What I heard at the National Housing Federation Comms Event 2018

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Yesterday I was invited to speak at the National Housing Federation Comms Event in London to talk about how you can demonstrate impact and value in internal communications. I hadn’t attended a specific housing event before and it was great to see over 250 people together to learn, discuss and network about challenges and share successes.

Interestingly all the speakers were from outside the housing sector so I was lucky enough to hear how behavioural insights can impact bottom line, what Macmillan Cancer Support is doing to engage a workforce spread across the office and the road and some truly inspiring case studies highlighting what to do in a crisis.

These were my highlights:

EAST Framework: Four simple ways to apply behavioural insights

I have always believed in the power of personalisation so I loved listening to Ed Fitzhugh talking about how it made a measurable impact in changing behaviour. We don’t do much of this internally but the best social intranet I built was personalised as people could subscribe to content relevant to them – it made cutting through the noise much easier!

The framework he covered can be found here. EAST stands for Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely.

The examples shared included simple changes like directing people to the form online rather than a website – removing a click to make it easier for people to get to the information we want them to get to.  Using personalised content that is more attractive by referencing details about your car or your registration to pay tax in time. I enjoyed the reference to nudge theory (especially as the #icbookclub choice for this month is Inside the Nudge Unit) and how using social norms can drive change – using phrases like nine out of ten people pay on time. Using texts with a combination of the personalisation and social norms at times that will generate the best responses was a good reminder of the importance of different mediums.

Pledge to Polly and Yambassadors!

The campaign examples from Macmillan Cancer Research were a good reminder of the use of creativity and humour in the workplace. The pledge to Polly campaign was all about encouraging people to read and follow policies – with a video, poster campaigns and a bit of humour they engaged employees across the business.

Having introduced O365 in the business they embarked on an engagement and adoption campaign around Yammer – there were some great examples shared about how they did this and some top tips to get the basics right (remove technical barriers, integrate, tailor training and support, recruit yambassadors and have a strong internal comms presence).

When it’s a crisis, it’s always about people

This whistle-stop tour of crisis comms included Amanda Coleman from Greater Manchester Police, Alicia Custis from Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and Nicola King from Teneo Blue Rubicon. I would have loved to have spent more time on these sessions as what they had to share was incredibly helpful and relevant for every comms professional.

There were so many takeaways from this session but here the list I captured from the sessions:

  • Put people, victims and families at the heart and ensure they remain the priority
  • There were five elements to reputation management: Media, Social Media, Stakeholders, Police, Victims and Families
  • Be prepared
  • Ensure people are media trained – I know a great trainer for this if you’re looking!
  • Have good relationships with the media
  • The communications strategy needs to be integrated across social media, digital and your channels
  • Credibility is key

Be strategic with the tactical

During my session on internal communication I shared my model for internal communication – a model I always used when in-house – and I shared five top tips to help you demonstrate value and create impact:

  1. Have data to support your business case and to measure success
  2. Invest in yourself – your opinion is not good enough in the boardroom
  3. Have a conversation – don’t be afraid to ask what value looks like to them
  4. Be strategic with the tactical
  5. Solve business problems with better communication

Thank you to the National Housing Federation communications team for organising a great day with some fantastic speakers. You can follow all the updates on Twitter under #nfhcomms18

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Join our community

Subscribe to join our community and we’ll be in touch with helpful advice and updates about how we can take your organisation from chaos to calm. Our community gets invited to a quarterly 90-minute Ask Me Anything online session with Jenni Field, as well as early access to events, discounts and research.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.