Owen:

Hello and welcome to Message Makers. This is where we dive into the knowledge, insight and experience shaping the world of communications. I'm really pleased to be joined today by Dan Gibbons from Capita. It's great to have you with us Dan.

Thanks very much for joining us. And if we could start out by just getting a bit of information about your background. So, you've worked in L&D, you've worked in events, you worked in marketing, just describe that journey into comms for us Dan.

Finding a path into internal communications.

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you very much for for having me firstly. It's my absolute pleasure to be on. I've had a really varied career. So when I talk through my career journey, you'll see that there's not really been a master plan.

At university I did a course called Writing, Directing and Performance. I really got into the video side of that. So my first job, was as a video editor, but I was also an Events Manager as well - like a media production company. So that was very much thrown in at the deep end and I learned a lot of things very quickly. And I think actually that allowed me to to have quite a few different options, because being in events, you've got to be able to juggle lots of things at one time.

And being trained as a video editor gave me that creative side as well. So then I found a route into marketing, and I did a bit more work with the learning and development team at that company. And I just thought, do you know what? Why not? Let's give L&D go. So I actually moved into that world - a complete side step.

I worked in L&D for about three years as an L&D advisor. And then I started really merging my background in marketing with L&D. I started to get more involved in in the internal comms side of things. And then I actually moved to another organization that was a bit of a dual role.

So it was internal comms, mixed with the the L&D side. And actually over time, I thought, my skillset is best suited to internal comms. So that was the route that I decided to go down after that, because it allowed me to play to all of my different strengths, and it was the thing that I found most rewarding and enjoyable for a variety of reasons.

But ultimately, that's how I ended up as a Comms and Engagement Manager at Capita. So yes, there was definitely no master plan, but I seem to have ended up where I'm happy. So, sometimes not having a plan was apparently a good thing.

Owen:

And just thinking about that, you worked in marketing with that kind of campaign mindset. Most of the people I talk to and work with in marketing are very data driven. Thinking in campaigns, thinking about outcomes. Working previously in production, you're actually having those skills and knowing what goes into making something.

And then L&D is very specific, trying to train people and impart knowledge. Are there elements that sit within all of those that now sit within your comms practice?

Dan:

Absolutely, I think that is partly what I enjoy about it. By having a career where there's not been a plan, I've sort of jumped from one thing to another. I was at several points thinking, what's my career path looking like here? Because when I was at school and we talked about different career options and journeys, it all seemed very linear.

And I was thinking, oh, it just seems a bit chaotic. But actually with comms, I was able to take that multitude of experiences that I'd had, and the skills I developed, to be able to make use of it. So I think with L&D, it was the people side and getting a lot more into the idea of research about psychology and motivation and engagement.

Owen:

Did you see that wiggly journey as an advantage? And do you think that's something for people working in comms, or aspiring to work in comms, that's an advantage to them do you think?

Why internal communications attracts unexpected careers.

Dan:

I think so, I think it's interesting. I don't know many people who are in the world of internal comms that actually set out to do that. I mean, I didn't really know about internal comms at all until I was well into my second job in marketing. I think that maybe partly for that reason, people don't naturally see it as a career route.

It's something that people potentially stumble across and then find it's their niche, basically.

Owen:

Focusing on the marketing side of it. There's a lot of people that I work with who are in marketing and are very data driven. All the decisions that they make will be driven by the impact that it has and the data that they've got available. Is that something that you've taken into internal comms? Have you used data to drive some of the decisions you've made at any point Dan?

The role of data in shaping communications strategy.

Dan:

I think data is a really good starting point because that can help you set out your course. So, if you looked at the data from things like readership rates, straight away you can get a picture of what people are engaging with? What aren't they engaging with? And that's going to allow us to move forwards. Equally with things like satisfaction surveys from employees, you can start to get a sense of what is it that are the strengths of the things that you're doing in the coms and people space and where it is that you need to improve.

And although there's lots of other elements after that to really implement successful initiatives and campaigns, I would always say data is the starting point. And that's the thing that underpins and drives all of those future decisions.

