Beth Barrett, ePR Change Management and Communications Lead at Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS FT and Royal Surrey FT, checks in with us to share the secret to achieving meaningful change.
Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I think a career in communications chose me! Communication sits at the intersection of change management and storytelling. I am a creative soul at heart which is my superpower when it comes to purposeful messaging and strategy.
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important in the communications sphere? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
Reputation is built on attention to detail. It takes time, understanding, creativity and empathy to make your message resonate so I’d rather do three things brilliantly than thirty things half baked. The real key is listening, to achieve meaningful change and influence you need to really understand your audience and meet them then where they’re at.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
Our biggest challenge is reaching a predominantly deskless workforce. It’s really important we communicate with everyone so it takes carefully crafted and creative strategies to make sure we get key messaging cascaded effectively.
What one thing would make your working life easier?
More hours in the day?
How is the role of communications perceived in your organisation?
I am very lucky as the leadership team in both of my organisations genuinely value good communications and our strategy underpins and aligns naturally with core business objectives.
What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. I’m passionate about finding new ways to measure our outcomes (not our output). This means we remain agile and innovative in our approach to keep delivering tangible and quantifiable value.
At React & Share, we’re obsessed with helping our clients measure and report their efforts - what measurements do you think comms teams should be presenting to internal stakeholders?
Measuring and reporting efforts need to directly relate back to the business objective which drove the activity in the first place. If a change in behaviour is the objective; it is valuable to identify and measure attitudes before and after the campaign.
Looking into your crystal ball, what do you think will be the next big thing in communications?
Real-time information which is short, sharp and meaningful to your audience. We need to work hard to cut through the noise across so many platforms so I think streamlining strategies to deliver bespoke, bitesize, relevant and useful information needs to be at the forefront of our minds.
