Jenny Pratt, head of communications at the National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health, joins us for a chat on her beginnings on communications and how to get into comms from other fields. Read more about her take on multitasking and learning on the fly in the interview.
Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I have always loved reading and writing, ever since I was a child. When it came to choosing what degree I wanted to study I went with what I enjoyed and did Publishing with English at Loughborough University.
I chose to do a placement year to give me some hands-on experience and that is how I got into communications; I went for an interview with Corus (now TATA Steel) in South Wales where I didn’t get the job I applied for; instead they created a placement role for me in the communications team. It was a fantastic year with a great team where I learnt a lot. And that’s how my communications career got started!
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important for a communications role? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
You need a pretty broad range of skills and I’m still learning how to be better! I think it helps to be a natural writer/content creator (whatever you want to call it) — you’ve got to be able to take information (whether that's lots or barely any) and create something out of it that people will resonate with.
It also helps to be able to speak to lots of different people. When I first started out (and still now at times) it was really daunting to speak to and ask questions of people I didn’t know. Communications has really helped me to overcome any confidence crisis and pick up the phone to speak to all kinds of people. That people side of things also needs to come through in your work — putting yourself in other people’s shoes, listening to them and understanding them is key to delivering something that’s going to be effective.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
Comms professionals are great multitaskers. That’s one of the benefits of the profession because it means there’s lots of variety and always something new to learn. On the flip side I see some vacancies where there seems to be an expectation for communicators to be an entire team in one person — SEO, PPC, graphic design, video editing, digital, copy writing, PR, internal comms, crisis management… and the list goes on. There are people that can touch on all of these but there is the risk that it spreads you too thin and creates barriers for some fantastic people trying to enter or progress in the profession.
What advice would you give to those at the start of their career in communications?
Get yourself a great line manager! I’ve been lucky to work for some talented and supportive people; they’ve challenged me to do new things, supported me through highs and lows and shown me techniques and ideas that work. Something that’s really helped my personal growth is that these line managers haven’t micromanaged – they’ve given me projects of my own to work on (and make mistakes on) that really helped me to learn and develop.
Even though I went to university, that doesn’t mean you need a degree to get into communications. There are apprenticeships for people starting out, but I also see a lot of people moving into the profession as a second career — I think because some people are natural communicators so they can apply that inherent skill and empathy to the role.
Wherever I’ve worked there’s always been lots of opportunities to get involved in communications without needing to work in the team. So, if you’re facing that ‘no experience’ conundrum then volunteering to get involved as a communications champion, intranet super user, or internal blogger, for example, can help you get started. Make yourself known to your communications team too — we’re always looking for contributors to help with content.
What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
You can’t succeed on your own. Get an understanding of the whole organisation and market, develop a rapport with the rest of the business, and then, once you have this breadth and depth of understanding, you’ll be in the best place to pick out what really matters.
Communications are a result of action — good communications are backed up by the actual doing or delivery (otherwise it’s just words) so you need those strong internal relationships to be able to challenge and question. It works both ways though — resilience and being prepared to listen to feedback on your own work is just as important.
We at React & Share live for helping communications teams through understanding website content sentiment and improving it off the back of feedback. How do you and your team approach content improvement?
I think all of us experience a bit of a cringe when we look back at work we produced a year (or even a month!) ago. I think it’s a sign of self-improvement to look back and see things I could have done better. Even when I look at some of the campaigns I’m most proud of, I think to myself “I wish I had…”.
There are lots of things that go into content improvement. In a nutshell that boils down to qualitative and quantitative information. With a multitude of digital platforms we can look at the analytics to see what content is popular/engaged with/inspires an onward action/is searched for etc. We also ask people what they want and need, for example in surveys with our students or Alumni. I work in a small team so have a really hands-on approach which means I can pick-up on sentiment and themes — for example on social media — and keep an eye on things to see if there is a wider opportunity or concern.
It’s also handy to have regular conversations with colleagues from other departments as they can help you to spot trends. For example, if our Customer Experience team starts to notice a frequently asked question then we can help remedy that by looking at website content or navigation so users can find the information themselves without needing to contact us.
