From employee engagement and crisis comms to preparing for Generation Alpha: Key highlights from ICE Live

A packed full agenda of 10 presentations and three roundtable workshops, more than filled the thoughts-capacitor at this week’s ICE Live as we learned from the past and looked to the future for internal communications.

It was a real pleasure to listen to inspiring stories and discuss challenges within the internal comms community. Top marks to Andrew Thomas and the Communicate magazine team for organising and a big hand clap emoji for whoever signed-off sticky toffee pudding on the lunch menu, a personal favourite.

Key highlights among the many were:

Creative engagement for leaders

Shoshana Whybrow, VP Corporate Affairs at Sage, showcased how their in-house team improved leadership communications for their Financial Year ‘Kickoff’ strategy event, turning it from a traditional top-down three hour broadcast with low engagement to an interactive multichannel and high-touch global plan.?

Activation initiatives included: month long content programme, leadership mini tours around the globe, nine podcasts (hosted by young execs interviewing senior leaders), a ‘Connect’ channel where anyone could book time for a chat with the 70 leaders, competitions and entertainment led moments such as choirs, dancers and smoothies. They surpassed their ESAT target of 80, hitting 86 while 74% of employees said Kickoff supported their understanding of the company strategy.

'The leadership mini tours gave the execs a great opportunity to talk to colleagues,' she said.

'An engaged colleague base will deliver your commercial results. And we've really raised expectations about the quality of communications at Sage - forced ourselves to be creative and often with less money.'

AI, EI, Oh!?

It wouldn’t be an industry event without AI on the programme and this imaginatively entitled panel discussion featured Frank Dias communications lead, AI at Adecco Group, Julia Holmes, head of communications EMEA & Japan at Getty Images and Leo Ryder, internal comms manager at Accenture. Framed around AI and its role in employee sentiment and human empathy it naturally evolved into wider discussions about the merits of AI. Key thoughts from the panel were:?

• Use AI for low empathy tasks
• People feel more misled if you create human images from AI
• Understand your tasks and workflow. It’s about playing on strengths and limitations of the tools and yourself. As Frank said: ‘I see myself as editor-in-chief with AI and decided when and what I want to use the AI for’
• Make sure HR and comms are involved in the AI tool decision and it’s not just the tech team
• Don’t worry about the AI hype cycle, focus on the reality cycle for your organisation

When it all kicks off

A very honest account of a serious health incident where ‘It all kicked off’ for Claire Evans , head of corporate communications at Coca Cola HBC. Delivered with mounting tension to the point of the crisis when it ‘Now really kicked off!’, Claire reflected on the whole incident at the end, highlighting the importance of having already nurtured good relationships with authorities and a global news organisation like Reuters before an incident.

‘You can’t just have that relationship at the time of a crisis,’ she said. And secondly - keep your employees informed about what actions are being taken during the crisis, something she wished they’d maybe done sooner.

Move over Gen Z, Gen Alpha’s coming

Pia de Malherbe , chief brand officer, enlightened us to what the themes and focus will be for Gen Alpha, who will start joining the workforce in five years.

• 2 in 3 Gen Alphas will have jobs which don’t exist yet and will be created by tech or AI?
• They will have multiple careers, side hustles, constantly up-skill and switch employers more easily. Great example shared by Pia on how Volkswagen in Germany actively supported entrepreneurial employees to retain talent
• They are more focused on positivity and very aware of stress levels
• They are DEI experts, that is just normal to them. And while Gen Z sought 'Purpose' in a company, Gen Alpha will look more towards 'Relevance'
• Employer brand storytelling will be important for them. They will want to see what it’s like working for a company from the inside

Final thoughts from me: Be creatively active, curious and bold with employee campaigns and storytelling. If the idea terrifies you, it's probably a good one! (Special mention to Travelport's David MacHale and Anne Kerr for their frighteningly ambitious 'Seven Wonders' campaign - there was no Plan B, he said and they pulled it off!)

Thanks to all the speakers and panelists who took to the stage over the day - the above is just a snapshot of what was captured in my notebook! If you want to hear more about employee engagement strategies and campaigns then follow the award-winning blue goose