This year’s CIPR Inside conference discussed the challenges facing internal communicators, from defining IC, to taking responsibility for culture, to exploring new methods of communications and leadership within the organisation

Jenni Field, director, Redefining Communications
“I’ve never felt like culture is something internal communications has really owned, but it’s where we can start to add value and influence the whole organisation.”

Helen Deverell, director, Helen Deverell Communications
“One CEO said we need to get it right every time. That demonstrates how much importance they place on our role.”

Trudy Lewis, communications specialist
“There is a direct line between good internal communications and financial security.”

Lisa Pantelli, director, Become Communications
“Employee voice is synonymous with engagement. CEOs are less inclined to listen to what people are saying. There is a gap between the role of employee voice and its role in internal communications.”

Rachel Miller, director, AllThingsIC
“Remembering that CEOs are human is really important for us as internal communicators.”

Stephen Duncan, head of employee engagement, Weber Shandwick
“CEOs may believe that internal communications is responsible for culture, but it wasn’t the head of internal comms that got fired at Uber.”

“You can’t change the nature of an organisation in six months. You can’t change it in a year. Changing culture takes a long time. You can’t change culture just with communications.”

Rachel Thornton, co-founder, scarlettabbott
“High performing organisations have high performing internal communications teams.”

Danielle Chan, head of communications & engagement, Community Integrated Care, discussing the organisation’s new approach to comms and culture
“We rely so heavily on the discretionary efforts of our frontline workers. We’ve completely shifted how we think about our workforce.”

“We understood where our work sat within the whole organisation. We knew we had to get frontline leaders on board.”

Andrew Whyte, director of communications, Financial Conduct Authority, talking about a shift in understanding within the organisation
“There’s this constant sense of frustration that everybody’s a comms expert, everyone things they can do our job. Our perspective often loses out to legal risk, even when we know that reptuational risk can be quite significant.”

“The idea was to show, then, that there was a real professionalism to what we do; to be seen on the same level of professional credibility as lawyers, etc.”

Overheard at the CIPR Inside conference
“Actually we don’t have to be at the table. The table is really boring.”

“It’s also important to give employees a voice. You can’t tell people to be excited about something, you have to tell a story that makes people feel excited.”

“It’s not just about having a seat at the table, it’s having a seat with the overall comms team as well.”

“Measuring feeling is really difficult and if you’re measuring in terms of cold hard cash, that’s not really effective. So measurement is really important, but what the hell do you measure?”

“Do people at brand and marketing conferences sit around and say, ‘How do we add value? Can we define what we do?’ Prove your worth and it will be taken seriously.”

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