Talking Internal Communication...

Meat no cheese when it comes to employee events

Now that we at Gatehouse are officially in the events business (our live events arm Gasp! is now around six months old and growing nicely) I find myself pondering more and more the role of big set piece events as part of the employee comms mix - and questioning the tactics some organisations adopt in this vitally important area.

A friend of mine has recently returned from a two day management conference. The event follows a long and extremely painful period for the organisation (and the broader industry) and was, I imagine, intended to inspire and motivate the troops and to prepare them for a new, different and hopefully more successful 2010. 

Those sound like sensible objectives to me and I imagine the team behind the event explored lots of options around event content and style, before finally nailing their approach.

I bet they sat there and brainstormed lots of ideas and grilled lots of agencies in their search for an event that combined a fun team building exercise with something valuable and cathartic. Something that fused real fun with serious business. Something that would be both memorable and impactful. The holy grail.

From what I can gather they settled on some sort of music-based theme centred around an exercise that required participants to listen to some tunes as a group and use them to uncover and explore their emotions. You know the sort of thing – a bit of Mahler, Barber or maybe Girls Aloud to stimulate a discussion about your feelings relating to the past year. Cute. 

Jesting aside, I do see the logic – get them to identify and verbalise their negative emotions before symbolically parking them up at the door and marching on together as one. Indeed, I’m pretty sure I used a similar rationale myself during my in house days (though times were, admittedly, a little more buoyant back then).

My own personal favourite, rather appropriately given this post, was a management conference we developed themed around the book Who Moved My Cheese? Complete with rubberised cheddar desk drops, it was certainly different and memorable but, like this one, with hindsight I’m not convinced it actually hit the mark.

Back to the recent event, the problem is that my mate and her peers – the target audience in comms speak - thought all this was cheesy beyond belief. I think Stilton may have been mentioned at once stage. The intention was clear, but the execution somehow undermined the validity of those [very real] emotions and made light of them. Own goal.

I guess the lesson here is to be very sensitive to the emotions of the audience and the context in which an event is happening. Oh, and not to get too wrapped up in searching for that funky theme or super cool hands-on exercise.

It’s all about context.

Many organisations have experienced pain in the past year and, even for those that haven’t, the fact remains that most employees have family and friends who have lost their jobs.

Before rushing to the door of your nearest ‘motivational’ events company to book the very latest musical, theatrical or art-based exercise for your people, stop to think how it will play out. If you’re not careful it could, like this one, be rather counter productive.

Big events have a powerful role to play in engaging employees, but the fact that they are high profile also means they are high risk – get it wrong and you could spend the next 12 months trying to re-establish credibility.

As a rule of thumb, treat your employees as adults and, if there’s negative stuff to surface, address it head on. You know, sometimes just talking can work wonders…. 

Lee, Gatehouse

PS – if you do need help with your live events and want to ensure you deliver  something that really works without breaking the bank or destroying credibility, don’t hesitate to give the Gasp! team a buzz on 0207 033 8712.

A thought-provoking day at the 2009 CIPR Internal Comms conference

Earlier this week I spent the day in London at the annual CIPR internal comms conference.

The event was chaired by my CIPR Inside committee colleague, Hill & Knowlton’s Scott McKenzie, and was attended by around 60 communicators from a wide variety of sectors and organisations.

I ran a brief workshop on measurement and evaluation and a lunchtime clinic on change communication.

Having failed to have blogged about the event within a few days, I’m going to leave it to two of my faster and more agile committee colleagues to give you the low-down on the day…

• See what CIPR Inside chair Scott McKenzie had to say here
• See what CIPR Inside committee member Sean Trainor had to say here

I will be posting separately about some of the themes discussed during the measurement workshop – so watch this space.

The next big event in my diary is the SCM Summit on 14 & 15 October – a must-attend conference which always provides bucket loads of inspiration and good practice. If you haven’t already signed up for that, it’s not too late – check out the conference website now via the Summit logo on the right of this page.  

