People potential and performance

Within ClearScore rather than using the term HR they describe it as ‘people potential and perfomance’. Just as marketing and product teams tend to think about the users, Anna’s users are the employees and that is who she focusses on.

Her first priority is to understand who the employees are:

• What do they care about?
• What do they think?
• What segments exist?

Secondly, she thinks about her product, which in this case is ‘ClearScore the employer of people’:

• What’s great about ClearScore as an employer?
• What’s less good?
• What’s our unique selling point?

It’s also about understanding the culture, which as Anna has been involved with the company for several years she knows really well.

Thirdly she focusses on the market they’re operating in:

• Who are we competing against for talent?
• What are other employers doing in this space?
• How are we positioned next to them?
• How does what we offer stack up

Conceptually there is quite a lot of overlap and programme development is about building the employer product with some new features. One thing is developing these features really well and the second thing is communicating them which as Anna says goes back to the bread and butter of marketing and where she feels more comfortable.

How to go about creating a strong employer brand

Anna is really proud of the culture and environment at ClearScore and the purpose behind what they’re doing. This is tracked as part of their engagement survey and belonging had a score of 80% which is a great signifier of their work. They’ve cultivated a high trust environment and many of the leadership team have role modelled vulnerability and openness. This has unlocked permission for other people to do the same and through this cultivate a motivated, intelligent and thoughtful workforce. This then leads to more reinforcement, for example some of the employees developed a mental health ambassadors programme and ran this independently to help people with their mental wellbeing. This led to people managing their mental health proactively and feeling more of a connection with the people that they worked with. Clearscore’s CEO is very open about their mental health journey and this has helped to normalise the challenges people face and create trusting relationships. As Anna says

“The energy that we put into work is a finite resource so it’s important that people feel they can be themselves and they don’t have to expend energy creating a work self.”

 This then leaves energy for work or family or whatever else people are dedicated to. This is something that ClearScore feel passionately about and has been considered throughout the building of the company. Tech start-ups often have a reputation for being ‘work hard, play hard’ employers so it’s important to get the right balance.

How to make sure your employees are the right cultural fit

Getting employees who are the right cultural fit is a challenge for any organisation and something ClearScore have had difficulties with in the past. They have been on a journey with recruitment and no longer have a cultural fit part in their interview, instead they have evolved to look at culture build rather than culture fit. For example, can people bring new perspectives and new ideas to the company? They also look for ClearScore behaviours, which are a bit like the rules of the game and have moved away from types of personality to types of behaviour. How well these behaviours resonate with people is tested very carefully during the interview which is a two-way process. It’s about trying to find the right fit on both sides and about finding someone who is going to come in and succeed and love the environment that’s been created. It is probably one of the most important things that the managers can do to create great teams and bring talent into the company.

Connecting to customers

At ClearScore, teams are focussed on building the app (there’s also a website version of it) and the experience customers derive from it. They concentrate on how to create calmness when you’re making a financial decision and how to use beautiful design to lay out clear information. ClearScore also connect customers to products so there is an element of retail too, for example if you want a home loan ClearScore can direct you to loans that are right for you based on data you have given them. These products are provided by partner companies and it’s important that the customer’s experience is as good with these partner companies as with ClearScore as any problem reflects directly on ClearScore. It is therefore important that ClearScore take a lot of time working with partners who are innovative, obsess about the customer experience as much as they do and make the experience seamless for the user. It is especially important if a customer is rejected for a product that this is done in a way that is a as painless as possible. Advertising and sponsorship are also important touchpoints and where customers may see the ClearScore brand and form opinions about the brand.

Helping employees to see how they affect the customer experience

Scaling quickly has helped ClearScore become a huge channel for their partners who they work really closely with. The best partners have the same mindset as ClearScore and their engineering teams will work together on the end-to-end experience. This provides a more fulfilling experience for their employees and helps them take ownership of the whole process while working to the best solution.

Maintaining the strong employer brand during growth

Maintaining the employer brand is a big challenge for companies as they go through this phase growth and you can’t take it for granted that it will just happen. Anna says she uses Dan Pink’s work around what drives and motivates us. He talks about mastery, purpose and autonomy and Anna uses this in the programmes they are developing to deepen their strengths in those core areas while driving the performance of the company. What this looks like at different stages naturally evolves so it’s important they stay clear on what their people care about and what their purpose is through the different stages. There also needs to be flexibility around the ability to shape your career and your learning journey. All of these things help in creating a strong employer brand.

The experience of joining a company of under 50 employees (where, to a certain extent, you have to be a jack of all trades) is very different to a larger organisation where there’s more specialisation. It also becomes more interesting with all the data points generated, personalisation, open banking etc but this may not appeal to everyone so it’s important to recognise this may not suit the employees who started at the beginning of the journey.

Central to the employee experience, you have to put people’s personal potential and their holistic wellbeing firmly in the picture and it’s important to think how this will continue at scale. This is quite a challenge but also one that is manageable. Also investing in building on the goal of making a positive difference in this industry gets more exciting as the company gets bigger. Clearscore have a really ambitious diversity and inclusion strategy which is in service for the financial wellbeing for everyone goal.

The final thing is to continue to use performance management to make sure employees are all developing and pulling in the same direction which is critical.

Useful links

https://www.clearscore.com

https://www.clearscore.com/careers/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakilmurray/

Welcome to the latest of our short episodes published between our regular fortnightly interview shows. In this episode we discuss a topic and share a resource we think you will find useful. Continuing our focus on organisational values, in this episode we will be looking at how to better live your values within your organisation. You can download this resource from our website www.thebigpicturepeople.co.uk. Via the menu at the top of the page, select “Resources” and you can find it listed there or you can access it directly by clicking here.

 The other resources we have featured in the previous episodes are:

• Bringing meaning to work – how to better understand what your employees need to make them feel there’s meaning in their work.
• Determining your organisational values – how to either work out what your values are, or to validate the values that you have within your organisation.
• Assessing your values – checking your values are fit for purpose and whether they can be used for better decision making. Are they driving your organisation strategically forward?
• Using stories to illustrate values – how to tell stories which highlight your values and show how they are lived and breathed within your organisation.

As above, this episode is about the resource ‘How to better live your values’ and is designed to be a team exercise. The exercise is about getting people to identify the areas within your organisation where you’re excelling and finding examples of where you could utilise those strengths. It’s also about identifying where you have the biggest gaps at the moment and what you need to do in order to plug those gaps.

The exercise can be worked through on an individual value-by-value basis or it can also be performed across all of your values getting people to look at the whole landscape.

The resource includes a template that you can print in whatever scale you wish, up to poster size if required. The exercise actually works best with larger groups with the template printed on a bigger scale. In this way, you can use post-it notes to get everyone to write their thoughts and ideas down. With smaller groups an A4 size will be sufficient. If you would like to use the template for an online session you can import it into Google Jamboards or any another platform where people can write virtual post-it notes. It will also work in something like a PowerPoint presentation by importing it as an image.

The main thing is getting people to recognise where you can improve, things you can stop/start/do more of, and also to appreciate what works by looking at examples of what you do really well. So, you either want to look at your strengths and identify the gaps or look at the gaps and identify the strengths needed to fill them.

At the end of this part of the exercise you should have some ideas of what you can build into an action plan, for example, or what you can look at as a set of priorities moving forward to ensure your values are consistently delivered across the organisation. It fits nicely and builds on from the resource we shared last time, ‘Using stories to illustrate values’, though it is slightly more analytical approach.

In the next short episode, in a fortnight’s time, we are going to run through a recap of the resources we have shared with you and how you might use them in a logical sequence or prioritise the ones most useful to you.

Thank you for listening, any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated and you can send an email to info@thebigpicturepeople.co.uk or by using the contact form on engagingic.com.

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms our interviewee is Kristina Vaneva who is Director of Employee Engagement & Internal Communications at Atlantis Resorts in Dubai. Kristina is on a mission to create hope and positivity, and to encourage happiness not only in the workplace but also in people’s personal lives. In her twelve years at Atlantis Dubai, Kristina has successfully managed the Employee Engagement Department, part of the HR Division and has received several personal as well as team industry awards.

Kristina describes the Atlantis Dubai as one of the largest integrated resorts in the world with a huge water park which fits up to 10,000 people, 28 restaurants, a dolphin bay, a sealion point and 1458 guest rooms. There are 2200 employees from 87 different countries leading to a very diverse workforce operating 24/7 which is an accurate reflection of what Dubai itself is about – a melting pot of people and diversity. Employee engagement in a 24-hour operation is always something Kristina is driving for.

A passion for employee engagement and internal comms

Kristina’s passion for employee engagement and internal comms began at an early age and was developed in childhood. She describes how as a child she enjoyed creative writing and was in the literature club, then in high school she was part of the school paper and later in charge of the yearbook. At university she was part of the university magazine and then went on to work as an investigative journalist. During this time, and while living in Malta, she embarked on a project to examine the affect of adopting the Euro in Malta and visited many countries in the Euro zone. She interviewed everyday people on the streets and politicians and journalists to see how adopting the Euro had affected them. This project helped solidify Kristina’s love for journalism, her passion for communicating and getting messages across. It was this passion which helped her join Atlantis Dubai in 2008 as manager of the employee marketing team which, as Kristina says, is really all about employee engagement and internal comms.

