Helen McCallum has already sought to improve universities, the NHS, and the Environment Agency. Now the director of policy, campaigns and communications at Which? has another target in her sights: British banks. Photographs by Sam Friedrich

Corporate communications isn’t always cut-throat. Yes, at one end of the spectrum, you’ll find the slick mercenaries, happy to act as hired guns and manage the reputation of the highest bidder.

But at the other end of the continuum, you’ll find those for whom success isn’t all about financial gain. These are the ones just as motivated by the warm glow of altruism – making a difference, improving lives and representing the public.

Step forward Helen McCallum. In a career that has taken in education, the health service, the environment and now consumer rights, the director of policy, campaigns and communications at Which? has and continues to seek out communications briefs in which she can do good.

Although clearly passionate about her work, it took her a while to find her calling. “I don’t think I knew where I was going,” she says. “I didn’t really know until I was 37.”

So she felt no particular pull towards communications at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls Grammar in Barnet. “I was one of those people who’d volunteer for all kinds of things,” she says. “So I did a lot of drama, I was chairman of the debating society and school council, and did things that actually have informed a lot of the skills I have today: the capacity to present things in different ways and thinking about audience response.”

Studying at the University of Nottingham, reading English Literature, she was drawn into student politics. She ended up as the president of her hall and was then elected as the sabbatical president of the student union – but concedes, “I was interested in people, rather than any aligned political view.”

This was 1973, when Britain’s student unions were quite militant. She organized rent strikes, supported the miners and campaigned against investment in South Africa.

Her role as secretary of the union was partly administrative. “It was the hardest job and there was no training. There I was at the age of 20, managing a team of staff. It was unbelievably good experience, although I’m not sure I could say I enjoyed it.

By then, her career hopes had started to take shape. “I wanted to do some form of political public service or something people-focused. So I applied for the NHS and civil service graduate schemes and for positions in university administration.”

On graduating in 1974, she got a job in Sheffield University, as a junior PR before moving a couple of years later to Salford University. “It really was on-the-job training,” she said. “I knew nothing. Today, I work with people with degrees and PhDs in communications.”

Although there were only 42 universities in the country then, the priority for universities was to secure funding. For Salford, a reinvention was necessary. “We really focused down our messages on what Salford did that was unique. We had to sell the fact that it was technically focused – a useful exercise to do early in my career.”

After Salford, Helen’s focus turned to family. She had two baby girls, and took three and a half years out of her career to look after them. And then “sort of accidentally” went back to work for Sheffield University, job sharing a new role of alumni officer.

That was in 1984. They stayed in the role for two years and managed to “jointly put our stamp on it”. Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing. “Job sharing is a bit like marriage. You do things in different ways. But I think it was novel. So we felt an obligation to make it work.”

Part of her work in alumni relations involved raising funds for the university, a function that would stand her in good stead in her next role. When her husband took up a job at Cambridge University, the family relocated and Helen was offered a job in the university’s new development office. Here, she had a fundraising remit that would help fund a new building for the faculty of law.

“It was all good experience for a career in communications,” she says. “You have to define what’s the core ask and what’s unique. And you have to articulate the case for need.”

But it wasn’t until 1989 and Helen’s next role at East Anglia’s NHS regional health authority that the communications bug bit. “I was 37, and I knew it was what I wanted to do. I really felt I could do something to help the population. At that time, the NHS wasn’t effective in internal or external communications.”

Helen was appointed to establish an internal trading agency in communications with the expectation that it would ultimately become privatised.

“The NHS had determined that the communications function wasn’t ‘core’,” she recalls. “So the regional health authority comms team was a band of people under enormous stress. The NHS in East Anglia employed 45,000 people at the time and demand for the communications team from the District Health Authority, hospitals and GP services outstripped supply by 50 to 1.”

For Helen, managing the trading agency was like running her own business. She’d pay rent to the NHS, had to compete with external agencies and, all the while, persuade NHS bodies of the need to communicate in the first place.

“We use a Trojan horse technique as a way of establishing our credibility. So we’d win a contract to write an annual report, then we’d come back in with a pitch to offer retained services. Some CEOs just wanted you do a leaflet and drop it off. We’d do it and then say ‘By the way…’ and suggest another service.”

The agency grew from three to 13 staff in two years, had respectable turnover and succeeded in shifting attitudes.

“It was probably my favourite job,” she says. “I had huge selfdetermination and no one breathing down my neck. There was a lot of satisfaction in winning business, expanding the agency and making change happen.” She was soon promoted to the RHA’s head of communications and stayed in the role until 1994 before another crossroads loomed. Regional health authorities were being abolished and East Anglia RHA was being merged with Oxford’s to create a middle England regional office.

This left Helen with a tough choice: “Do I take the privatised agency out and run a business, or apply for the job of head of NHS communications? I chose the latter.”

She got the job even though, she concedes, it was a “financially stupid” decision. “But it wasn’t about the money for me. I was driven by a mission to create better NHS communications.”

She had her work cut out. “Communications really needed to be improved. Internal comms had been neglected to the point of negligence. But it just felt incredible difficult to do anything – a feature of being a head of comms for any massive organisation.”