Lee

The employee expo – a tactic with real potential

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by a large utility company to attend its annual employee exhibition. They’ve been doing one for years apparently – taking over an large exhibition hall for a few days and inviting their people (and suppliers) to come along for a few hours to see what’s going on inside the company.  Intrigued by the concept and keen to get to know the organisation better, I snapped their hand off and went along for the day as a guest.

I’ve come across similar events in the past – indeed I created one or two during my days in-house – but they were always tagged onto a more traditional all-employee conference. As such, the exhibition element was effectively bonus content – a way of making better use of an expensive venue, giving staff something to do during the breaks and subtly reinforcing the messages and themes conveyed in the main event.  So this was my first direct experience of a ‘pure’ employee exhibition. 

The concept is simple. Hire a venue, brief key teams to create their own exhibition ‘stands’, invite employees along, deliver the event. I’m making it sound easy and, of course, the reality is the exercise can be as simple or painful to produce as any other activity we get involved in – and I have no doubt the event I attended involved considerable input from the comms team here, who did an excellent job. But, depending on which way you do it, it could be a very different kind of input to the usual employee conference.

Although there was an overarching umbrella theme and identity for this event and a welcome from the CEO in the exhibition guide, there were no tight scripts, very little Powerpoint, branding was minimal and the timetable was fairly fluid, so there wasn’t too much ushering required. Those of you who are involved in staging large internal events will know that these are the meat and veg of the typical conference - and therefore often place considerable demands on the comms team.    

Where I think these events are most effective – and this one was – is in the following areas:

• engaging employees around some of the real, live, current activities the business is involved in – enabling them to experience some of the things their colleagues do and hopefully gain an appreciation of what’s happening across the wider organisation
• providing some visibility for the more obscure teams and initiatives – giving them their 15 minutes of fame  
• building community by providing an environment in which employees can meet other employees informally, in a largely social setting
• unleashing employee creativity by giving teams the freedom to design and deliver their own exhibition space (working to a consistent brief, of course) 
• bringing dull subjects to life and getting employees to sit up and pay attention to subjects that would normally fly below their radar   

The event I attended featured a Crystal Maze which employees could enter to win prizes if they collected sufficient ‘time tokens’ from around the exhibition.  As for the stands themselves, all sorts of techniques were employed to get team messages across – blackboards, staff in costume, video, stickers, postcards, quizzes, before and after photos, visuals and give-aways – the list goes on and on. 

There was a large area in the centre of the hall where employees got to compete against each other in a ‘drilling and tapping’ competition – effectively having a go at what some of their frontline workers do each day. This was a big hit with staff.

A Big Brother-style diary room even enabled visitors to leave comments on video. Throughout the event interactivity was emphasised – there was even a competition where visitors got to nominate their favourite stand (my own personal favourite was the ‘Old Skool Customer Service’ stand). 

Ask me a few years ago and I’d have probably disliked this approach, but in today’s context it really works. Budgets are tight and there is growing scepticism amongst employees around some glossy, heavily produced, tightly choreographed set-piece events. As we are seeing in other areas – like social media – a more authentic, raw, real world/user-generated approach is sometimes more effective and credible.

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about experiential employee events and I’ve always been a fan – any live event that gets beyond a simple ‘show and tell’ and actually involves people has to be a good thing.  But many of the examples I’ve come across in the past have been glossy, highly theatrical affairs – inevitably costing a huge amount of money. Powerful as these grandiose internal events can be and relevant as they sometimes are, the reality is that we don’t always need a bespoke set, actors, live video and a lighting rig U2 would be proud of. This example shows that sometimes a well thought-through, simple, under-produced, home-grown approach is far more effective.

Lee

Podcasting Perfection – a last minute bargain for internal communicators

CIPR Inside is running a special one-day interactive workshop this month on podcasting – and the good news is we’ve just slashed the price to a more recession-friendly £99+VAT for CIPR members, charities & NGOs (£125+ VAT for non members). I’m sure you’ll agree that’s an absolute bargain for a one day course of this calibre!