Creating positive, thriving workplaces

Interestingly, in her own time, Kristina runs her own YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/c/KristinaVaneva) where she shares her experience in employee engagement. This could be of interest to people who are looking to create an Employee Engagement department, an Internal Comms department or to put together a better strategy for something that is already in existence. Kristina wants to share her experience with her viewers to help create positive, thriving workplaces all over the world.

She believes that if the place you work has a great camaraderie and sense of belonging, then the 8-10 hours a day that you’re there will fly by and you will consider it less as work.

Craig comments this is a brilliant and benevolent thing to do, finding the time and having the confidence to share this kind of knowledge.

The challenges of diversity and employee engagement in a 24-hour operation

Craig asks Kristina about the challenges of employee engagement in a 24-hour operation and Kristina replies that it’s actually the challenges which keep her engaged as this is what she loves. She enjoys making sure every day at work is a different day and explains that every project, programme, campaign and engagement strategy that is put in place always involves a diverse set of expectations. Some people have worked in the organisation for over 10 years and don’t want to see old information which has just been regurgitated… they want to be surprised.

Hospitality in general is in the business of creating amazing experiences and everlasting memories so, how do we as internal employee marketers do this for our colleagues? According to Kristina, the secret is care and connection. If you connect with the people around you in a genuine way and show that you care then you’ve opened that first door.

Part of the challenge is adapting the style of your communications so that it’s fun but also serious and understandable for everyone – what looks like a straightforward message can be easily misconstrued. People have different preferences for communication, some may prefer written communications and others video channels such as YouTube. You have to be careful and not just concentrate on one type or style of communication.

 “Adapting to people’s various styles is one of the challenges” says Kristina.

The other main challenge is the 24/7 nature of the organisation means that you have to reach people at different times of the day – the morning shift, afternoon shift and evening shift. So how does your message reach all of them? You have to make sure you have engagement and communication champions in every department as it’s not just a push communication, it’s also a pull communication. Two-way honest and open communication is what you’re looking for to create that sense of engagement and belonging. It’s not one person’s role to be in charge of communication, everyone is responsible for their own engagement.

Briefings at the start of shifts are crucial and share the important communications for that department plus the communication related to the hotel. These briefings are the responsibility of the team leaders. Meetings are also held with influential people within the departments and divisions of the hotel. It’s important to talk to these people and this may be in their offices, the lunchroom, in the smoking area or maybe on the bus. Making sure that what you’re communicating is understood and that they can translate your message is key.

Unstructured communications such as an impromptu meeting are also important as they have an authenticity, and you can get immediate, informal feedback. Craig suggests that maybe organisations which aren’t 24/7 or operate shifts could learn from this.

Demonstrating care through actions

Kristina shares a quote which really resonates with her “If you care less about your people, they start to become careless”. If you show a sense of engagement with your employees, which is created by care, they then share this with the guests. She goes on to say that there’s a certain type of person who fits really well within the hospitality environment and that’s someone who is caring by nature, who’s warm and loves to make personal connections.

Recruiting and keeping the right employees

Craig asks Kristina how they make sure that their employees are a great fit for their organisation and she replies that in Dubai they are lucky that they have so many people from all over the world who want to work there. Atlantis has a great customer brand name and also a good employer /employee brand name and reputation so they always have a high number of applicants. This in turn allows them to select someone initially who has the right attitude and then they can train them in the required skills if necessary.

According to Kristina, keeping employees engaged needs to be a multi-prong approach from different levels. For example, the senior leaders are as much in charge of employee engagement as the HR team, as are the team leaders and the departmental managers. So, everyone who is in charge of someone, at any level, can engage or disengage a person.

A strategy for engagement

Kristina describes how the Atlantis engagement strategy is created a year ahead with a calendar of activities and programme of events and has three different areas of focus:

1.Creating a sense of belonging using internal communications

This is achieved using town hall meetings (more recently these have been virtual), newsletters, videos from the senior leadership team, digital noticeboards and print magazines. A lot of the campaigns are displayed on a giant billboard at the ‘back of house’ where the offices are. Also on display are long term service awards and loyalty recognition for employees.

2.Rewards and recognition

It’s important for any organisation to celebrate a win, be it a big or small win. Atlantis win a lot of industry accolades so it’s important to recognise the people who helped achieve those awards.

3.Activities

These may be mental, physical, social or cultural activities and help gel the people together with a sense of community and belonging.

Once you have created a sense of community and pride in the place that people work, then they will show genuine care for their guests. They feel they are welcoming guests to their home because they’re proud of where they work and feel connected to their guests on a more in-depth level.

Then there’s learning and development, talent management and career progression which all form part of employee engagement and the employee experience as a whole.

Keeping people engaged through the challenges of the pandemic

Craig asks Kristina how she has kept people engaged through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and she says the last 10 months have been a rollercoaster ride but working for Atlantis resorts prepares you for that. One day you could be helping prepare the biggest live-stream concert, another day a gala dinner where you could have someone like Katy Perry performing and on another day you could be setting up the ballroom for a local artist to display their work. “Every day is a huge challenge but a fun challenge so it’s within our DNA to be prepared and resilient and expect the unexpected.”

When the pandemic hit in March 2020 the communication style completely changed particularly in terms of frequency. Previously weekly newsletters became daily and sometimes twice daily. As the lockdown was very strict people couldn’t see anyone, so they also started a weekly 20-30 minute video newsletter called the Atlantis Flashlight where the news was read out like a genuine broadcast, there were competitions and interviews with people. It was made fun and something that people would look forward to and helped motivate people.

They also used a lot of positive psychology interventions, an example of which is a one-month gratitude campaign which helped create a lot of positivity within the team.

Another successful campaign was the ‘Clean and green in quarantine’ campaign which, while being environmentally related, helped bring people together. This was especially helpful in a time of crisis when a glimmer of hope can help relieve feelings of powerlessness which could lead people to become disengaged. It was important to give people a sense of purpose and create different avenues which maybe they hadn’t thought of before.

This was a 5-6 month period of very intense, engagement focussed campaigns to make sure people’s morale remained high which paid off as a wellbeing survey showed 95% engagement. A more recent engagement survey showed a result of 88% engagement which shows what a great job the leadership team did in terms of care. Craig comments that this showed the campaigns must have covered all angles of engagement to get such a great result in a very difficult period.

What does 2021 hold?

The weather in Dubai is amazing from October onwards so the last two months of 2020, when the travel corridors opened up, the resort had phenomenal occupancy in the hotel and December was actually busier than the previous year Kristina says. So, 2021 is filled with a different kind of (but still very engaging) work, possibly with an increased use of technology which is often under used in employee engagement especially employee engagement in a 24-hour operation. For example, apps and programmes that create a virtual experience such as parties as they do not want to forget celebration and rewards and recognition, so they need to adapt and learn more about this technology.

Summary

• Two-way honest and open communication is what you’re looking for to create a sense of engagement and belonging.
• Remember people have different preferences for communication, some may prefer written communications and others video channels such as YouTube. Don’t just concentrate on one type or style of communication.
• It’s not one person’s role to be in charge of communication, everyone is responsible for their own engagement.
• It’s important for any organisation to celebrate a win, be it a big or small win

Craig thanks Kristina for giving us an amazing insight into employee engagement in a 24-hour operation in an incredibly complex but also really well coordinated operation with a fantastic culture. This is critical to not only customer service but also employee experience.

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinavaneva/

https://youtube.com/c/KristinaVaneva

https://www.facebook.com/kristina.vaneva.3

Welcome to this short podcast episode which continues our theme of looking at organisational values. Our previous episodes having been about bringing meaning to work, determining your organisational values and whether your values are fit for purpose i.e., how well do your values support your decision making and strategies?

The resource we’re sharing in this episode is designed to be used as a team exercise unlike the previous resources which were more aimed at personal reflection. The resource is called ‘Using stories to illustrate values’ and as most people know our values really need to come to life so that our people can relate to them. We also need to help our people understand how our values fit within our organisation and what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to our values.

The exercise can but used with a small group but actually works best in big groups such as conferences and large events. It’s a really good way of drawing out your values but also something, that once people are used to, you can use at the beginning of every meeting or gathering of people just to keep that continual focus on your organisational values. It’s a story telling activity, designed to be high energy and with lots of engagement. Ideally this would be done with groups around a table but in the current circumstances this could be difficult, so it also works with virtual gatherings using break out groups.