Owen:

I think it's interesting as well using data. You just mentioned there the read rates, or the consumption rates on a particular channel are good, but also when they're not good. I think that's something that people miss sometimes. That data can be used to support a case to do something, but they can also be used to support a case to not do something.

When instinct and experience challenge the data.

Dan:

Yeah, definitely. And I think that a lot of the time when you're making these big decisions, especially anything that's got a real cost implication and/or a time implication, it does need to be justified. And occasionally when you're looking at the data, even if you've got plans to progress with something, occasionally the data just says actually, you may like this idea, but people just aren't going with it for whatever reason.

And, as you said, that can sometimes lead to a decision to go actually, we'll just pause this. In my experience, I had various different internal comms initiatives that we've run, and sometimes it works really well in one organisation. Perhaps naively, I've got into another organisation and gone, yeah, this worked really well in the previous one, we should definitely do this. And then we'll do a few.

So for example, I've tried to do some internal podcasts where we've said we're going to get to know different employees. In one company, people loved it. In other companies, people are like, I'm not really interested in this. It's not going. And actually, that's when having the data is really useful, because I could anecdotally say oh, well I've spoke to some colleagues and they really like it.

But equally I could look at data that says that might be the case for them, but the vast majority of people have switched off after episode one and they're not interested.

Owen:

It's really interesting that. I think that point of, okay, I think this is going to work, I've tried it somewhere else. Having that experience and that gut feeling is really valuable. Having the data that backs it up, or disproves the theory. And so I think, you need both sides of that coin. You can't just have one or the other.

So it would be useful to just get a bit of background about Capita, the organisation that you work for. So they're an outsourcing partner, quite a large organisation. Capita conducts work for lots of different other organisations. So you might be employed by Capita but carrying out work for another organisation. Does that present any challenges when you're communicating? When you've got different brands and different tones of voices? Different audiences in different parts of the business?

Communicating across complex organisations.

Dan:

Absolutely. Working for a large company like Capita, it almost feels at times like yes, we've got the collective company and absolutely we've got shared values. From a comms point of view, there's guidance from the central group brand tone of voice and things like that.

A lot of the time as well, we work very closely with with our client groups. And actually that does mean that you've got to have, at times, a bit of a bespoke approach that suits that you and your client. That does present an interesting challenge.

Owen:

And how did you approach that challenge? When we chatted earlier, you talked about an exercise that you've been through, to get to that point. So maybe talking in general terms, can you explain a little bit about how you tackled that?

Defining culture through collaboration.

Dan:

I think a big part of that's actually been looking at culture, because culture can be viewed in a number of different ways. And one of the things that we were discussing is, actually, do we view culture purely as the way that we treat people? The sort of typical thing people imagined when they think of culture. What does it feel like to be at work? Are we going to be respectful to each other?

Or do we view culture as all encompassing? So for example, you've got the people culture, but you've also got a high performance culture. And that's very much the route that we went down. We said, we should look at culture as something that's all encompassing.

And actually, if we focus on culture as the key point to looking at how we can establish the best working practices going forward, and the best practices in terms of seating our people in our operation. That's very much what we need to do. So to get to that point, we did an awful lot of work. We actually started by going, let's look at our people survey and say, what is it that people feel is working well? And where could those areas of improvement be?

Let's go beyond the data and get the insight beyond that. So, we got people from both the client side and the Capita side. We ran a number of focus groups with loads of people from right across both organisations. And we asked some simple questions from a cultural perspective. What's going well? What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses?

And what we agreed was actually, we need to have something definitive to go after rather than just saying, let's improve culture. So we agreed that we need to come up with, what we called the culture code. So we need to look at all of the data that people have come up with as part of these focus groups and say, actually, let's have a collective agreement on what are our guiding principles that are going to work for both Capita and the client side. And that is going to be the basis on which we base our approach to culture.