The event will take place at the University of Birmingham’s superb Media Centre, from 1000-1600 on Wednesday 22 April 2009.

As with the early days of the desktop publishing revolution, the accessibility of social media tools like blogs and podcasts has prompted a gold rush as communicators and non-communicators alike have rushed to make use of these ‘quick and easy’ channels.

This has resulted in content often becoming little more than an afterthought – of secondary importance to the packaging. But the medium is not the message and this one day CIPR Inside event aims to put the emphasis firmly back on content.

During this one-day seminar you’ll learn how to structure a great podcast, the importance of pace and flow and, ultimately, how to create an effective piece of audio communication.

Led by BAFTA award-winning producer, Natasha Carlish, it will cover: 

• The benefits of podcasting
• The importance of content, structure, messages, clarity, quality.  
• Professional interview techniques
• Professional hints and tips
• Supplying audio to radio stations and multimedia outlets
• Creating your own podcast

We ran this event last year and it went down a storm with everyone who came along – so don’t miss the opportunity this time.

To reserve your place just email CIPRInside@ntlworld.com.

Lee

CIPR Inside leadership comms event this Thursday - new speakers just added

We have just confirmed two great new additions to the panel of business leaders and communicators lined up for the CIPR Inside leadership communication event taking place in London this Thursday (22 January). 

In addition to the excellent speakers already confirmed (see below) we will now be joined by Simon MacDowall from HMRC and Nick Henderson from Guardian GS LLP.

Both Nick and Simon bring different and unique perspectives to the leadership agenda and will further strengthen the panel, promising a lively and informative debate. I, for one, am really looking forward to it.

Here's a little more about them:

Simon MacDowall is currently Director of Communications and Marketing for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), one of the largest government departments with 90,000 staff and a budget of £4.25 billion. Although responsible for both external and internal communications, the challenge of leading a programme to engage and motivate people at a time of restructuring, budget cuts and annual reduction of the workforce is probably the greatest.

Previously he was Director General of Media and Communications at the Ministry of Defence and Communications Director at the Department for Work and Pensions. Before joining the Civil Service in 1999, Simon was Chief of Public Information for NATO in North-western Europe; following on from a career in the Canadian Army, during which he saw service in Canada, Germany, Bosnia, Kosovo, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Nick Henderson is currently the CEO of Guardian GS LLP a strategic risk mitigation company. Guardian provides intelligence and information to large corporations and family offices on how to mitigate people risk.

Prior to joining Guardian Nick was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Coldstream Guards for 24 years. His last appointment was as Commanding Officer.  In the course of 2005 he was responsible for all aspects of security, governance, reconstruction and communications in Basra City, Iraq which included the much-publicised rescue of 2 Special Forces operatives from the Iraqi Police in September of that year.

In Iraq Nick established a comprehensive and structured training plan for the Iraqi Police Force which included all military and civil agencies, national as well as international. This plan has subsequently been adopted by the British Army.  Additionally, he established new procedures to combat the rising threat from roadside bombs and suicide bombers within the city.  He specialises in evaluating threats and establishing teams to implement security measures to neutralize these threats.

Nick has extensive experience at the international and strategic level having worked in the UK Ministry of Defence, with NATO and with the UN.

In addition to these two new speakers, the session will also feature:

• Jonathon Scott, former Group Head of Internal Communication at Royal Sun Alliance
• Sally Costerton, Chairperson and CEO, Hill & Knowlton EMEA
• Richard Dennison, Senior manager - social media at BT plc
• Henri Forde, Head of Internal Communications, City & Guilds Group

The event will take place at Hill & Knowlton's offices (20 Soho Square, London W1A 1PR) from 1600-1830. Tickets cost just £25 + VAT (£28.75) for CIPR members; £35 +VAT (£40.25) for non-members. To reserve your place simply email ciprinside@ntlworld.com.