The idea is that you get everybody into small groups of 6-8 people and ask them to share an example of someone they have worked with within the organisation who has demonstrated one of your values. You may want to give people a particular value to concentrate on or give them the freedom to choose one themselves. You want everyone to come up with a short story that lasts between 60-90 seconds describing what they saw, who was involved, what the situation was and how that highlights or typifies one of your organisational values. We always encourage people to use something which isn’t necessarily highly significant, it can be just a really small example of someone doing something that really illustrates values.

Once everyone has told their story the idea is to get everyone to ponder them for a few seconds and think about which of the stories really stood out for them and who told it and not to tell anyone but make a mental note of it.

The next phase is to get people to mix up and move around into different groups and then get people to tell their story again to the new group. Again, ask everyone in that group to mentally note which story stood out and who told it. Ideally this cycle should be repeated 2-3 times if the group is large enough.

After all the rounds have been finished you then ask people to stand next to the person that they felt told the most powerful story which illustrated your values. What you will find is that there is aggregation around 3-4 people who’ve told the best stories. You then ask each of those people to tell it to the rest of the people. In a virtual situation this could be done by nominating people through the chat bar or by having a polling feature.

What you tend to find in this exercise is that it’s a really strong way of getting people to understand and also articulate what it is your organisation is all about from a values perspective. It’s an extremely powerful exercise.

We’ve run this exercise on numerous occasions and it’s something that always lands really well, there’s always great feedback and in fact people can get quite emotional especially if they’re talking about a colleague who is present.

Almost universally people say “why don’t we do this more often?” or “why don’t we share stories of people living and breathing our values on a regular basis?” What we normally suggest to people is why don’t you do it at the beginning of your management meetings or your team meetings? Take time to go around the table and get people to share a story of something they’ve seen that week or taken part in which illustrates us living our values in a way that is meaningful and purposeful. As you can imagine, in terms of embedding your values and getting everybody confident to articulate what it is we’re trying to do from a values perspective, it can be incredibly powerful.

The exercise ‘Using stories to illustrate values’ is available to download from our website www.thebigpicturepeople.co.uk using the resources tab at the top. You can use it at your next team meeting, conference or online gathering to help your people better articulate your values.

We hope you find this and our other tools useful, it would be great if you could give us some feedback if you’ve used them and found them helpful. Maybe you have a story you’d like to share with us about how you’ve used them which would be fantastic. You can contact us via the feedback form on our website www.engagingic.com, or by emailing us at info@thebigpicturepeople.co.uk.

Thank you for listening, please feel free to share this episode with anyone you think might be interested. If you’re not already subscribed to our podcast and you’d like to subscribe via your podcast platform of choice, then you’re more than welcome to do so. It means you will get an automatic update in your podcast stream every week.

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms, we talk to Nick Daggett who is Senior Sales Manager at Invotra and based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Invotra create and maintain the conditions for professionals to do their best work using technology. Prior to working at Invotra, Nick was Head of BD at Oak Engage. Nick has many years of experience of working with clients to develop digital workplaces for organisations that need to communicate with their workforce wherever they are.

Nick explains that Invotra were founded in 2014 and are used by organisations to help “enhance the employee experience”. While Invotra have a base in Newcastle, the head office is in Woking, Surrey and there is also an office in Ireland. The company is split between the intranet software side of things and consulting which covers intranet planning and strategy. They work primarily with public sector organisations, for example the Department of Work and Pensions which has 95,000 employees, the Home Office and more recently NHS Test and Trace which Nick says greatly interests him. Nick explains that 45% of government employees use Invotra for their intranet for communicating, collaborating and engaging with each other.

Why do we still need an intranet when we have applications such as Yammer, Twitter, Microsoft Teams?

While Nick agrees that there are plenty of applications and systems that could be used including CRMs, a service desk, survey tools, emails and text messages, this also means that there are potentially too many to choose from and this can cause confusion. Internal comms teams need to know which channel to choose to have the most impact with their messages. Integration over the past few years has been key to improving the use of the intranet, it can pull all the other different platforms in use together in one place.

Previously if you needed information you would refer to the company handbook which had all the information you required and ideally this is how the intranet should work. So, the intranet should sit as the digital workspace bringing all the other systems and applications together and allowing the employee to find the information they require quickly and easily. It’s secure, it’s efficient and it’s professional. You’re on your organisation’s intranet getting the right guidance and content and connecting people to each other.

How the intranet used to be perceived

Craig remembers the intranet from many years ago as being like a digital warehouse where people would store scanned files so they wouldn’t be lost. Nick agrees it did become a bit of a repository in the past and the word ‘intranet’ can strike fear and boredom in some people who still perceive it as it was 15 years ago. It used to be draconian and boring with the annoyance of lost passwords. It was a generic, one size fits all system with a lot of top-down broadcast communication.

But what should an intranet look like now? If it’s going to work it needs to be built with its purpose in mind, it’s a user led purpose and answers the question ‘what does the employee need?’.

Creating a modern, social intranet

The intranet needs to invite you in to use it, you need to have a desire to go on there and see what’s going on. It shouldn’t be a chore. Nick suggests that everyone’s an author at heart and everyone can collaborate. These days the intranet experience is personalised as it recognises who you are and sends you more relevant content. Typically, the modern intranet will be accessed by an app which has the organisation’s branding so it looks and feels like the organisation, there’s no logging on to a separate system anymore. While the intranet home page doesn’t need to be as good as Google it has to be familiar and intuitive if you want to keep engagement high. It needs to be user focussed and based on outcomes. But the important question is ‘what is the purpose?’, is it for brand focus or are you trying to reach the unconnected, deskless workers who aren’t sat at a computer? Nick thinks it is these workers who were previously unconnected that benefit most from the intranet.

Craig asks Nick about the sort of functionality you would suggest for an intranet and Nick explains that the ‘functionality is a by-product of achieving the outcome’. If an organisation comes to them with a lack of engagement, or disconnect with their employees, then they’re looking for something that’s going to increase engagement. This can be done through the use of a collaboration tool or widget to create a hub which is going to help build a sense of community. You could use this hub to share ideas and talk about all sorts of things, all of which help to create the culture of the organisation.

The benefit of the intranet for new starters

Using the intranet can help a new starter to recognise what the culture is like at an organisation. If everyone is commenting on new stories, including the CEO, then that shows it’s a collaborative, social environment. The intranet can also be a great way to help onboard new starters, they can even have access before they start their new role.

How do you get employees to trust the intranet?

It’s important that employees know the intranet is not just there as a tick-box exercise or for head office to keep an eye on them, it’s there as a tool for them to use. Generally, there is no need for moderation either as most people realise the intranet is there for their benefit and, as the younger generation know very well, anything you create digitally leaves a footprint which is going to be around for a long time. People understand that they need to take responsibility for what they are posting.

Increase engagement with an intranet relaunch

Nick explains that a relaunch of your intranet can help increase engagement and collaboration. This can be achieved quite easily by making sure it looks fresh, is user led and focusses on what employees want now. Ask your employees what they want from an intranet, put out a survey and get some feedback. Is it there for collaboration, critical communications or just for the news? Everyone will have a slightly different response but already you’re starting to engage with your audience.

Nick and Craig discuss whether it helps to have a name for the intranet, ‘The Hub’ seems to be very popular and also ‘The Water Cooler’ and ‘The Town Hall’. Nick suggests asking employees to come up with a name to help increase interest and awareness of the intranet.

Nick thinks that ideally the central comms team should take responsibility for the intranet but that each department should have a captain to help look after it. It could be that someone looks after the wellbeing page and another person is in charge of policies and governance. The more people involved the better so one person isn’t left trying to manage it on their own.

Your intranet should not be a soapbox

It’s important that your intranet has engagement, Nick tells a story about a company who had the most fantastic intranet, it was beautiful and had all sorts of videos etc, but nobody commented on anything. The blogs came from the CEO and no one felt comfortable commenting. Craig says this links nicely to his interview with Cai Kjaer (add link when published) where Cai explain it’s no good having all these collaboration tools if no one is engaged and we should be measuring the degree of interaction that is happening. The people who are posting on the intranet need to be asking questions and responding to comments to help to start to draw people in. You need to make sure the intranet is not used like a soapbox for management to shout out the corporate messages from.

Summary

In summary, intranets have moved on significantly in the last few years due to improvements in technology. To get the most of your intranet you need to be clear about its purpose, why have you got an intranet? If you can do that you can create a fantastic environment which integrates all the other different platforms in a one stop shop for employees. Really the purpose should always end up with more motivated, happier, productive staff.

Useful links

https://invotra.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-daggett-25413a3

Welcome to the latest of our fortnightly short episode which are an opportunity for us to share some of our favourite resources and thoughts with you.  We hope you are finding them useful.

This episode and resource builds on from Episode 7 (Determining your values). As Jim Collins once said, many organisations already have values but our role as communicators and employee engagers is to uncover those values and articulate them consistently. Clearly articulated and well thought out values should drive behaviour and decision making at the point of action. If we know what our values are, when we reach a fork in the road, we should know which way to go guided by our values. They should empower our people, so they know what to do in certain situations that aren’t always predictable.

