As mini Miller is due to make an appearance any day now (fingers crossed!), I won’t be out and about attending the events this year. So I thought I’d summarise the ones that I’m aware of and also appeal for comms pros to get in touch with me if you’d like to take the opportunity to write your opinions on what you experience for Diary of an internal communicator. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t have been able to go to all of these! But I’ve written a fairly comprehensive list below and for all stages of careers, to give you a flavour of what is around.

If you work in comms and are planning to attend an industry event, do check out my guest article guidelines and get in touch to let me know what you’re going to and would like to write about.

Why write about industry events?
As we all know, money is tight in the budgets this year and companies are increasingly making tough decisions about what can and can’t be afforded. Unfortunately it seems offsite learning and networking often gets cut and you have to miss out. Well, not any more – I see the value in reading about events that have taken place, yes it’s not the same as actually being there, but hearing the latest industry trends, who is talking about what and seeing examples of that loveliest of all phrases – ‘best practice’ in action, from the perspective of someone who was there, interests me and your feedback shows that you like it too.

The list is below. If you’re going to any of these events and would like to put your hat in the ring to write about them for my blog, do contact me. Are there any others that you’re aware of? If so, do add them below by commenting, thank you, Rachel.

Dates for the diary

• Weekly: #Commschat takes place on Twitter
• Monthly: #SimplyTV webinars
• Throughout the summer: CIPR summer social series
• Ongoing: Melcrum’s Black Belt programme
• Ongoing: CIPR Strategic Management Series
• Ongoing: Regional events for CIPR groups
• Ongoing: Year-long schedule of conferences by PR Week/Haymarket
• 10 May: CIPR, Integrating traditional and social media, London
• 22 May: IoIC, Social media for internal communicators training, London
• 22 May: IoIC, Game Changers event featuring Sarah Hodges, nr Winchester
• 23-25 May: Institute of Internal Comms annual conference, near Birmingham
• 24 May: Social Workplace Conference in London
• 25 May: Deadline for Melcrum’s SCM awards
• 28 May: CIPR Excellence Awards, London
• 29 May: Ask the guru: Practical answers to internal comms dilemmas, London
• 7 June: Running an effective internal comms department, London
• 12 June: Deadline for CIPR Pride Awards
• 13 June: CIPR, Measurement training, London
• 15 June: IoIC Awards, London
• 26 June: VMA Internal Comms showcase awards
• 27 June: Melcrum, IC 101: An introduction to internal comms
• 12/13 June and 12/13 July: The internal comms model (four days), IoIC, London
• 11 September: Melcrum: Intro to Sharepoint for internal communicators
• 9-11 October: Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management summit, London
• 10-13 October: Communication Directors’ Forum, Aurora

Perry Timms is Head of talent and organisational development at the Big Lottery Fund, which awards lottery money to community groups and projects that improve health, education and environment in the UK.

He sent me a link to an interview he filmed with People Management magazine where he talks about using social media for learning – which he describes as creating “a playlist rather than having to listen to full albums”.

The standout quotes for me from Perry’s interview are below and you can watch the whole thing online:

• Twitter has connected me to a influential individuals and a world of different thinking
• I enjoy the excitement, energy and interactivity social media brings
• Apps such as Flipboard mean I get the freshest info I can about the topics I’m interested in
• I’ve found an MBA app so you can experience (Skill-Pill) learning on the go
• People are fearful about the consequence of instant information being accessible by anyone who has access to Twitter or Faceook
• They are also scared about what they can use social media for.  I would urge people to experiment with it and to take a duty of care but the sharing of information and instant accessibility provide a strong case of why you should use it
• A (social media) policy is not necessary if you have a workforce that understands how social media is used and aren’t fearful of the consequences
• You can illustrate good use of social media (with employees) and how influential the use of those tools can be and how it can help them filter information
• In my mind, e-learning is passive and not a learning tool, the stimulus isn’t there. Social media gives you interactivity and excitement. It is short bursts – what you want, where you want it
• Social media… provides a playlist of your own learning content rather than be shoved a couple of albums to listen to from start to finish.It’s about user-driven and user-produced playlists.

What are your experience of using social media for learning? Do you agree with Perry’s thoughts? Feel free to comment below, Rachel.

I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve  come across which focus on top tips for internal communicators to help them encourage leaders to consider incorporating new channels, be more visible and to start engaging in dialogue with employees. These certainly provide value for comms pros but I decided to do something different and rather than write from a professional communicator’s point of view, look for a senior manager who is doing this and ask them to provide a fresh perspective.