And that includes how we treat our people. That includes our ways of working. That includes our motivation and our mission and our purpose. Having that was then our sort of key starting point. Beyond then, it was the case of communicating that at the business through a varied campaign. We know that anything to do with culture, getting line managers involved is a key thing.

So we run a number of line manager training sessions to really get them to not only understand, but also champion. And actually, one of the most recent things we did, it culminated in having a Culture Day where we said for one day, we're going to all down tools, as it were. We're going to meet in various locations right across the country, and we're going to spend the day reflecting on culture with a number of exercises, including more discussions and more workshops and going through what does the culture code means to people?

How can we, as a business, move forward with it, but also within your teams? How can you move forward and progress with it? And then off the back of that, we've now got a series of actions that we're going to be embedding. So that project was really, I would say, a key element of allowing us to move forward as both, the outsourcer in Capita and then the client side as well.

So finding that thing in culture, and saying this is going to be the basis for how we effectively move forward.

Owen:

It sounds like quite an all encompassing project. But I think the key points in there, the two bits that really stand out for me, are involving people from the start. So it's not a top down, driven approach, it's getting everybody involved. And then, the manager side as well. Every single survey that comes out says that, you know, people's direct line manager is the most trusted source of information within an organisation.

So recognising that and engaging with that audience and making sure they've got the tools, and presumably that everybody is aware that this is something that everybody's fed into as well.

Building culture code employees believe in.

Dan:

Definitely, and I think that was the key thing for us. One of the key elements to me with any new initiative or campaign, and especially something like this with culture, if you get buy-in of people, it makes it feel like they are owning it - and it's not being done to them.

I've been in companies before where they've done exercises like this, but purely with the senior leadership team, and they've said, right, we've had an away day, we've come up with what our culture's going to look like. And people go, well, I don't know. That doesn't really work with me. It feels a bit jarring, that doesn't feel like the business I work for.

But by involving people from the start and saying, actually, this is your organisation and we want you to own this, we find that's much more impactful and you are going to win people over. And also from a culture point of view, you've got to really do it that way. Because if we're saying we want you to live and breathe our culture, you've got to basically agree on what that is going to look like so we can work together on that, rather than it being done to them.

And on the point about line managers, 100%. I think there's been various studies and stats that say when people are unhappy at work, a lot of the time they naturally will turn to their line manager. Potentially unfairly or not, they might go, in a way, I'm going to blame them. There's some sort of frustration because I should be happy at work and my manager should be making me happy.

And that's, in a way, human nature. But partly that's why we thought with culture, that's why we need to make sure that the line managers are fully on board with this as well, and that they really understand this. So, if they are encountering any difficulties within individuals or within teams, they fully understand what we're asking from a cultural perspective. We've got that clear standard now.

And it makes it a lot easier for them when they are setting out performance objectives and performance targets to say, when it comes to the values and behaviours, which is a really important metric by which we evaluate success within our employees, we've now got a clear standard. So that takes away the ambiguity of what somebody that's positively contributing to the culture looks like, and someone that's detracting from it.

So getting their buy in was was absolutely crucial, for sure.

Owen:

So when we spoke before, I know diversity is really important at Capita, as it is to many large organisations. There's also a narrative going on with international pressure on diversity and inclusion. I think that term, diversity, is being seen by some as being a little bit triggering.

We've seen the, kind of, rebranding of diversity and inclusion to wellbeing and inclusion in a lot of organisations. We've seen, I guess, a shift in tone slightly, and possibly a shift in some of the activity.

Is that something that you've seen? Or is that something that you just carried on with as before?

How are you approaching, wellbeing and inclusion, or diversity and inclusion, whatever title you give it at Capita?

Embedding diversity and inclusion through everyday communication.

Dan:

Yeah. So diversity and inclusion is really, really important for us. So, in short, we have carried on. So there's not been any change internally in any language at all, because we really recognise the importance of diversity and inclusion. As you mentioned, there has been a shift in the political landscape. But for us, it's about saying well actually, we can see with clear evidence the importance of having diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of skill set. Especially being a multinational organisation, we can see those benefits first hand, in addition to all of the the numerous studies that back that up.