The resource we’re sharing with you today is called ‘Assessing your values’ and it asks you to write down your organisational values and think about how well they act as a guideline for behaviour. Are people generally proud of the values, do they mean something to people, and do they drive their motivation?

The resource asks you to look at:

• The connection between your people and the values
• Do the values provide a guidance for decision making?
• How do the values help you to decide how to allocate your resources?
• How do your values affect your priorities on a strategic level?

Do your values help you at a corporate level as well? For example, a food manufacturing company uses ‘quality’ as one of their values and the story they tell as to why it is important to them is related to a time in the past, when the raw materials that they used for manufacturing were poor quality. They were faced with the dilemma of do we ramp down production and fail orders or do we drop our quality standard and fulfil our orders? The decision was made to only produce a product which met the quality standard. This meant letting customers down with orders and also missing sales targets, but the company decided they would never compromise on quality even at the cost of some other key areas of performance.

It’s stories like this that illustrate whether a value is something that is integral to your organisation and whether it will shape the organisation going forward.

While this is designed as a personal reflection exercise, it can also be used among your team where you can then compare the outcomes and find out if you are aligned or misaligned.

You can download ‘Assessing your values’ from the resource page on our website www.thebigpicturepeople.co.uk where you will also find the previous personal reflection exercises we have shared. We will be back in a couple of weeks to share another resource with you which will build on this narrative.

If you have any feedback on the resources or the show in general please let us know via engagingic.com where there is a form you can fill in or via our email address info@thebigpicturepeople.co.uk.

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms we are talking with Tanya Pakhuta about adapting internal comms to changing situations. Tanya is Senior Global Internal Communications Manager at LeasePlan.

Tanya is a fluent English, Dutch, Ukrainian and Russian speaker and is a passionate communications professional with experience across diverse industries with expertise in internal communications on a global level. Prior to LeasePlan, Tanya worked at Canon and several other major multi-national businesses. Tanya is also a qualified dance instructor and we will find out how she has combined that talent with her IC role later in the interview.

Tanya is based in Amsterdam which is a fantastic city despite its poor weather! LeasePlan is a car leasing company operating in two large and growing markets:

1. Car-as-a-Service for new cars and
2. High-quality 3–4 year-old used car market.

So essentially to put it in simple words LeasePlan purchases vehicles directly from the manufacturers and finds and manages these vehicles for its customers. They also provide a complete end-to-end service for a typical contract lasting 3-4 years. In carnext.com this is a digital marketplace for high end used cars and is supplied by the LeasePlan fleet and also some third-party suppliers. Altogether LeasePlan have about 1.9 million cars on the road in 32 countries with over 8,000 employees so is a large and complex business from a people perspective. Tanya is responsible for the internal comms for all the employees though they do have focal points in each country which are part of Tanya’s responsibility.

Responding to the challenges of a global pandemic

Tanya explains that it feels like we have been going in circles after going through the first wave of lockdown, then a certain degree of freedom, then back to lockdown with no end in sight despite the production of a vaccine. For an internal comms professional this has been a very challenging time. From one day to another Tanya and her team have had to rethink how they were going to operate. They had to decide how to approach COVID and they had to figure it out fast. One thing they learnt very quickly is that silence wasn’t an option. They found it was better to over-communicate rather than under-communicate so that’s when they put all hands-on deck. They also realised all the carefully crafted plans that they had made for 2020 could be thrown in the bin and they had to start over. LeasePlan’s senior leadership team played a key role in this as well as they knew what to do and how to do it. They were very responsive, and they knew how to communicate. They had to keep adapting internal comms to the changing situation.

Honesty and transparency is key

The first thing that they did for the sake of honesty and transparency was to make their CEO, CCO and other senior leaders available for three hours every Wednesday to speak directly to their employees on an all employee call. They made it three hours to cover all the 32 countries and different time zones. Tanya has been asked why they wouldn’t simply record the message and then replay it, which would have been possible, but for the CEO it was a priority to make himself available to people. He wanted the employees to know he was there for them and taking the time to walk everyone through what is happening and make them understand what it is they can do.

There was also practical advice on how to talk to the customers and make sure they were transparent with them too when talking about their contracts. People were hungry for these types of communications, it was the first time the CEO had been so available to everyone and Tanya thinks people needed that. They had thousands of people dialling in to each call every week eager to hear what the CEO had to say that day. This call played a key role in their strategy when they first started doing it. Craig confirmed he’d heard the importance of transparency and visibility and also the willingness of leaders to step forward and field some difficult questions in other organisations. Tanya explains that the internal comms team managed the Q&A side of things for the CEO, employees could log in and ask questions and then get an almost immediate response.

Building a community to keep people connected

The immediate priority was to stay afloat as a business and the CEO sessions provided a platform to ensure everyone is up to date. The next thing was focussing on people’s physical, spiritual, intellectual and community needs. The CEO understood that now was the time to make this happen, we needed to be there for our people and build on the community that has been around for the last 50 years at LeasePlan. Working from home and in lockdown circumstances was not something that LeasePlan was used to, it was a totally new concept. As a comms department they were met with the challenge of how do they make this happen digitally?

Within two weeks they had a digital platform up and running called Nextgen LeasePlan community. The platform was packed full of activities for each day of the week to feed the employees body, mind, soul and community spirit. Previous to this LeasePlan had a fairly standard and traditional mix of internal comms channels such as the global internet, local internet, the company newsletter, digital signage in some of the offices and global email.

New platforms for communication

Prior to the pandemic the comms team were starting to look at using different platforms for communication but had wanted to do it in a planned and well thought out manner but within two weeks of lockdown they had launched new communication channels using Yammer and Instagram. Why Instagram? Tanya explains that the IT departments have been working hard to provide a secure working from home environment for their people so there’s been quite a bit of restriction on which platforms could and couldn’t be used.

From their platform they ideally wanted interactivity, engagement and something familiar that people already knew how to use so there would be no need to invest in extensive training. It didn’t take long for the comms team to decide on Instagram. Another key element they wanted to implement was live streaming and Instagram provided an easy solution for this.

“So, we started using an external channel for internal communication purposes.”

 Instagram was set up alongside Yammer with the distinction that things not suitable for Instagram could go on Yammer, so the two channels worked hand in hand.

Practical tips on using Instagram as a platform

The four ‘buckets’ that the comms team used were:

• Mind
• Body
• Soul
• Community

For each bucket they had a list of activities that they would offer to their employees to partake in every day. Each week a schedule would be published of what was happening when on each day so people could follow it. For example, for the body bucket they introduce high intensity interval training (even for kids as they were suddenly at home 24/7), yoga lessons and dance workouts. The yoga lessons were taught by an employee in LeasePlan Greece who is a certified yoga instructor on Monday and Wednesday mornings via Instagram live feed stories. Tanya decided to take off her ‘internal comms’ hat twice a week and teach the dance classes she would normally teach at a gym. She was very happy to do this as she couldn’t teach at the gym and it was the perfect way for her to interact with the employees on a different level.

Tanya explains that they used Instagram mainly for the livestreaming activities which were mostly physical activities but also for daily mindfulness sessions. In the soul bucket they also used it for an introduction to Enneagram which is a system that explains all the different personality types and they invited guest speakers to discuss it further.

They also introduced a “Meet the Team” series where Tanya would interview the senior leaders from the organisation about what they do, their focal points, how are they responding to the COVID challenges and so on. This meant their people felt much more engaged with, for example, the managing director of LeasePlan in Finland who they wouldn’t normally have any touch points with.

Using Yammer alongside Instagram

To Tanya’s great surprise the uptake of Yammer was also successful. She’d always been reluctant to open up those gates as she wanted to have a structure in place before it was put into use but then life has other plans. It actually worked out very well, people knew how to use it and kept on engaging with all the content (everyone knows how hashtags work). This was when they got to do some of their most fun stuff, for example, lip sync challenges to “I Will Survive” and “Can’t Touch This”. They saw the CEO lip sync and dance together with his dog in his living room!

One of the most popular engagements was ‘The LeasePlan Games’, each week a challenge was launched by one of Tanya’s colleagues and the first week the CEO kicked it off with a plank dance with his daughter. They had various submissions and each week they would vote for the person they thought had performed the best in the challenge. They’ve seen a variety of skills such as juggling, dancing, spinning bowls on their fingertips, doing burpees, all sorts of things.

Adapting internal comms to changing situations

Tanya explains that they’d done so much in such a short space of time that some people must have felt bombarded with all the activities going on but they knew it couldn’t go on long term, so they had to look at their communication strategy weekly. They asked the questions ‘Where are we now?’ and ‘What is the most important need our employees have that we can satisfy at the moment?’. They knew they couldn’t go on singing and dancing around forever, so they’ve moved on in their strategy.

For example, their approach to Instagram has completely changed, it is now an employer branding platform and where they shout to the outside world about what LeasePlan is all about. It’s now a channel they would like not only their customers to follow but potential employees, suppliers and clients. This is a real change in their communication approach due to the pandemic and is going well even though it is all fairly new.