One leader who regularly uses social media is Dean Royles, Director of the National Health Service (NHS) Employers Organisation. Some of his communications can be read via Twitter, and you can see his messages and videos on his organisation’s website. He is a member of the Employee Engagement Task Force and I asked Dean to write an article for Diary of an internal communicator to provide an insight for my readers from the view of a leader who sees the value in communicating with employees and using social media to do so. I’m delighted that he was happy to oblige, so I’ll hand over to him to carry on the story, Rachel.

Why blog? Why tweet? With a busy schedule and pressured job, where do you get time?
Despite all the things on my agenda – pay, pensions, industrial action, health and well being, politics – this is the most commonly asked question. As an advocate of social media perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. But the question is always asked as if I see blogging or tweeting as a discretionary hobby rather than a fundamental part of my role.

What do I see that some others don’t? It seems to me that asking why I blog is like asking why I bother to communicate. No one asks me why I speak in meetings! Or why I email or why we do press releases. Yet social media seems to me to be a much more effective media. It is an essential part of stakeholder relations and a key aspect of management and leadership.

You will find communication on page one of any management textbook. Usually with a flow chart! New medias don’t diminish the need for communication – they exacerbate it. If you think you get by without, you are probably wrong IMHO (an acronym for Tweeters!), it becomes exponentially more important.

Don’t get me wrong. I do take the time and effort to chat to staff and keep up to date with employees, stakeholders and partners face to face whenever I can. But the ground you can cover on social media is enormous.

If you are like me you are probably reading this on a train, bus or on your way to or from work. It doesn’t feel an imposition on your time to read it does it? In the same way there was no imposition on my time to write it. It’s part of what I do and who I am.

Showing personality
Another great advantage of blogging and other forms of social media, in addition to reach (you can get your message to thousands more than you would than newsletters and emails) is the opportunity to give of yourself and show your personality and values.

The nature of my job means I do get quoted regularly in magazines and newspapers. British citizens love the NHS and this feeds an appetite for information and views. This relationship is something I love about the job, and I hope I get the response and tone right to the circumstances of the story.  But in all those quotes and references, there is no opportunity for the reader to see my personality – to see who I am, what’s important to me. Yet I know from face to face communications that this is such an important part of whether people believe what I say. Am I consistent and does it resonate with what they know about me? With social media I feel I can engage in this territory.

Those that follow me and read my blogs know that I’m a dad, a father to four children, a husband, a hiker and a Sheffield united fan (really!). That I’m proud – very proud – to be a public sector manager. That I think whistleblowing is good for the NHS and that we don’t praise NHS managers enough, that partnership working with unions is good for patients and good for employers.

Opportunities to listen
It also allows me to listen, to find out about others, to understand the issues and anxieties of those that work in the NHS, and to pick up on the tone of conversations and what issues are rising up the agenda and what issues are resolving themselves. It really is a fantastic way of giving of yourself and listening. Give it a go. It’s the new management by walking about!

Post author: Dean Royles.

Thank you to Dean for providing insight into the value he places on communicating with employees and using social media. I think it’s refreshing to come across a leader who clearly sees how his communications have a role to play within the make-up of an organisation and why social media works for him. What do you think of what he has written? Does anything surprise you? Feel free to comment below and thanks as ever for stopping by, Rachel.

She looks at what was discussed, shares her views and highlights what took place including a social media panel, a session about the seven deadly sins of communication and creating engaging films.

Have you attended a comms event recently that you think would be beneficial to share with other comms pros? Do get in contact with your ideas and check out my guest writing guidelines.

Over to you Sonsoles….

The social media panel of the Simply Summit saw some brilliant ideas raised by the speakers. Mark Comerford explained how we are moving from a digital to a networking society saying: “networking means participating in culture, changing storytelling by storybuilding”.

According to Comerford, the role of communications professionals is to build smarter networks and be responsive to change, because if you aren’t ‘your organisation is going to fail’. He said you can’t ignore the fact that these new media exist, therefore organisations should adapt to this change.

The rest of panellists explained their experiences implementing social media for internal communications at their companies. It was interesting to listen to Mark Morrell, former Intranet Manager at BT, pointing out that it was very difficult to implement some elements, such as blogging, since they implied a cultural change for the company. “We had to make people understand what these new tools could do for them”, emphasised Morrell, who also highlighted how important it is to try out these tools within companies.