I hope to see you there.

L

CIPR Inside event: Leadership Communication & Authenticity - London, January 22

Do leaders really understand internal communication? Do internal communication practitioners really understand the challenges that leaders face? Do we even speak the same language?

As we face a dramatic economic downturn – with many organisations restructuring, consolidating their operations and laying people off – what role will internal communicators play in helping their leaders respond to these difficult challenges?

If you happen to be in London on Thursday 22 January and are free during the late afternoon/early evening, why not come along to our next CIPR Inside event to find out the answers?

Organised and hosted by my committee colleague, Hill & Knowlton's Scott McKenzie, 'Leadership Communication and Authenticity' aims to explore the role leaders play in creating a conversation culture inside their organisation, how they establish an authentic voice internally, and the nature of their relationship with professional communicators.

This will be a free-ranging session with experienced practitioners and business leaders on our panel. A facilitated discussion will draw out key themes and issues, before these are hotly debated in open forum. The debate will be followed by a Panel Q&A and then networking drinks.

The event will take place at Hill & Knowlton's offices (20 Soho Square, London W1A 1PR) from 1600-1830. Tickets cost just £25 + VAT (£28.75) for CIPR members; £35 +VAT (£40.25) for non-members. To reserve your place simply email ciprinside@ntlworld.com now.

I hope to see you there.

L

CIPR exclusive: an audience with Bill Quirke - London, Tuesday 4 November

You've heard the positive things I've had to say about Bill Quirke's recent speaking engagements (see my report below from the recent Melcrum SCM Summit) - now it's time to make up your own mind... 

Next Tuesday - for one night only - Bill will be leading an exclusive CIPR Inside event exploring how internal communicators can raise their game and respond to the demands of our fast-changing profession and working environment.

Drawing on his work for the new edition of his classic text “Making the Connections – using internal communication to turn strategy into action” Bill will use a wealth of practical experience with a wide range of international organisations, to identify how to meet the challenges of the changing role of the internal communicator.

His timing is impeccable. As the recession begins to bite internal communicators will be under increasing pressure to demonstrate their worth and prove to management that they have something genuinely useful to contribute. In what is bound to be an entertaining and eye-opening session, Bill will explain not just how to add value, but how to be seen to be adding value.

If you're around next Tuesday, have two hours to spare after work and can afford the recession-busting ticket price of £25 for CIPR members/£25 for non-members (plus VAT), then I can't recommend this one highly enough.  To reserve your place email ciprinside@ntlworld.com now.

The event will take place from 1800-2000 at the CIPR PR Centre, St James's Square, London.

See you there!

L

Views from the SCM Summit - day two, final instalment

Following Bill Quirke's inspiring talk on recession-proofing the internal comms function we chose specific conference tracks and broke into smaller groups for much of the remainder of the day.

More insights from Bill

First off I chose to join Bill again for a more intimate 'clinic' on leadership and line manager communication - a broad, meandering conversation from which a wide range of Bill's views, practical tips and ideas emerged. Key points for me were:

• Our role as communicators is to join the dots - to drive consistencies - at Board level. Senior executives have a habit of conveying conflicting messages - the FD shouts 'let's cut costs' from the rooftops whilst the HRD continues to say 'we want to become a world class employer and provide the best development in the business'. The two messages clash. We need to find the commonality amongst Board members regardless of their functional responsibility- and ensure that the top team is setting the right tone in the right way. To help do this Bill suggested mapping out key messages and, next to each message, highlighting the leadership behaviour that will help reinforce (or, indeed, undermine it).
• When working with senior leaders it's important to create a safe environment - where leaders can make their views and feelings known without undermining their functional responsibilities or being seen to lose face at the top table. A powerful technique we can use is to capture what I call the 'bastard questions' - all those difficult, irritating, explosive questions everyone thinks but no one is brave enough to ask. Posing these questions - as an independent internal communicator who is also the 'voice of the organisation' can help you really cut to the chase.  
• We need to work with leaders' existing skills, characters and personalities - rather than trying to shape them into something they're not. Not everyone can be a Richard Branson. Make it your business to understand what makes them tick. Find out what they're passionate about (horse racing, formula 1, soccer?) and use a metaphor they are comfortable with to help them bring their subject to life.  