Rather than having five activities, five days a week they’re now going to pick big projects that they can focus on no matter what the circumstances to help connect their employees to each other and keep that sense of belonging that they have created.

One of the projects Tanya is particularly keen on is ‘LeasePlan runs to the moon’ where the employees are encouraged to walk/run/bike the distance from the earth to the moon. Every mile that is completed turns into money for charities that support mental health. It was launched a couple of weeks ago and the employees are absolutely ecstatic, posting pictures from runs and walks, taking their kids with them etc. There’s a leader board so you can see who’s first, second and third which encourages people to leave their house and simply go for a walk, you don’t have to be training for a marathon. This project is something that LeasePlan are going to run for the whole of 2021 as it’s been so well received and is a collective goal for the whole community.

The change of use of Instagram seemed to happen organically over time and everyone seemed to understand what was happening. It is full of faces and testimonials from employees, every second Friday they have a LeasePlanner who takes over Instagram and does ‘A day in the life of…’ which is a good way to learn more about each other. What does it mean to be a commercial account director, an insurance manager or a marketing manager in Greece? These are the things that the comms team are busy with at the moment along with positioning themselves as a forward-thinking company in terms of diversity and inclusion, this is a big thing on the agenda at the moment.

In terms of other platforms Tanya thinks they’ve also developed a bit more on Yammer and they’ve also adopted a Microsoft Teams way of working. They’ve also plotted their global intranet into Microsoft Teams so whenever anyone opens up Microsoft Teams for a meeting, they will see what’s happening within the organisation. It might seem like a simple thing, but it took quite a while working together with the digital team to make sure it worked seamlessly for everyone regardless of device. This solved the issue of having almost too many channels, so now they are all in one place it makes them accessible to everyone and everyone knows where to find them. This has led to a spike in data in terms of views, readership and the comments and likes have gone through the roof which is a really big thing for LeasePlan.

Learning about comms in a pandemic

The comms team, and Tanya personally, have learnt so much this year –

 “the pandemic might have been the best thing that happened to our careers”

 While this might sound dark the world has changed completely overnight and as communicators, they had to stay ahead, act fast, be creative and not be afraid. The key learning for Tanya would be to see how eager their employees were to engage with each other while being physically apart. For a traditional organisation like LeasePlan, it was incredible to see that people were so hungry to have contact with each other, engage with each other and to build this true sense of community which elevated LeasePlan’s culture further.

All the initiatives they created for employees were so well received that they really got to know each other on a different level, they’ve met each other’s families in various situations. If someone had told Tanya two years ago that this was going to happen, she would have laughed, she couldn’t see this change in communication coming. This is something that money can’t buy and it’s a big testament to their culture and the people that work at LeasePlan as they make the company what it is.

Tanya would like to keep this level of engagement going forward. Another thing would be to keep being honest and transparent at any time, even when things aren’t going right because by doing this, you’re opening up the doors for people to add value. At the end of the day, for their own job satisfaction, everyone wants to add value as they’re not there only for the pay cheque, they want to feel like they contribute. This is a lesson they learnt through the whole process as they became closer to each other while they were physically apart.

Craig agrees that this has been a tremendous opportunity to learn and he’s heard this a lot from the people that he speaks to. Despite all the negatives of the pandemic people have been able to draw on inner strength and look at it as a chance to learn and reflect on. We need to recognise that we can’t just go back to ‘business as usual’ and the old way of doing things in so many different areas.

In summary

Tanya admits that she’s still learning every day, especially during this last year and will continue to learn in 2021. The key takeaway personally for her is that you shouldn’t be afraid to be brave and experimental in communications. Be creative, there are other ways of doing things and if you make communications more human, they will be more successful, and you will see the results.

Useful links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyapakhuta/

https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/bringing-meaning-to-work/

Bringing meaning to work resource

Welcome to one of our short episodes released between our interview shows. Last week we interviewed Shira Tabachnikoff, who is Stakeholder Relations and Internal Communications Manager at ITER, about engaging multi-cultural employees and you can listen to her interview here. Next week we’ll be talking to Tanya Pakhuta about adapting internal communications to changing needs which has been particularly important over the last 12 months and we’re sure you’ll find it interesting.

Today we will be sharing a personal reflection exercise with you (which could also be used with your team if you wish) and it’s all about determining your values. A lot of clients that we work with will already have established values within their organisation. They will probably have spent quite a lot of time designing them and pulling them together. If you haven’t got values or haven’t spent time articulating the values you have, then this exercise is a good starting point. Even if you do have values this is a good opportunity to reflect and check that the values you have as your espoused values are the ones that the organisation actually use.

The problem with communicating values

We work with clients and organisations who are looking to communicate their values and the challenge with this is that we often default to using a single word value and think this has universal meaning to everyone within our organisation. They think this single word will have the same interpretation for everybody but we know this isn’t always the case. With any organisational values there is often additional work to be done to ‘operationalise’ them, to make them understood with a clear definition across the organisation. To do this well and effectively you have to be able to articulate behaviours that are indicative or not of whether you are delivering those values. This is something we do with our clients when we are working with them to create a big picture, particularly one with a strong values element. Some of the visualisation and exercises that we create with them are very much around how they operationalise their values and turn them into something that is tangible. It is then possible to observe if this is happening within the organisation.

The starting point for determining you values

Start to think about what some of the words are that you would use to describe your organisation, the things that are really important to you. This is essentially what values are. At the end of the day, we have personal values that drive our behaviour and decision making and as an organisation you have a collection of values which do the same.

The ‘Determining your values’ exercise

The exercise uses a number of different descriptor words and you will need to decide which words really resonate with you either personally, organisationally or for your team (have a listen to our previous episode about “Bringing meaning to work” if you are not clear what motivates your employees and other colleagues at work). Select three words that represent values which are the ones you would never give up, the ones that are absolutely critical to you. This selection forces you to be really crystal clear about what your organisational values are. Hopefully if you do this for your organisation and it already has some espoused values, you will find that you will gravitate towards them. But if you find that they are massively different, if you think there’s a different set of values within your organisation that’s fine. It’s alright to have local and team values but you need to make sure there is some congruence between them, differences don’t mean they are incompatible. We will be examining this issue in our next short episode in two weeks time. We will look at how you assess the existing values and compare them with the ones the organisation actually needs or has and also strategically are they still relevant?

The ‘Determining your values’ exercise is suitable to use on a personal level too as this is really important. Being able to articulate your values and find clients and customers who fit with them is an important part of being able to do your best work. They are also important when finding new employees during the recruitment process.

The resource is available to download from our website here.

All the exercises that we will be sharing in these episodes are really straightforward and easy to use, they have clear instructions, we’ve given you an idea of how long it should take, and we’ve ranked them in terms of difficulty from easy to challenging. The challenging exercises may need a little more time and thought.

The idea behind these episodes is that we share some resources with you that you can use and hopefully find useful. If you want to discuss how to use any of these exercises, then feel free to get in touch either via engagingic.com where there’s a form to send us comments or email us at info@thebigpicturepeople.co.uk.

We hope you are finding these episodes useful and if you’ve got any feedback, we’d love to hear it so please get in touch.

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms, The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Shira Tabachnikoff. Shira is a Stakeholder Relations and Internal Communications Manager at ITER, an intergovernmental organisation established in 2006.

ITER involves a hugely diverse audience of 35 nations, using 40 different languages, and covering approximately 80% of the global GDP.

Shira has been with ITER for nearly three years, raising awareness of intercultural differences and ensuring all are aligned based on understanding and communication. Before this, she held senior internal communications roles at the European Food Safety Authority and the European Science Foundation. She has many years of experience of leading communications in diverse and multicultural environments, and engaging multicultural employees, which is the subject of this episode’s podcast.

Creating multicultural employees in a multicultural organisation

In large organisations in which cultures and languages differ so greatly, and so broadly across vast variations of roles and seniority, internal comms becomes a gigantic challenge. Internal comms must:

• Create awareness within employees
• Help employees understand the multicultural challenges they face in a project
• Show employees how they can adapt to not only survive, but thrive in a multicultural environment
• Help employees recognise the benefits of working with people with different backgrounds and perspectives

It is therefore hugely beneficial for such organisations to run introduction programmes and workshops to new employees. “It’s the study of behavioural change – you have to start with awareness and that’s your main objective of this induction,” says Shira.

Organisations should use this introduction to allow employees to question and identify where they may have found multicultural tension before and how they can develop and leverage from it.

Being aware of people’s differences

Communication and interpretation of an organisation’s values is a challenge even for internal comms leading an English-speaking audience. So how can internal comms of multicultural employees best tackle communicating values and ensure the audience has interpreted it as intended?

Shira discusses studies from researchers who have helped her develop workshops that can identify gaps between cultures, and how these can be bridged for multicultural employees to work in sync. Such researchers were:

• Hofstede
• Andy Molinskey
• Erin Meyer

These researchers look at why different cultures behave differently and receive information differently – and it’s often based on their historical cultures.

