Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
A role in communications was something that I had thought about only in the last few years. My career journey so far has been an interesting one! My degree (18 years ago!) at King’s College in London was in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and honestly speaking, once I graduated 4 years later I really wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to take next. At that time it was 2008, unfortunate timing with the recession looming. I was lucky enough to get an interview at Estates Gazette (now EG, where I have remained!) for a Sales Operations Administrator role and over the years I have had different roles within sales support and customer service before I moved into the Marketing Team almost 2 years ago. For a role that I hadn’t considered earlier in my life it’s certainly one that feels very natural to me and I do enjoy it as no two days are the same.
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important in the communications sphere? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
I think particularly for internal communications it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of the employee and make sure the information you’re providing to them is actually useful, helps them to do their job day-to-day and ultimately helps them to understand how they can align themselves against the company’s vision, values and mission. It’s key to making them feel that they are playing a part in contributing to our overarching goals.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
I think over the past two years with the pandemic and the move to remote working it’s been a challenge to keep everyone engaged without that regular face-to-face contact. Everyone has experienced that “online fatigue” at some point within that time. In October last year, after having implemented 100% working from home since March 2020, we began to slowly re-introduce coming back into the office maybe two or three times a week. This was only if people felt comfortable doing so and we encouraged lots of communication between teams and their managers to come to arrangements that best suited their needs.
What one thing would make your working life easier?
More time! There’s so many great communications and PR resources, courses, books and podcasts that I just want to do everything! One of my goals for this year is to be selective and dedicate some time each week to my learning and development.
How is the role of communications perceived in your organisation?
Communications is integral to our success as a business. One of the great attributes of EG is its people and we are lucky enough to have an internal structure whereby it doesn’t feel hierarchical, and the senior leadership team are very approachable.
What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
You need to be able to monitor the quality and quantity of what you’re putting out to stakeholders and ensure that it’s still relevant. Be willing to hold your hands up when something isn’t working and improve it. I would also say that investing in your own career development is a big one – this industry is constantly changing and it’s vital to keep up with that so that you can grow in your role.
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?
Any measurement where you can show the value of the communications that you are putting out there. So for internal communications – looking at open and click through rates and getting that qualitative feedback through regular surveys (and more informal feedback channels as well) so you can review any changes in employee engagement. For PR, if you want to position yourself as a thought leader and an authoritative source within your industry then you want that to be reflected in the number of mentions you get in your target media. Continual measurement throughout the year is important – so comparing your campaigns each quarter to see what types of content performed the best to help you shape your strategy going forward.
Looking into your crystal ball, what do you think will be the next big thing in communications?
I think given what has happened over the last two years with Covid, there has been more of a shift onto the employee, how they feel and all aspects of their wellbeing. I think that will continue even as restrictions begin to ease again. There will be even more of a focus on how we can engage with them and encourage feedback, particularly in key areas such as mental health, diversity and inclusion and hybrid working.