So from our point of view, we very much carry on as normal. We're used to it being part of the drumbeat of our communication anyway. Within the specific contracts with our clients, supporting the broader priorities of Capita, we've got our own diversity, equity and inclusion strategy.

From a comms perspective, our job is to to make sure we embed that. Because, as I said, for us it's about seeing that output. Yes, there's the morale aspect. There's the people element, which is really important. But if I was thinking purely in sort of hardheaded business terms, actually performance is just much better when you have got a diverse workforce, because that allows you broadly to pick from the broadest talent pool, and that's going to allow you ultimately to have the best people.

Owen:

And you mentioned comms supporting on that, what role do you see comms playing in embedding that within the organisation.

Dan:

So from a comms perspective, obviously if people come into the organisation, we don't know what their views are. So how do they feel about that? We're not sure. So in some sense, we might need to do a bit of continuous selling as to why it's important.

But for us, that's not so much our primary purpose. It's more just talking about it in terms of everyday language. It is our general approach. It's an important part of what we do, and how we approach what we do. So in one sense, it's just part of our BAU.

Is internal communications a support function or strategic driver?

Owen:

So it's almost not having diversity and inclusion comms, but making sure your comms are diverse?

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really, really nice way of putting it. It's not saying, right, whenever we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, it gets its own branding, its own separate column, and we talk about it very differently. It's how we talk about all the other comms. It's saying it's part of that, that regular drumbeat of communication.

Owen:

And then when we were talking before, there was a couple of terms that came up, and one of them was comms as a support function. Some of the people that I know kind of take great offence at that term.

Whether comms is a support function, whether it's a strategic driver, where it sits within the organisation. Is it in HR? Is it its own unit? In some places it sits in a kind of combined comms team. I don't think there is any right answer necessarily. And I think it's different across different organisations.

But if I had to put you on the spot, where do you think comms should sit? Where do you think it could be most effective? And is it a support function or is it a strategic driver?

Dan:

So I think in terms of where it sits, I've actually been in organisations with both sides of the coin. So I've sat in internal comms functions within marketing, and I've also sat within HR. As you said, I don't think there's there's a right or wrong answer. But in line with your question, I would lean towards it sitting within the HR function, purely because of that engagement side of things.

I think sometimes it can be a little easier when you're looking at how we can push engagement initiatives if you're working? I suppose you're much more aligned with the HR side of the business. So, I suppose it's not necessarily saying you're going to perform better as an internal comms function under HR. It's probably more of a practical point, if you're working closely with HR.

But, I think equally, I would say that there's a lot of benefit to the marketing space because from a communication point of view, a lot of the time there is that duality. So when it comes to tone of voice, you've got the external brand and the way that we communicate. And I'm a believer that that shouldn't be totally different to the way that you communicate internally.

It just needs to be altered and tweaked.

Owen:

I like that you've hedged your bets there a little bit as well. It's interesting, you talk about collaboration as well, collaborating between those different functions, so collaborating between marketing and comms and HR. How do you go about collaborating with those different disciplines? Have you got any hints or tips on how to make sure that's as effective as possible?

Stakeholder management and cross-team collaboration.

Dan:

Yeah, 100%. I think it is really important to look at the broader narratives, in line with the different projects, initiatives, campaign and news stories that you want to put out there. It is definitely important to look at how we get that cadence right. And where possible, I suppose you could call it a form of a comms calendar, you can look at where you are working closely with the HR function and go, right, in terms of the people initiatives, what is it that you've got coming out? Is there going to be new approaches to performance reviews? Or is there going to be mandatory training coming out? And equally in the marketing space it's going, well, externally what's the plan for how you're going to be communicating things out to our customers? And equally, internally, what do we need to do to reflect that?

So I think from a marketing point of view, I've always found it frustrating when colleagues hear about things externally first and they have to go on the company website to get the news. And then internally, we might shout about it a week or two later.