Differences can include:

• History of democracy
• Economic situation and the impact it’s having on the culture
• Tolerance
• Gender inequality
• Short or long term vision
• Detail-oriented analytical approach, or preferring ‘bottom line’

Without stereotyping and appreciating that every individual may have their own beliefs, understanding differences and why people may react differently to each other, or why they might feel uncomfortable about something, allows a more empathetic approach. Which is essential to engaging multicultural employees “I think empathy is truly the most important ingredient,” says Shira.

However, identifying gaps doesn’t always help an employee adjust to a multicultural setting. Instead, Shira believes organisations should spend resources on creating and taking ownership of their own organisational culture.

“What I’ve found really helpful is to create our own culture, so that you’re talking to people about how they can best adapt, but then you have to give them something to adapt to,” Shira explains. “It’s not as easy as saying, oh, you’re an American and you’re going to go work in France.”

With employees often coming from international careers, they may have a good knowledge of the culture of their new location. It’s getting everybody to work in unison that is the challenge, and the most effective way to do this is to create a common ground for everyone to adapt to, allowing self-awareness of each individual and appreciating colleagues’ personal perspectives.

Defining values in a mutual context

To create an organisational culture to which all multicultural employees can adjust to, an organisation should set clearly defined values, such as:

• Trust
• Integrity
• Loyalty
• Diversity
• Team spirit

Whilst all these values can be agreed by all cultures positively, an organisation must then consider how to integrate them into behaviour; and take onboard how they may be interpreted. For example, one individual may view the value of honesty as exposing every honest feedback truth as critical, whereas another individual may see this type of honesty as disrespectful and deliver it differently.

Internal comms people must create time and space for employees to discuss how they interpret meaning, and then figure a way they can agree to deliver accordingly.

Having these values in place allows for different individuals and cultures to work as a dedicated team with agreed cultural values. This sometimes requires adjustments from employees so they can collaborate and enjoy the values harmoniously.

The result will be a feeling of belonging amongst multicultural employees, who bring their own values to the table while equally appreciating and welcoming others.

Challenges of internal comms

Internal comms must ensure that such values are not set merely as a box ticking exercise. They must be respected and believed in by all in the organisation.

Shira emphasises how crucial it is for internal comms not to defend senior management who are not practising the values themselves. Doing so will cause hugely damaging effects throughout the organisation, with employees expecting internal comms to be little more than propaganda.

Instead, internal comms must protect the values to ensure employees feel safe, supported, and listened to confidentially. This will allow communication to flow. However, to thrive in the most successful multicultural organisations, employees must be led by role models in senior management.

Summing up engaging multicultural employees

The values promoted in a multicultural organisation are values that should be enjoyed by all organisations, no matter their size or cultural ‘differences’. There are many key attributes that an employee can maintain in a successful multicultural organisation. These help them become better individuals and teams throughout a positive and enjoyable career. Shira concludes:

“Most people have such good intentions, they just sometimes don’t know how to channel them, or they’re blocked. They don’t understand why someone is different than they are. And I think culture is one aspect, that there’s so many different things that make us different.

“Understanding how to help people overcome those things and work together with people with all different sorts of backgrounds and values is really something that I’ve learned so much by doing these workshops, and the ability to just listen and hear it and give kind of nudges, or give a little bit of an awareness of where that might be that helps them develop on their own.”

Useful Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shira-tabachnikoff-675a003/

This week’s episode of Engaging Internal Comms is a short interim episode between our normal interviews. In it we would like to share some ideas with you that we think are useful and valuable. The Big Picture People are already using these ideas with our clients so we know how helpful they can be.

In these short episodes we’re going to share resources with you that you can download from our website (thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/resources) These resources are a mixture of personal reflection exercises, which are things that you can do on your own, and team exercises.

The first resource we want to introduce you to stemmed from work we are doing with clients where they are starting to look at how people’s expectations of their work changed during the pandemic and how this affects what people want from their work.

This is a useful resource to use now as a personal refection exercise and we’ve called it ‘Bringing meaning to work’. We’ve all had a chance to re-evaluate our life priorities over the last few months and it’s a good opportunity for us as internal communicators and employee engagers to maybe think about this on an individual, team and organisational level. As people return to work, we need to be looking at the different expectations that they have for their work and for their lives.

The resource ‘Bringing meaning to work’ is just a short one-page exercise designed to help you explore what some of the things are that our people need from their work at the moment.

The question is why do people work for your organisation other than money? Essentially everyone expects some degree of remuneration, that is a hygiene factor, but we’re looking beyond that; what is it that people are looking for from their work?

There are five different levels to look at:

1. Individual level:

• What are some of the intrinsic motivators?
• What is it about the work itself that makes it attractive?
• What are the career prospects?

2. Team level:

• How important is social interaction? This has been a huge challenge over the last few months so this should be something that we need to be conscious of going forward when we’re communicating with and engaging our people.

3. Organisation level

• How has your organisation been perceived during these last few months?
• Have you stood up and been counted?
• Do you have strong values that people are proud to go out and talk about?
• How connected do your people now feel to the organisation and its external persona?

4. Professional level

• Sometimes people’s loyalty to their profession is much stronger than to the actual organisation itself and it’s important to recognise and respect that this duality that can exist.

5. Customer / Service user

• Is there a strong connection between your people and the people that your organisation serves or who it sells to?
• How does this affect people and the way that they work?

This is all on the downloadable resource and there are also instructions on how to use it.

The next short episode we will be recording links to this one and will explain how the resource in this show feeds into your organisational values. This isn’t necessarily about rewriting your organisational values, but about how we can dovetail some of the elements we’ve been looking at in what people want from their work into these values.

These short interim episodes are all about giving you, the listeners, some tools that we already use that we hope you might find useful.

We would love to hear your feedback about the podcast and especially the new format, you can contact us at thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/contact/

This week Craig chats to Cai Kjaer who is Co-founder and CEO at SWOOP Analytics about the importance of measuring online collaboration. SWOOP is a leading enterprise social network analytics platform that uses data from Microsoft Teams, Yammer and Workplace by Facebook to help organisations and their people to become better collaborators. Cai has been involved in improving business relationships using Social Network Analysis since 2006 and is also involved in the Danish Chamber of Commerce – Australia.

When they met Craig and Cai connected immediately over their shared view that change happens when communicators within organisations create the opportunity for conversations and dialogue rather than relying on download or broadcasts only. Cai has a strong passion to help people in organisations to become better at collaborating.

How do we establish an authentic line of communication?

Cai explains that when clients come to them at SWOOP, what typically stands out is an interest from their employees to have a better connection to the leadership team and colleagues in other parts of the business. They often stress the desire to have a two-way conversation rather than a one-way broadcast. They want to know how to establish an authentic line of engagement between the CEO and the frontline.

There is a deep-rooted requirement to establish a conversational tone, especially with self-managed teams where knowledge flows much more freely and they are also dealing with rapid changes in the business environment. Gone are the days of a senior leader sending an email to engage their team and catching up with them later. Tools are needed to establish a conversational tone at scale.

The importance of measuring online collaboration

Craig asks Cai, that even though we can measure the ebb and flow of communication is that enough detail? Cai gives an example of an organisation that appeared to have a particularly collaborative platform with a really high use and lots of messages. However, when they looked at how people interacted with each other there wasn’t a lot of two-way interactions, just a lot of one-way communication; this is a bit like shouting from the rooftop and no one listening. So, you need to be careful about what you measure to get accurate and measurable insights into collaboration.

Another issue to be conscious of is not to use these platforms as a type of ‘Big Brother’. In Europe GDPR has focused everyone to think about what we’re doing with data and whether it is ethical, but we need to be aware that this isn’t always the case outside Europe where there may be different attitudes and laws.

How to get from one way transmission to two-way communication

The important question therefore is how do we get away from one-way transmission and into a two-way flow of communication and how would we measure that? There are signals that organisations are having good, strong conversations and one of them is how many posts get a reply.

The top 20% of organisations who collaborate successfully online follow the 1,2,3 rule. This means that when you are interacting online you want to have a balance in your conversations of one post, two replies and three likes. Imagine a face-to-face conversation where no one gets the chance to reply? It’s important to not only post but to reply as that’s when the conversations start to happen. To have a balanced conversation, you need twice as many replies as posts. As there is no body language online this is where ‘like’ comes in, this is the only way you can show someone you are actually there. It is an important signal that people are paying attention and also stimulating for discussion.

Engager or broadcaster?

Think about what you are publishing and what you want other people to do with that information. Research has found that when you post a question, you get twice as many replies as when you don’t. Senior leaders need to think about starting conversations with questions rather than broadcasts, this also gives psychological safety for people to engage with the senior leaders.

You have to make sure you ask the right questions. Smart executives team up with their internal communications team who help them move on from just delivering a message to starting a conversation.

Cai sums it up nicely with a quote from Carrie Basham Marshall, founder of Talk Social to Me, “is the platform a megaphone or a hearing aid?”.