Sandwell Community Caring Trust - the power of simple manager-led communication

Next up was Geoff Walker, CEO of Sandwell Community Caring Trust. This was a really interesting session from the boss of a West Midlands-based charitable trust which was recently ranked second in the annual Best Companies to Work For study. Not only was it great to hear another regional accent, but it was genuinely enlightening to hear Geoff's simple recipe for value-adding internal communication.  What he did so well was demonstrate many of the tangible, measurable benefits of an increased investment in face-to-face communication and improved employee engagement. Over a relatively short period SCCT has reduced absence levels from 37 days per year to just 0.3, cut staff turnover from 22 per cent to four per cent, slashed management/admin costs from 24 per cent to six per cent and increased the proportion of spend being used to enhance frontline services from 63 per cent to 87 per cent. Impressive results which would make any CEO or FD sit up and listen. He put much of this success down to freeing up managers and leaders to spend more 'quality time' with staff. 

Internal/external alignment

In the afternoon I ran a small discussion group on the alignment of internal and external communications. My group was passionate about the need for a joined-up approach and all felt that internal comms should be part of an integrated comms function, rather than sitting elsewhere (e.g. HR, Marketing).  They flagged the danger of handy labels like "employee engagement" (step up HR) and "internal brand" (step up Marketing) and the risk of departmental in-fighting in these areas.  To help improve internal/external alignment they suggested more combined roles (generalists rather than specialists in either internal or external), getting iC people to buddy-up with members of the press office, creating virtual teams around key projects and ensuring a joined-up approach to planning.

IKEA UK - the BIG 2008 Retail Seminar

Phil Rogers and Lois Blenkinsop of IKEA UK then jointly ran a session "coaching managers to be more effective leaders at IKEA". A nice example of thinking big, differently and taking risks, this case study revolved around the annual retail seminar which had in the past involved a group of 36 senior managers. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, falling visitor numbers, increased competition from the likes of Tesco and an internal reorganisation, the IKEA team wanted to find a way to involve greater numbers of managers, to identify the potential leaders of tomorrow and to spark real behaviour change. The result was a brave and ambitious retail seminar entitled 'Big 2008' which involved 14 UK stores, 576 direct participants, a further 576 'shadow managers' who back-filled for the permanent managers, 60 retail coaches and 40 content specialists. The programme was run over a period of eight weeks, with a week spent learning about operating an efficient IKEA store, the product range and commerciality, the market and consumer and culture, management and leadership, and a further four weeks spent on the frontline putting that learning into action. It was both a major management development exercise (colleagues voted for shadow leaders) and a giant back-to-the-floor for senior leaders (who spent time shifting product, on the tills, etc). The supporting comms campaign was effective and involved the usual suspects -teaser posters, magazine articles, and intranet content. Anecdotally at least, the results were impressive - the initiative sent a strong and clear signal to the organisation about its ethos/culture/brand, the importance of people and the scope to grow and develop. However, when someone from the audience asked what hard results they had seen, the IKEA duo confessed that, to date, there had been no corresponding increase in sales and minimal impact on employee engagement.