Her priority in that first year was change management. The team was populated by unsuitable staff. “They weren’t nasty people. But they had neither the skills, understanding or remit to do what they should be doing. I had 12 people reporting to me, and none were the right shape.”

After a much-needed cull, she felt able to start again “with a smaller but perfectly formed team”.

Her work wasn’t going unnoticed. A colleague at the time, Alasdair Liddell, remembers “her combination of strategic insight and attention to detail”.

He recalls: “She had the idea of using the NHS 50th anniversary to celebrate its achievements and refresh its image, and against a high degree of scepticism from many quarters turned her vision into reality by pulling off a series of events and activities that engaged the whole workforce and delivered a substantial improvement in its reputation.”

Another colleague at the time, Jude Mackenzie, is now director of advocacy and communications at Christian Aid. “Helen’s aspiration for great communications is infectious and a great motivating quality,” she says. “She has the ability to articulate a clear vision and then inspire people to achieve it. She has worked in some tough, high pressure environments but never loses her trademark smile.”

Helen’s next move was prompted by the change of government. “Labour wanted to reintegrate the core functions – which meant reintegrating the NHS executive head office into the Department of Health and creating a post that reported to both the CEO and the permanent secretary, essentially amalgamating my job with the ministerial job. I had to either apply or go away.”

She applied for the role and got it, becoming the first director of communications for the Department of Health. It was a huge job. She was controlling a campaign budget of £54 million “which would have been enough on its own”. But she also had responsibility for the ministerial press office media churn and the corporate communications for the NHS – “The internal comms alone meant communicating with 1 in 30 of the adult population”. The problem, she says, was that the ministerial job always won, over strategic planning or coordinating communications.

“I realise in retrospect, it just wasn’t doable. I had flat in London but I’d be working so late I’d be lucky to get to that, let alone back to my family in Cambridge.”

That doesn’t mean it was unsatisfying. “Being that close to seat of power, weekly meetings with Tony Blair – it was exciting and tremendously good for my memoirs. But I’m interested in strategy and planning; this was fire-fighting, and I didn’t want to do that forever and a day. I would have ended up divorced for one thing.”

So after three years, she moved to the Environment Agency, having been recruited by its chief executive Barbara Young (now Baroness Young of Old Scone). “I met Helen at a party where she was being chatted up by the chief executive of ITV who was trying to lure her to his organisation,” she says. “I needed a director of comms and he was pleading so much that I thought she must be truly ace and so I virtually hired her on the spot. She was and is truly ace. She is a seasoned communications specialist, honed in the Thick of It that is the Department of Health. But she was more and could see the rounded picture of where the Environment Agency needed to be.”

And in this role, Helen was able to move from defence to attack. “I’d been constantly on the defensive at the NHS, dealing with very negative media. But in 2001, the environment was barely on the political radar. It felt like I was moving to a job where I could be more promotional.”

She was there for six and a half years, before an opportunity arose in 2007 to do something really different: becoming director of policy at Which? If nothing else, the role was an opportunity to add another string to her bow.

“Policy hadn’t been part of my remit until then – the positioning of policy, yes. But I hadn’t had management responsibility for that area. The whole proposition was attractive.”

Leaving the world of communications was easier said than done though. Within two months, the organisation’s director of communications and campaigns left and she took on that brief too. The difference this time, she says, is that she’s “shooting into government, rather than being shot at”.

As well as the comms team, she oversees a 12-strong policy team whose job it is to understand and investigate consumer needs and look at what could be put right. A similarly-sized advocacy team looks at how to make that change happen. “They think about the change required and what is the easiest, most effective way to achieve it,” she says. “They give consumers the tools to vote with their feet, or push for new regulation or legislation.”

With so many issues to tackle, it’s no wonder she finds the job so fascinating: “I can be talking about dentistry in the morning and then illegal file sharing in the afternoon.” But, in today’s consumer climate, one issue dominates: the banking crisis and how consumer’s voice can be heard as the sector is rebuilt.

The Future of Banking Commission, will be the first report to look at the financial crisis from the point of view of normal people and the banking industry. It will also hear evidence from the public, and Which? is holding events to allow ordinary people to feed in their view. The first debate on 4 February attracted 300 people and Which? also runs a website to allow people to give their input – www.which.co.uk/banking

“We’re trying to get the consumer perspective factored into the way change is driven. They’re looking at it from business and economic point of view. We’re asking, how do we end up with a win-win? It’s our big priority at the moment.” 

 

Curriculum Vitae: Helen McCallum

2007 – Director of policy, campaigns and communications, Which?

2001 – 2007 Director of corporate affairs, Environment Agency,

1994 – 2001 Director of communications, Department of Health

1994 – 1998 Head of communications, NHS Executive

1992 – 1994 Head of communications, East Anglian RHA

1989 – 1992 Senior public relations manager, East Anglian RHA

1988 – 1989 Fundraiser, University of Cambridge

1985 – 1989 Alumni officer, University of Sheffield

1981 – 1985 Career break to raise family

1977 – 1981 Public relations officer, University of Salford

Education: BA Hons English Literature, University of Nottingham,

Queen Elizabeth’s Girls Grammar School, Barnet

Interests: Theatre