Insights from benchmarking data

The benchmark report published by SWOOP in April 2020 looked at 9,000 teams and provided some interesting data. The vast majority of Microsoft Teams groups were private with only 5-6 active members, usually all from the same part of the organisation – like lots of tiny, disconnected islands. It showed that while it is a great collaboration platform, it didn’t appear to be connecting people across the organisation. Conversely in Yammer, most of the groups were public, much bigger and representative across the organisation. Conversations tended to be longer in time on Yammer and shorter in Teams though the messages had larger word counts in Teams. Facebook Workplace appeared to be a mixture of both.

Cai suggested the analogy of a school where the private conversations were taking place in the classrooms (Teams) but all the interesting stuff takes place in the schoolyard (Yammer) where you generally also make friends.

Therefore, if you’re an internal communicator Teams is a powerful platform but don’t expect it to be the place you publish content to reach everyone. You need to be mindful of the platforms that can be used, not just what they can do but what people are using them for.

Is there fragmentation when more than one online platform is used for collaboration?

Data from the organisations taking part in the benchmarking report measuring online collaboration shows use of Yammer didn’t drop when Microsoft Teams was introduced and in fact use of both grew. Maybe we are finding a way where we are identifying the real unique benefits that each of these tools have and a high degree of overlapping functionality. We are perhaps also becoming more familiar with when to use which platform – becoming ‘digitally mature’.

Summary

Cai sums up by saying if you have a senior role, or impact to influence other people, start using the platform to ask questions and @ mentioning people as this gives people the safety to reply. Asking questions gets 150% more replies and @ mentioning people 76% more. Find an issue that is important for the organisation and raise it as a question to get feedback.

Cai finishes the interview with this thought “It is only through conversation that we can take people with us and generate the change we are seeking”.

You might like our blog The Communication Strategy Challenge which examines this subject further.

Useful links:

Twitter: caikjaer

Website: https://www.swoopanalytics.com/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/caikjaer

Related podcast episode: Effective use of digital comms | S1 E7

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms, The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Imogen Hitchcock, the owner of Beaumont – a company whose mission is to change the way companies tell their story.

Founded by Imogen in 2015, Beaumont comprises a small team with a big punch. They are passionate about helping individuals, teams, and companies to build trust and influence through effective communications.

Based in Switzerland, Beaumont works across several sectors and companies that range from some of the newest tech startups emerging from Switzerland’s universities to big multi-nationals.

Prior to creating Beaumont, Imogen held senior internal communications roles in the public and private sector, working for leading multinationals and local councils.

What are employee ambassadors?

The role of internal comms has evolved in line with how people expect to receive, locate, and trust information. Employee ambassadors play a vital role in delivery of this information.

Imogen says that employee ambassadors bring human and relatable internal communication to the audience in a trustworthy, authentic, and reliable channel.

“Surveys have shown that fewer than 50% of people actually trust the CEO of their company,” says Imogen. “But that percentage rises when it comes to using a person ‘like me’ (relatable to the audience) as a source of information. We’re constantly looking for people we can relate to in order to find out information and build our views. And that’s where employee ambassadorship is strong.”

The principles required to create ambassadorship

The creation of an employee ambassador happens organically within an organisation, with only mild direction and instruction. This ensures authenticity in the ambassador’s purpose, with the role growing from the ambassador’s loyalty and passion – qualities that cannot be mandated.

A healthy cynicism in these employees serves the organisation well, helping to create diversity and expose honest feedback, thus steering clear from the ‘how we’ve always done it’ approach.

Imogen says that diversity should be encouraged not only on a personality level, but also through length of service and level of seniority.

The role of the employee ambassador is not simply an ad-hoc part of an employee’s job description. “If organisations are going to be serious about the wealth of support and passion they have in their employee base, then they need to reflect that in their ambassadorship programme as well,” says Imogen.

The advantages of employee ambassadors from a business case perspective

With CEOs and senior management often heavily focused on performance, profits, and KPIs, encouraging the use of financial and time resources to be spent on ambassadorship programmes can be a challenge.

However, there is much evidence on the financial advantage ambassadorship can have to an organisation, including:

• Higher end-of-year net profit
• Higher level of engagement
• Increased productivity
• Lower employee turnover rate
• Lower recruitment costs

While financial benefits are usually most appealing to senior management, the emotional advantages are what encourage a healthier bottom line because employees understand the difference they make in the development of the organisation. Employee ambassadors remove the boardroom jargon and replace it with relatable, trustworthy, and motivating language. This helps to ignite passion and enthusiasm within employees.

“These are really very clear indicators that an ambassadorship programme, for all the difficulties and the challenges you face in setting it u,p is worthwhile because it will affect the bottom line, and it will help the CEO do their job better,” Imogen clarifies.

How to begin the journey to creating employee ambassadorship

To begin creating an employee ambassador programme within an organisation and reap the huge benefits it brings, Imogen recommends firstly ensuring the project leader is on board. This will be a person with high emotional intelligence, and who understands the exponential benefits and importance of employee engagement. They may be found in corporate HR teams and will have already had some involvement in engagement programmes.

Imogen also emphasises the need to manage expectations of reality. It is important to ensure that employees and those involved in the ambassadorship programme understand that it is a long-term goal. A goal that requires commitment before game-changing results become apparent. Taking this step will ensure dedication and continued motivation when results aren’t seen overnight.

A big picture should be shared, involving setting:

• A measure of success – the goal
• An idea of how it could be reached
• Milestones
• Evaluation methods and times

When finding the right people to enrol onto the employee ambassador programme, Imogen’s advice is to start small.

“Why not do a pilot programme in one of your offices or one of your markets which is particularly engaged, and take advantage of your people in there to find out what an ambassadorship programme looks like for them?” suggests Imogen.

Upon listening to the feedback and insights of the team, discuss what tools they’ll need to help continue the programme successfully.

Make it clear to the team that you need them to be transparent and open with their feedback and opinions. Most importantly, ensure they are interacting and working together.

The skills of an employee ambassador

Ambassadors will naturally exhibit certain skills that allow them to work well without any instruction or guidance and which they continue to develop organically through ambassadorship programmes. Such skills include:

• Core communication skills
• Writing skills
• The ability to listen empathically
• Writing ability
• Coaching ability

But there is much more to becoming a skilled ambassador than this. Craig questions whether there should be a development framework that can monitor an ambassador’s performance and effectiveness to not only enhance their abilities, but also allow them to showcase incredible life skills and talent professionally on their CVs.

Doing so also creates a brilliant way for an organisation’s brand to present a nurturing support programme to its employees, consequently encouraging engagement and passion deeper amongst its people.

Summing Up

An Employee Ambassador is the authentic voice within an organisation. The filter between senior leadership and its people. The conduit that allows them all to communicate together as a whole.

“I think it’s important to know when you’re starting an ambassadorship programme what success actually means for you and your company,” Imogen concludes. And when an entire organisation is singing from the same hymn sheet, only good things can happen.

Useful Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imogenhitchcock/

Website: https://talktobeaumont.com/

In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms, The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Elizabeth Isaacs-Sodeye.

Elizabeth has been Internal Communications Manager at LexisNexis UK since September 2019. The company employs around 10,000 people globally and provides information and analytics to professional and business customers.

Elizabeth has previously worked as Corporate Communications Executive for the Royal Society of Chemistry, and as Tools and Engagement Specialist at Indesit. She also has an MA from the University of St Andrews.

Elizabeth describes the function of her team of internal comms people at LexisNexis as the cultural engine of the organisation, bringing people together in interesting ways in a timely manner, involving engagement, diversity and inclusion, employer brand, and a dabble of learning and development.

How organisations get the best out of internal comms

Though internal comms are held responsible for the connection amongst organisation levels and its people, how effectively it operates depends on how much senior management believes in strong communication. “When I’ve got the most out of it, or felt like I’m being the most impactful, has been when I’ve been able to partner with a senior leader who really gets it,” says Elizabeth.

She explains how, even if senior management do not completely understand certain methods of approach in how internal comms links everyone together, the crucial ingredient is to be trusted with knowledge to advise on how best to get a message across to all employees.

Elizabeth gives the example of how valuable insight of internal comms can help decide when best to release a statement or email, even down to the time of day, for it to be most effective.

Brought in early enough, relationships between teams and levels can be ramped up to maximise effectiveness – and there are very few other functions like internal comms who have this effect on every part of the organisation.

The shift from internal comms broadcaster to Trusted Advisor

There is a common misconception that the purpose of internal comms is to simply broadcast messages and changes to an organisation’s people, without returning potentially negative feedback to senior management level for review.

This can be very damaging. An internal comms person must become the trusted advisor, who can open up circulatory communication channels throughout the organisation, thus creating greater impact on how organisations move forward.