So for me, aligning that is really important. So, at times it's just using some of that time management and planning to go, how are we going to make sure that this all sits together? And as you said, not having just one week with a huge dump of information in comms that people just can't keep up with, and then having a bit of a fallow week.

So there definitely needs to be a fair amount of stakeholder management and negotiation. I think we've got to make sure that we are proactively forming really good working relationships with a number of teams. I think that's absolutely essential.

If you're sitting in the comms space, you've got to make sure that you get on with with all these different stakeholders from across the business, and that you can show them that if they've got something that they need to to get out to the organisation, they can rely on you as a trusted comms expert.

And in return, you want to be able to rely on them to communicate openly with you and keep you well informed of what's going on in that specific area.

Owen:

And I think that goes back to that point of is comms a support function, or is it a strategic driver? I think when you're talking about it in that way of collating all of the different messages and initiatives and kind of owning that space. Managing the stakeholders across it, but also making sure that anything that is going out that's being communicated is driving back to the strategy as well.

I mean, comms is often the bad guy that has to say no. Can we talk about this thing? Well, not right now because of X, Y and Z. And I think that's where it does very much becomes a strategic driver. One of the things you mentioned there as well was that stakeholder management and how important that is to manage stakeholders across all those different parts of the business.

How do you approach that?

Dan:

In terms of managing stakeholders, I think the key thing is to establish those relationships. When you're new to a business, and you're starting out as the new comms manager, at times you can't necessarily expect that to be automatic. You have to build up that degree of trust and that does take time.

The way I view it is, you have to work around the business and start to collect that group of stakeholders from each area and go, okay, this is the person that I can go to for this business area. I need to make sure I'm having a really open and collaborative dialogue.

Sometimes for me, I find just having a regular cadence of meetings in the diary is really useful. So rather than saying, we'll catch up as and when. It's saying actually, let's put something in weekly if needed, or every two weeks we've got 30 minutes in the diary. We're going to run through things. I'd always rather have a number of regular meetings set up, and say we don't need it, than find that certain areas of the business just slip off the radar.

I remember when I joined companies, initially people might be very prescriptive and they may write the comms word for word and not want it to be changed. And actually over time, if they can see the the benefit in the influence of letting the person that really knows comms get involved in that and help with the process over time, they actually let go a little bit.

To the point where, I've got this with a few people I work with now who are heads of other departments that often say, we want to launch this thing. Here's the info. I completely trust you to just come up with the launch comms campaign. So I'm just going to hand it over to your team, because you guys are the experts in this. And when you can get to to that position, it makes life so much easier going forward.

Owen:

And does that come back to the point we were discussing earlier about data as well? If you try to get a stakeholder onside, if somebody is coming to you with, okay, I want x, y, z to happen, this is how I think you should communicate this. Actually having that data there to go, well yeah, historically that worked better than this.

And we would advise this based on the data. There's nothing better than experience and building that relationship and that trust over time. But actually if you've got that bank of data to go, the reason I'm advising this is because of this data.

Using data to influence leadership decisions.

Dan:

Absolutely, and I find that especially when I'm proposing a way of doing things to the leadership team for example. Because, as with any organisation, when you've got a leadership hierarchy, if you're talking to someone in leadership and they disagree with you, it can be quite difficult because you think, well, I really think that this is right. But if we look at the data from previous experience, that maybe hasn't worked out that well. So going off the data, it would be better to do it this way this time.

And I find that can make it a lot easier in terms of avoiding it becoming purely about opinion and actually going, well, let's look at facts rather than well I think this, well I think that. Who wins? Let's go back back to the data essentially, and that can be the determining factor.

Owen:

Looking ahead a little bit, what challenges do you think are facing internal comms either generally or within your organisation? And also, what opportunities are there as we move forward?

The future of internal communications.

Dan:

I think the biggest threat is potentially, people not really seeing it as that strategic driver that you were mentioning, and actually just not seeing it as something that's that valuable.