Creating a fanclub
Other interesting panellist was Mark Allotey, Digital Internal Platforms manager for Telefónica O2 UK, who also explained how difficult was for him to break the silos inside the organisation when creating their social platform ‘Fanclub’.

I also enjoyed the session by Mike Grafham, from Yammer’s Customer Success team for EMEA, and Jasmine Elnadeem, Social Media Trainer and Consultant, who shared their experiences and views about the use of social media for internal communications.

The seven deadly sins of communication
In a really engaging and fun presentation, Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela were in charge of showing how the seven deadly sins can be translated to the work of communications professionals. Here is their very personal translation:

1. Wrath: get on well with all your colleagues working in different departments in your organisation
2. Greed: just use the tools or channels more suitable for your message. Don’t use too many channels just because you can
3. Pride: go out and speak to real people to measure how successful your communications are
4. Lust: don’t fall in love with your own stuff, be tough on your own words
5. Envy: stop complaining and envying other people in the organisation!
6. Gluttony: don’t use too many words when just a few can work
7. Sloth: don’t do always the same, try to communicate in new ways, be original

Internal communication in the real world
In what I think was a perfect end to the day, Keith Porter and Julie Bellham, from Standard Chartered, talked about the lessons learnt from their internal communications practices. I found it really inspiring listening to how they changed to a better internal magazine, focusing on stories about people and giving it a fresher image using texts and design. They described how they created an engaging corporate video by working with their CEO to explain their Liverpool FC sponsorship.

Through all of the initiatives they shared, their lessons learnt included:

• provide clear links to company strategy
• measure your communications
• try new things
• you can increase management interactivity through communication

Being braver
Both Keith and Julie said that in spite of all efforts, some people within companies ‘just won’t get it’. My key takeaway from their talk and successful ideas, was that communicators need to be braver. Do you agree with them?

Post author: Sonsoles Lumbreras

Thank you very much for your thoughts Sonsoles. If you attended the Simply Summit and have some views on what was discussed, or from this article, you can comment below.  You can also find more information about the summit and its speakers on their Storify.

The course has now been finalised and I thought I’d share details of the MSc Internal Communication Management course in case anyone is considering furthering their comms career through education.

It will start in October 2012 and offers students opportunities to develop specialist internal communication knowledge and professional skills.  It has been designed for part-time students who will generally be in full-time employment in a range of sectors and organisations. It suits communication professionals currently working in internal communication, comms pros who aspire to an internal comms management career and general managers interested in internal comms.

The university says: “The blended learning delivery course format (short residentials followed by individual study and online activities) suit UK and EU students as well as international students resident overseas. Typically, students spend a minimum of 10 hours a week on their module studies. The course is designed for participants who are ready to move beyond training courses and are keen to engage in masters level learning. Participants will extend their intellectual capacity, develop their careers, and make valuable contributions to the performance of their organisations. They will gain insight concerning communication contributions to employee engagement.”

What are the entry requirements?

• An honours degree (normally equivalent to a British 2:2 or above), or equivalent professional qualification. Applicants without a degree but with academic aptitude and extensive suitable experience, for example in corporate communications, public relations, management, marketing, journalism, or general business experience may be considered
• A strong interest in the challenges of internal communication evidenced in a statement of about 500-words which describes the reasons they want to join the programme, and what they hope to gain from the experience
• Appropriate computer literacy and access
• Two references that confirm capacity to successfully engage in postgraduate study. Some candidates may be invited for interviews
• Those with the Advanced Prior Learning (such as the CIPR Diploma in Internal Communication and the IoIC’s Advanced Diploma of Proficiency in Internal Communication) may be exempt from the PR4019 Internal Communication and Organisational Behaviour module
• Evidence of appropriate English language competence through an official language test for non-native English speakers e.g. IELTS 6.5 or equivalent

To find out more about the course including timings, costs and much more, see the university’s website or contact course leader Dr Mary Welch: mwelch@uclan.ac.uk

If you’re looking for information about comms courses, don’t forget to check out my Rachel’s Resources page for ideas. Got something you think should be included? Do get in touch and let me know.

Post author: Rachel Miller

Alongside Anna Light from Edinburgh Airport, Kerry is writing about what should be measured by internal communications and by whom.

Kerry said: “We’re looking for examples of different methods, frequency, cost-effectiveness, formal and informal that we can include as part of our report. We would love to hear from comms professionals, this can be anonymous but better still with names and organisations attributed.”

