21 years of internal communications

My internal communications learning comes of age today! It is 21 years since I took my first internal comms course – a one day ‘introduction to’.

In actual fact, I’d already been working in internal comms roles for a few years before that. But it wasn’t really taken seriously as a profession at that time. We were “the girls that did the newsletter” – and, yes, that was as dismissive as it sounds!

But I loved the role. I love language, I love people, I love making and facilitating connections. I’m curious and interested in finding out about different teams, individuals and projects. I enjoy making sense of how everything fits together (or should do) and how the different parts contribute to the overall whole.

My first love

My communications work over the years has broadened out and is no longer just internal comms. The comms strategy work, training and mentoring that I do with my clients is often about their whole range of audiences, not just their own internal people.

Nevertheless, I often describe internal communications as my first love.

It’s certainly not the glamour choice (comms roles of any sort rarely are). Two of our basic skills requirements (in my view) are to have a thick skin and a sense of humour! But we make such a difference to our organisations, to our people and ultimately their success. So it’s the discipline that holds a special place in my heart.

Lots of change

Since I started in the profession all those years ago, a lot has changed. We’ve become recognised as a ‘proper’ profession for a start. New people coming into internal comms roles at the start of their career are often making a conscious decision rather than falling into it by accident, as many of us ‘more experienced’ individuals did.

There’s also more knowledge, rigour and quality assurance in place than there was in the early days. We did our best, but the understanding and study of our discipline just didn’t exist then. Certainly not in a wide-reaching and standard way.

It’s exciting to see how far we’ve come and wonder where we will go from here.

21 memories for 21 years

Thinking back across my career, here are 21 memories that stick in my mind – for good and bad reasons! I present them in no particular order.

1. My first ‘all staff’ email, which was related to a petrol shortage (let’s just say it wasn’t a huge success! I didn’t know what I was doing and included far too much irrelevant information which confused people)
2. Writing the internal announcement when the smoking ban was successfully voted through in the UK parliament – I was at Cancer Research UK so it was a really exciting moment for us
3. Carrying out my first large-scale internal comms audit as a freelancer – I got to meet amazing people doing incredible jobs and make recommendations to make things better for them
4. Taking a photo of a senior manager in his office to go into our staff magazine – I didn’t notice until I got back to my desk that he was sitting in front of a whiteboard with the word why? written above his head….
5. The time I issued an all staff email and spelt the CEO’s name wrong (possibly not the best career move)
6. The team spirit and ‘can-do’ attitude brought on by running a managers’ conference on a day with heavy snow – we adapted the agenda as we went along depending how many people had managed to get to the venue
7. Filming academics talking about new modules for their students, to encourage their colleagues to think of ways they could also get involved in the programme – one was a giggler!
8. Working with the procurement team at a university to help them connect with their internal stakeholders and ensure purchasing compliance
9. Watching a senior manager remove his jumper mid-speech to his directorate, knowing that his mic was attached to the jumper and also knowing there was nothing I could do about it
10. Working with an agency in London to edit a ‘thank you and well done’ video message from the CEO
11. Mentoring a skilled charity employee who was new to an internal comms role and seeing her confidence grow over the months we worked together
12. Almost completing the set of UK purchasing consortia conferences as a speaker introducing a framework for procurement teams to communicate with their internal audiences
13. Travelling round the country to facilitate workshops with groups of employees and gather their input to a charity’s new set of values
14. Visiting a site where our employees were not reading our internal magazine to find out what the problem was (it turned out to be something incredibly specific and would have been impossible to discover without informal, in person chats)
15. Running a communication skills training workshop with a guide dog sitting at my feet (apparently she was interested in me waving my arms around)
16. Attending the Big Yak internal comms unconference for the first time – so many of us who all loved internal comms in the same place at the same time!
17. Being in a scoping meeting that was twice interrupted by a knocking at the door which turned out to be a guide dog’s tail thumping against the door as it went past
18. Taking a late afternoon call from someone in the Finance team asking me to send out an all staff email because in the morning they would turn off the old finance system and switch to a new one (you probably don’t need to be an internal comms pro to imagine what my answer was!)
19. Running a ‘how to be an effective communicator’ workshop for line managers and seeing them realise their team members look to them for communication
20. Being the host for the CharityComms internal comms special interest group for the first time and seeing how many people had come along
21. Helping an internal comms manager to pull her thoughts into a coherent internal comms strategy so that she could present it to her senior managers for their sign-off (which they did)

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I am an independent kindness cheerleader and communicator. I work with my clients to find ways to communicate effectively, change attitudes and behaviours, and achieve their organisational goals. Find out more about my comms work on my comms website and about the Time for Kindness workshops on the dedicated programme site.