I was recently a guest on the Supercharged Change and Comms podcast.
Hosted by Pete Hodges and Chris Bradley, the podcast speaks to leaders in the field of change management and communication to get their insights on the best internal communications practices, and the lessons they’ve learned during their career.
In this episode I chat to Chris and Pete about my top tips for getting started in comms, whether we should be worried about AI, and the skills I think all internal communications teams should be prioritising in 2024. I also talk about our upcoming unconference, Comms Reboot, which you can buy tickets for here.
In this blog post I share some of the top tips for getting started in communications, the key skills needed for the year and the topic of AI and internal communication.
You can listen to the full podcast episode here
Top tips for starting out in internal comms:
- Get networking – This doesn’t necessarily have to be face-to-face meetings. You can network in lots of different ways. If you’re not someone that enjoys going to events, LinkedIn is a perfect space for connecting with lots of people.
- The internal communications community is a very friendly one and people are always very willing to share their experiences. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask people for help.
- Focus more on building relationships than your own personal brand. This can be more effective than churning out lots of content.
Key skills needed in 2024:
- Employers are looking for people who can do a bit of everything. You have to be able to write, advise, think critically and manage stakeholders.
- Experts in things like AI, design and copywriting will always be needed and we shouldn’t necessarily try to lump these in with other things but, right now, most companies are looking for people who are more generalist.
- The ability to be able to coach and guide senior leaders who want to do their own communication is crucial.
- Building relationships within organisations is key. Good internal communicators know how to connect people and help them get to know each other.
- Empathy is important – but so is resilience. Levels of burn-out and demotivation are high and because most comms people are naturally very empathetic, it can be easy to absorb a lot of other people’s angst.
- Understanding the different cultures of different types of workers is vital. Deskless workers need to be communicated with in a very different way to those who are office based.
AI and internal communications:
- We need to be aware of it and looking at the ways we can use it, but it’s not at a point where it will be replacing jobs yet.
- It will free up time and change the tasks we have to do, but may not mean a reduction in jobs. There’s a distinction between a job disappearing and a task disappearing, and there’s a danger that we’re merging the two together when we talk about AI at the moment.
- AI can be helpful for providing frameworks for documents and as a starting point for unleashing creativity and sparking ideas.
- More information on AI and other comms trends for 2024 can be found in this blog post.
If you’d like to explore some 1:1 consultancy to develop your skills just drop us an email at info@redefiningcomms.com and we’d be happy to chat!