If you have examples of how you measure internal communication that you’re happy to share with Kerry and Anna, you can contact them via email: Kerry.ambrose@essex.gov.uk or anna.light@baa.co.uk or comment via their post in the IoIC LinkedIn group. Thank you in advance for your help, Rachel.

CIPR hosts measurement training 
If you’re looking for training on internal comms measurement, I spotted that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is hosting an event next month.

It is the CIPR Inside Measurement Summit: Demonstrating Value and is happening on 13 June at CIPR headquarters (52-53 Russell Square, London, WC1B 4HP) from 9.30am-2pm.

Want to know what and how to measure the value of internal communications? Want to know what others in our industry are doing now to measure and show the effect of internal communications has on business outcomes? There will be a panel of expert speakers sharing their experience and how they are measuring the value of internal communications.

Speakers include David Iannelli from Hill & Knowlton, Paul Roberts from Ibis Communications, Angela Sinickas from Sinicakas Communications, Tracey Playle from Pickle Jar Communications and Sean Trainor from Uber engagement.

The finer details
You can follow CIPR Inside on Twitter. The event costs £65 for CIPR members and £85 for non CIPR members and you can book via this link. If you’re planning to attend and would like to write a guest article for Diary of an internal communicator, do get in touch, and you could see your work published on this site to share your thoughts with other comms pros.

Post author: Rachel Miller

Comms professional Sonsoles Lumbreras attended the summit and here she shares her thoughts with Diary of an internal communicator on what she heard and saw. This is part one and I will publish part two later this week.

Over to you Sonsoles…

Last week I attended the Simply Summit, a full day of interesting talks about best practices in internal communications. Professionals from companies and institutions such as Standard Chartered, Telefónica O2, UBS and the European Commission, as well as communications gurus and experts such as Euan Semple, Steve Crescenzo, Jim Ylisela, and John Smythe were some of the outstanding speakers.

The summit started with John Smythe talking about the ‘Velvet revolution for employee communication’, comparing it to the Arab Spring, and pointing out the changing role of internal communicators. Smythe underlined that effective engagement still requires top down clarity, and said that power sharing is what engages people at work nowadays.

According to Smythe, internal communicators have these roles:

• Advisor challenging the pattern of top down communication
• Negotiating with elites where others can contribute to add value and accelerate change by understanding the emotional side of your population
• Building the engagement challenge into change and operational improvement processes
• And the most important by far, grafting engagement capability into training, development, performance management and recognition

Organisations don’t tweet, people do
Euan Semple, author of the book ‘Organisations don’t tweet, people do’, gave his insights about the use of social media within companies. Semple highlighted the importance of getting rid of the fears around collaborative tools that can help to improve employee communication in organisations. According to Semple, we should ‘get technology out of the way’, since this can scare many managers who are not comfortable with it, and focus on the content in these tools. Semple said the main reason why companies shouldn’t be reluctant to adopt social media tools is that employees choose where they take part in conversations, and social media is now the place where those conversations are taking place. 

Engaging new employees through social media
Ian Andersen, external communications advisor to the European Commission’s interpretation department, brought some interesting examples of how they are engaging new employees by using social media, as a part of a wider communications campaign. They know that their future employees are present on these platforms so say this is an easy way to engage the right audiences to work for the EC interpretation department.

It was really interesting to see how the European Commission has built communities of linguistics around the world thanks to social media, having reached 8,900 fans on Facebook, 60,000 views on Youtube and more than 30,000 visits per month on European websites. Andersen highlighted that some of the keys for engagement are showing that there are real people listening behind the institution’s social media channels, being approachable and easygoing, responding quickly and helpfully to questions and involving people. 

Engaging employees for information security
Christoph Ruedt, from UBS, gave some interesting tips about how to create a secure culture. Some of the main points that Ruedt highlighted around the best way to create this culture were:

• making people the solution and not the problem
• thinking of information security as an ongoing effort
• present information security an internal part of your business, not an add-on.

He talked about an information security campaign at UBS and how it had two steps: establish importance and inspiring action. With these aims, Ruedt explained how they created informative posters where employees themselves gave advice about good behaviours at work regarding information security.

Tracking engagement
Director of Corporate Communications at Novozymes, Jeppe Glahn, was in charge of giving some guidelines about how to move communications into the heart of the business. In a very engaging talk, Glahn gave some tips to encourage top management teams to value communications at the organisation, such as do not only show managers the solution, but also the need to do something and to not be shy to ask questions to the management team.