The decline of corporate reputation

Peter Jones, Corporate Communications Director at Bupa, wrapped up the conference by exploring the current state of corporate reputations. With references to a number of recent research studies, he painted a fairly grim picture and suggested that communicators could be doing more to protect and enhance the reputation of big business. He proposed a back to basics approach to communication planning - making sure we identify the right stakeholders, be clear about their current and desired perceptions of the organisation, clarify key messages and measure, measure, measure. I'm all for that. He then scrutinised the communication profession more closely and suggested that in many way we're at fault due to our fragmentation as a profession, a lack of talent, limited learning and development opportunities and poor resource allocation.  Peter went on to criticise some communicators for creating 'do me' departments - largely reactive functions which merely jump to the turn of managers and do what is asked of them, when it is asked of them. By way of a solution he proposed an 'IC Code' for practitioners to follow, which I will repeat in full here:

Our internal communications will be:  

• a primary consideration in any situation affecting the business, its people or its sector
• accurate, honest, contemporaneous, concise and free of jargon
• address all relevant issues
• confidentiality will never be used as an excuse not to communicate
• two-way - we will encourage you to speak up
• will go first to those who need it most

I've created similar charters or codes in the past, but I quite like Peter's version - a good set of guidelines to bear in mind as we go about our day jobs.

And with that the Melcrum SCM Summit for 2008 closed - all in all a good, insightful, thought-provoking and nicely varied event. I look forward to next year. You can read more in the special conference edition of Strategic Communication Management, which is now available from Melcrum. 

L

Views from the SCM Summit - day two, part one

Another good, thought provoking day in Kensington today... Day two of Melcrum's SCM Summit was an interesting journey through the world of employee comms and engagement. During the nine hours between 0800 and 1700 we covered a host of hot topics, including communicating outsourcing, recession-proofing the iC function, line manager and leadership communications, working in partnership with HR, alignment of internal and external comms, and corporate reputation. It was one of those days where there are just so many ideas, theories, concepts and case studies that you come away with your head hurting (or maybe that's just because of my limited brain space?!)

Early bird delegates like me were greeted with a pre-conference session on communicating an IT outsourcing deal - not standard breakfast fodder granted, but interesting nevertheless. While we tucked into our bacon butties, Michael Nord showcased a change communication programme Fifth Business had developed to support the outsourcing of a client's data centre organisation to T-Systems. It was a nice example of how to design and orchestrate a complex, international, multi-channel change comms programme.

There are one or two communication practitioners who have an almost innate ability to cut through the bullshit and get straight to the heart of the matter. US practitioner-commentator Steve Crescenzo is one. Our very own Bill Quirke is another. And this session didn't disappoint. In his usual enigmatic yet straight-talking way Bill suggested how internal communicators might want to respond to the gathering economic storm clouds.

His premise was simple - if we don't hold a mirror up to ourselves pretty damn soon, someone else will do it for us - and we probably won't like what they find. He was talking about the dreaded cost and efficiency review or, worse still, the unilateral cost cutting that often accompanies increasing use of the "R" word. 

Paraphrasing John Lennon, he suggested that for many communicators "life is what happens when you're too busy planning - or looking at best practice". His remedy is to take action to ensure internal communication is focused on delivering the right business outcomes. Activity and value are not, he suggested, the same thing - you can be pumping out bucket loads of award winning content, but not making a blind bit of difference to the stuff that matters to the CEO. Sensible, compelling stuff  - it was a much needed wake-up call.

For those brave enough to glance in the mirror he suggested reviewing your iC function in four key areas - customers, channels, capability and capacity. The starting point is to identify the burning priorities of the business - just what is keeping the CEO awake at night?  Force the top team to be really selective about this - a potentially painful process as adding real value is likely to mean sacrificing some of those pet projects. Once agreed, align behind them and de-prioritise everything else. Decide who is important - who you're there to serve (CEO, COO, HRD, Facilities Manager, Chair of the Social Committee?)  Understand where your time and effort currently goes and then ensure you channel it in the right direction - in supporting and enabling the business priorities. Consider outsourcing the lower value activities. Define your offering - your value proposition - and ensure your internal clients understand what you do and don't do. Review channels for effectiveness. Up skill or, if they don't have the right competencies, replace team members. 