Management must ask for thoughts and input from those who are delivering and executing the plan. “They’re the ones you really want to hear about when you’re thinking about how to develop your organisation. And if comms is just broadcast from the leadership outwards, then you’re not getting that richness of insight,” Elizabeth explains. “And so, in those conversations with senior leaders, yes, you need to be polite and watch out for any career-limiting statement, but at the same time, you’re never going to become a trusted advisor if you’ve never learned how to challenge.”

Internal comms people must have faith in their ability and the reason they are there – to create a space where all management and employees take time to consider all ideas and thoughts from all angles, for immeasurable impact on how the organisation can grow.

How internal comms people can become a Trusted Advisor

Creating and maintaining good relationships throughout an organisation is key to a successful organisation. Relationships are built on trust.

Internal comms people create enhanced relationships between the people around them within an organisation. They unlock the trust needed to allow discussion and communication. They must also create exceptional relationships for senior management to trust in their ability and advice.

With respect for authoritative positions within the organisation, an internal comms person must provide excellent advice even on small movements that visibly affect the outcome. Doing so creates trust from the top, and in turn builds long-lasting relationships that allow internal comms people to provide the service they have the skills to provide.

A Trusted Advisor is a knowledgeable advisor

Internal comms people must understand the organisation throughout. This includes:

• The product or service
• The message before it’s published
• How teams and individuals operate to deliver both

Without having a good understanding of these factors, how can an internal comms person possibly advise?

Taking no time to gain knowledge will be deeply detrimental. However, the time spent to learn and understand will enable internal comms people to analyse, identify, and make decisions on how best to approach delivering a message and obtaining feedback. Thus, you can provide the accurate advice and effective decisions that gain trust from the board and further enrich these relationships.

“I was quite proactive in building connections with the different areas of business and understanding what they were doing because I was very aware that there was likely to be a perception that I didn’t really understand,” says Elizabeth. So she gained understanding, and therefore trust that she could help.

The voice of a Trusted Advisor

“If our job is to surface what’s happening around the organisation and create opportunities for connections to be made which might otherwise not have been, we need to be speaking in the language that people speak in when they’re speaking to each other.” Elizabeth clarifies.

It is crucial that internal comms people deliver in the correct tone. Without this, communication will be fragmented or distracting to its audience, losing focus and meaning.

To be the trusted advisor, internal comms must analyse the effect of tone. A highly educated workforce would not appreciate a lacklustre vernacular, whereas a more ‘relaxed’ organisation who prefers common and plain English would not engage with a message communicated in complex English.

Tone may differ from senior level to ground level, and internal comms must adapt accordingly to achieve maximum engagement and effectiveness.

Nurturing a Trusted Advisor career

To advance a career as a trusted advisor, Elizabeth recommends surrounding oneself with those who are leading and influencing within the organisation. Observe how they react and respond to organisational changes and align with their thought processes to gain understanding. Absorb their objectives and adapt your own accordingly.

If you feel you have some great ideas about how internal comms can move forward with creating greater communication, communicate them. Be open and honest. Share insights. Doing so will build trust in you and shift you from internal comms person to trusted advisor.

It’s also important for the employer to be honest about the pain points and problems the organisation is facing. This will help the trusted advisor to understand how he or she can help.

Elizabeth also emphasises the importance for organisations to introduce new trusted advisors to all the members within the business with whom they will be collaborating. It’s essential to the effectiveness of a trusted advisor, yet many organisations overlook this.

Summary

The role of internal comms is crucial today – more than ever before. For an organisation to react and grow in response to a volatile world, constant change is needed. To make that change with true support of its team, senior management can no longer simply shout orders and wait for the rowing mechanisms. They need their team to be onboard and understand where they are heading.

The role of the trusted advisor cannot be described simply as an action, but more like a creation of feeling – the feeling of connection that flows continuously, feeding messages and ideas around every floor of the organisation. And this only happens with trust, based on solid advice: the Trusted Advisor.

Useful Links

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-isaacs-sodeye/

In this first episode of the second series of the Engaging Internal Comms, The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Linda McCormack, who is Head of Internal Communications at Anglian Water.

Anglian Water has around 5,000 core employees and thousands more partner employees who bring required skillsets to enhance the company as a business and a service. It is one of the first water PLCs to embed pride and advocacy in its employees within its purpose and into a formal Article of Association.

Prior to her role at Anglian Water, Linda has held senior internal communication roles at organisations like Direct Line and others within the financial services industry. Linda has also previously worked as a communications consultant.

The importance of employee advocacy and sourcing it from the top

Successful organisations rely on a good reputation. This provides the foundation of customer loyalty that leads to repeat business and referrals. However, an organisation’s good reputation externally will only surface from a good reputation internally, amongst its own people.

It is this internal reputation – based on the culture of its employees, and their purpose and mission to provide their goods or service – that develops employee advocacy: the promotion of an organisation through its employees.

To create employee advocacy, leadership and influence must create brand awareness, innovation, and most importantly employee engagement.

The most fruitful position to lead and influence employee advocacy is from the C-Suite. Linda describes her CEO at Anglian Water, who has led a rich culture of employee advocacy throughout the company: “He’s very passionate. Passionate about the work. He’s passionate about sustainability. He’s passionate about resilience. This kind of thing genuinely means something and that then filters through the organisation, of course it does.”

To create employee engagement, it is important for internal comms people to feel supported by management in promoting the ethos of the business and delivering its purpose. This helps employees understand the importance of their role to deliver and make a difference to the organisation’s customers and the organisation itself. This creates a ladder for their daily tasks and understanding why they’re doing it, what for, and how they can achieve it.

Instilling a sense of purpose and value within employees

With employees fulfilling different roles – potentially out on the field and office-based – it can be a challenge to universally instil a sense of purpose and corporate social responsibility across the board. With disconnection having been a bigger problem this year than before, internal comms people are challenged with creating a sense of unity and collective purpose.

Linda recommends co-creation within an organisation, welcoming employees to become involved with discussions even before decisions are made. When employees are asked how they feel and organisations make efforts to understand what works for them and what doesn’t, they gain a sense of pride in their workplace and loyalty towards it.

Linda suggests organisations, management, internal comms people, and employees all visualise purpose as a guiding star: a common goal that everyone follows and continually pursues by evolving, exploring, and transforming together to find better ways.

Having a purpose with value is what matters the most in creating employee advocacy. “Values are what underpin the whole thing,” says Linda. “They are the standards of behaviour, and they help us support and challenge each other, through the tough times as well as the good times.”

A line of sight for employee advocacy

To promote employee advocacy, employees must first have a line of sight – a logical sense of how a business wants to move forward and how every employee plays a role in the mechanisms of doing so.

When employees understand the future and the business strategy, they trust their leaders, they feel inspired, and they believe in their brand.

Creating a strategic business plan which employees have co-created annually and as far ahead as 25 years provides a line of sight that creates purpose, stability, engagement, and productivity within employees.

To provide this line of sight, internal comms people must carefully and logically consider how to present the purpose and its message. The challenge is to ensure a sense of belonging and meaningfulness in each employee’s contributions, analysing inconsistencies in the narrative, and how it is received to allow all employees to merge together.

Building advocacy and pride within your people

Employee advocacy and pride will only truly emerge from a contented workforce. “People generally like to be happy,” says Linda. “And one of the great ways I found to create advocacy is to create a happy advocate.”

When employees work within a harmonious and supportive environment that encourages inclusion and openness, loyalty follows. Most importantly, involving employees in the co-creation of the brand encourages them to take ownership of it. They feel happy and confident in telling people about the brand. It makes them feel good, they have a strong knowledge of it, and they are completely onboard with the brand’s purpose.

Consequently, without forcing through the use of promotions and KPIs, employees naturally and confidently advocate their organisation, even beyond their working day.

Linda gives an example of when, during the coronavirus pandemic, Anglian Water asked employees to spread the word about the Priority Services Register, helping those who need support most quickly realise that they will be treated with priority.

Employees went above and beyond to get the message out. They used social media, told family, friends, and neighbours, and even helped vulnerable and less able customers make the call. They were happy advocates, because they saw a purpose in what the company was asking of them, and they felt good about delivering it.

A perfect example of the power of employee advocacy and the effects it can have on a business.

Internal comms challenges

Most notably, the challenge for internal comms is unifying different teams that operate in different ways, such as field staff and office staff.

Linda says internal comms people must ensure that all staff realise that, however they work, they are all customer-facing staff. “It’s all customer-facing – we all have an opportunity to make an impression on our customers,” she says.

Internal comms people must help employees realise their touchpoints; that they’re all on the front line, with the ability to help advocate the brand to its customers.

The pandemic has been a particularly challenging time, as different staff faced different challenges. However, the experience has taught organisations and internal comms people to treat all employees as frontline workers.

The pandemic has highlighted the need to demolish hierarchies within organisations, to see viewpoints from different perspectives from all areas of the business, and to have equal respect for positions across the board.

With a purpose-driven team of happy and engaged people, employee advocacy will see organic engagement that creates seamless and almost effortless promotion radiating from the centre of the business.

Useful Links

Linda’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-mccormack-80770452/?originalSubdomain=uk