There always seems to be, economic issues in the global perspective, and obviously companies are always going to be looking for ways to save money, which is understandable. And you could look at comms and go, well actually, is it making us money? Is it the same as the marketing or the sales team? Do we really need it? And I've known that to happen in quite a few businesses. The number one recurring bit of feedback is it doesn't feel the same anymore now that we don't really have internal comms. And I think that can definitely not be underestimated when it comes to that impact.

In terms of the opportunities facing comms, I think actually there's a lot of opportunity when it comes to technology. And I think when we look at the developments in the world of marketing, and all of the different ways that externally companies engage with people, with creative campaigns, short form content and all of the different shifts with that external approach to marketing to customers, I think a big opportunity is for internal comms to actually take some of that approach. Saying, well, do we always need to just send emails out to everyone with a few paragraphs of information and say read it, when actually, externally, we know that's becoming less and less the case as attention spans get shorter and people want that short form content.

So I think that by using the technological advances and the new approaches that people are using to engage with customers externally, I think there's a big opportunity in the internal comms space to leverage that technology.

Owen:

It's interesting. I think that comes back to the point that we've seen more collaboration across departments, across divisions and more repurposing of content as well. And from our point of view, if we're making content, can it be repurposed and leveraged into short form video content? Or making podcasts? Or exploring different media forms for an internal audience?

The point around ROI as well, I think is one that comes up time and again. I read a study from the financial services organisation, that had done some research into the engagement scores within individual teams in the business. The higher the engagement score within a business, the higher the NPS score within that team.

And there's already an established link between NPS and financial performance. So actually being able to join the dots and going, you can't necessarily get the ROI of a particular email, but the ROI of a comms function generally, if one of the KPIs is to raise the engagement score, then it follows that raising the engagement score, raises the NPS score, and the financial metrics follow as well.

So it's quite an interesting way of joining that line to go, actually, there is a bottom line impact from the activity that comms carry out. So yeah, quite an interesting way of breaking the problem down.

And then any individual campaign, or piece of communication, or project that you worked on. What's the proudest thing that you've been involved in?

When communications makes a real human impact.

Dan:

Going back to Covid times, the company I was working for at the time, we ran a winter wellbeing campaign. It was winter 2020, around the time when we couldn't do Christmas and all that other stuff. We ran a really focused campaign, with a number of virtual engagement events and gave people a load of resources and advice.

At the time, a lot of the comms were quite formal, and it felt totally different to what we'd been doing before. Normally with comms, you only tend to get feedback if people say, oh I didn't understand that email, or that link you sent out was broken. But it was really rewarding to get a number of people actually take the time to go, can I just say, I know that this is taking a lot of your time as a comms team, but it really has meant a lot to me. I've found it really helpful. I've actually found going to your engagement events really, really useful. And it's helped my wellbeing genuinely. And all of the resources that that you've sent over.

Getting that direct feedback, that you're really helping somebody from a wellbeing perspective, it's something that you don't typically get to experience in the world of corporate comms, as it were. So I think that one jumps out. And I think actually being involved in this fairly recent, culture project as well. Because it's so challenging to look at merging the sort of cultural identities of a client and an organisation, but actually seeing the outcome, the results, and seeing people really buy into it and get behind it.

And I suppose that's perhaps why, for me, I was leaning away from the marketing and into the internal side. With the marketing, it was really great to see the numbers and the engagement with the campaigns that you're running and you see that positive output. But the difference between that and internal comms, is that actually you get to see the impact on the people directly.

They're not just your your customers, they're your colleagues. And I think for me, that's what I find I find most rewarding ultimately about the world of internal comms.

Owen:

That's a brilliant place to leave it. Thank you ever so much for your time Dan, it's been great to chat with you.

Dan:

My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And really, really good to talk to you, so thank you.

Owen:

That's it for this episode of Message Makers. Thanks again to Dan for joining me and sharing his insight. If you've got any questions, ideas or suggestions for future guests, we'd love to hear from you. We'll be back soon with more conversations from across the world of comms.