Glahn highlighted three communications roles for line managers:

• Works manager: create coherence and meaning, communicate systematically and be available and listen
• Change agent: make it clear why the change is needed, explain how it will impact your employers and use regular two-way communication to drive the change.
• Visionary strategist: paint an attractive picture of the future; motivate your employees to contribute and reward and recognise.

Comms professionals, particularly those working in internal communications, are no doubt familiar with the 2009 Engaging for Success report to Government by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke. Despite the change in Government, employee engagement was one of the very few initiatives considered so significant in its own right that the new Government took an interest too, although it’s important to note that the Task Force is not funded by them, but by its members.

Back in May 2011 I attended the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) annual conference in Bournemouth and wrote about the MacLeod report after hearing MacLeod speak, which you can read here.

From MacLeod to the masses
This week I’ve been in touch with Ali Godding who has been seconded to the Task Force. In this new role she will undertake a variety of activities to bring the work of the movement to life for as many people as possible. This will include being focused on communications and updates from the various work streams. Ali has just published the first blog post from the group on the back of Monday’s conference, so I thought I’d share it with readers of Diary of an internal communicator.

She is planning to update people with news from the Task Force via the official Engage for Success blog, including what’s been happening with regional subgroups. I’ve added it to my blogroll, so do be sure to check in with it to keep updated with the latest news.

Alongside Ali (@EngagementAG), the blog will be managed by fellow secondee Cathy Brown (@cathyab) and they will both be tweeting via the official Task Force Twitter account @Engage4Success. You can also check out the Task Force via their Facebook page and their LinkedIn group. Alternatively contact them: info@engagingforsuccess.org

Further reading
Doug Shaw, who runs What Goes Around Limited, has published his own article about Monday’s Task Force conference, offering his thoughts on how it went and what he saw.

If the Task Force is new to you, check out this film for an overview of what the practitioner group is trying to achieve and if you have any comments for them, do get in touch via the links above.

What do you think about the employee engagement task force? Do you think that employee engagement is being recognised in your workplace and by businesses as an essential ingredient to business success? Feel free to share your thoughts below, Rachel.

I’m a CIPR member and last year I decided to start sharing my blog posts with the site so they appear in their newsfeed. This week Conversation is celebrating its first birthday. To mark the occasion they highlighted the most popular posts from the previous 12 months and I’m delighted to say that one of mine is in that handful. I wasn’t surprised to discover it was the Internal Comms ‘What I do’ meme that I created. That is the most popular post on my blog and is still getting hits daily, despite being published in February.

The top five most popular Conversation posts from its first 12 months were:

1. Braehead row puts Scotland on the map for PR and social media disasters, by Scott Douglas

2. Tedia Studies: Why boredom is good for your creativity, by Andy Green

3. Social media analytics: Measuring your results, by Michael Litman

4. What people think I do meme – internal communications, by Rachel Miller

5. January 2012: The month in #FAIL, by Kate Hartley

They kicked off last week and are informal and relaxed sessions in London that will cover all things digital and provide good opportunities to network. Tickets are only £10 plus VAT per session.

The next one is on Thursday, 26 April and will feature Richard Bagnall from Metrica. He will be looking at how to make the most out of data-driven public relations.

Other upcoming sessions include:

• 3 May – What has Google ever done for PR?
• 10 May – Integrating traditional and social media
• 15 May – Real time public relations
• 24 May – The future of broadcast
• 7 June – Back to the future for public sector
• 14 June – Social media and the third sector
• 28 June – Social media newsrooms
• 5 July – Social media and journalism
• 12 July – Community management tools and techniques

There will be ‘Social Summer Plus’ events on 16 August, 20 September, 11 October, 8 November and 6 December.

Venue
Doors open for all CIPR HQ sessions at 5pm, the presentation will begin promptly at 5.20pm and the evening will finish at 7.30pm. The venue is: CIPR Public Relations Centre, 
52-53 Russell Square,
 London, 
WC1B 4HP.

How to book
If you’re interested in attending any of the sessions, you can book here.

For more info
Contact the CIPR events team on 020 7631 6900 or email events@cipr.co.uk. The CIPR would like to hear from anyone who has topic ideas for future Social Summers, so if that’s you, contact Georgina Sansom: ginas@cipr.co.uk. If you’re not based in London, regional groups are planning to host their own events. Find out more.

Are you going?
If you are planning to attend any of these sessions and would like to share your thoughts on what you experience with readers of Diary of an internal communicator in the form of a guest post, do please get in touch with me.

Post author: Rachel Miller