All this was music to my ears. Too many comms functions remain disconnected from the business of business - focused instead on what AstraZeneca's  Mary Lynn Carver described as 'vanity PR' the day before. Too many practitioners get seduced by fluffy and potentially ambiguous concepts like culture and engagement, forgetting that we exist for one reason - to drive the organisation forward and help deliver its vision.  Let's be honest, the sort of robust, comprehensive 'roots and branch' analysis Bill describes is long overdue for many iC functions.

More observations to follow tomorrow....

L

Technorati Tags: internal communication employee communication

Views from the SCM Summit - reporting on day one

I missed out on most of the proceedings today, so much of the following report comes courtesy of my Gatehouse colleague Howard Krais... 

Melcrum's annual SCM Summit opened with a buzz in the room. The large audience (maybe suggesting that training budgets are not being radically cut just yet) were eagerly awaiting one of the ‘gurus’ of internal communications, Roger D’Aprix, who the IABC named in 1998 as one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.

With a new book “Communicating with a Sceptical Workforce” due out shortly, and without the aid of Powerpoint, D’Aprix provided a fascinating overview of what is happening within the internal communications profession, describing how the profession is at a crossroads and how it needs to adapt if it is to be meaningful in what he described as the new information economy.

Interestingly Roger described the way he feels about social media as being akin to being “an agnostic at a prayer meeting” warning that communicators needed to be very clear that social media really will add value to current channels. He also explained that whilst the big picture (mission, vision and strategy etc) remains important more emphasis needs to be given to the little picture, in other words helping people perceive their contributions in terms of their personal worth through proper support of line manager/supervisor communications

And get this, he quoted a recent Henley survey which claimed that people spend an average of 2 hours a day on email, equating to 10 years of your life. And given approximately a third of all emails are considered unnecessary that means that 3 years of your life is wasted on unproductive emails.

After a break, the folk from Involve, one of the Conference sponsors, ran a session aimed at getting attendees to experience real involvement and at the same time think about some of the key issues behind defending resources and budgets – something that might be useful in the coming months!

Using the format of a trial, an actor playing the role of CEO of telecommunications company ‘Lemon’ was accused of cutting budgets and acting against his company’s value. The audience was split down the middle as either being defence or prosecution counsel.

It was a good exercise in researching evidence and drawing out facts, looking at both sides of a story and working out in advance how to counter certain entrenched views, and it was good fun. Ultimately the CEO was found not guilty and was left to enjoy his imaginary sponsorship of West Ham United.

The final session in the morning was delivered by Greg Sage, who outlined how the internal communications team at Tesco communicate with a huge, and highly diverse – yet passionate - audience. A core theme centred on the constant challenge of getting news to people internally before they read it or hear about it in the external media – no easy thing given there are in excess of 300,000 staff based in over 2,200 locations, many of whom do not have PC access.

Greg explained how the internal communication team makes use of a wide range of channels, with a hugely successful face-to-face programme called Team 5 and a recently relaunched fortnightly newspaper called ‘The One’ at its heart, although these are just two of a portfolio of channels available.

Hearing from the man who heads up internal communications at such an iconic brand as Tesco was guaranteed to keep the audience enraptured - meaning that there were far more questions than could be dealt with, whether from those in the room, or those through the impressive Live Interactive voting technology placed on each table.

The afternoon featured speakers from GE Healthcare Life Sciences (a case study on post-acquisition integration) and from Nokia and the Edge Picture Company (what looked like a fascinating session on the teleco's video-based storytelling platform which I understand encourages employees to contribute content). Unfortunately we missed both sessions :-(  

In the closing session Mary Lynn Carver, of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, used her own experience of refocusing the AZ global communication function to underline the need for greater alignment between internal and external communications. "There's only room for one communicator at the top table" she argued before explaining why the interface between these two sometimes disconnected functions is becoming increasingly critical.

The first day wrapped up with an evening drinks reception courtesy of events company Jack Morton. There was a great band on hand, a caricaturist (who somehow made me look like Robbie Coltrane), good company, and the drinks were flowing. What more can one ask for?  

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

L