Like everyone else, communications professionals have adapted to the digital world imposed on them by the pandemic but there’s still nothing better than person-to-person contact.
That was the overriding feeling that emerged from a panel discussion at PR Week’s Year Ahead conference. There have been upsides to remote working, not least the enforced adoption of digital communication tools. But whether you’re in internal or external comms, engaging with colleagues and clients is a richer, more fulfilling experience face to face.
There will be no business-as-usual reset. The workplace will be different and the challenge for all is to take the best of the old and the new to create a hybrid experience that is sufficiently flexible and robust for the future.
The thrill of togetherness
“Some people have enjoyed the remote experience, others less so,” said Alex Malouf, corporate communications director MEA for Schneider Electric, based in Saudi Arabia. “In my experience, married men with kids seem to have rushed back to the office while introverts have blossomed [working remotely] and been more engaged. But as communicators we are social people.”
Julian Hunt, VP of public affairs and communications of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, agreed, saying: “Culturally we’re a very people-centric organisation and that’s been the intellectual challenge for all of us communicators – how do you reconnect and keep people engaged?”
Jenny Halpern Prince, who founded Halpern in 1993, said: “Our whole view of running an agency is about being together. Every time we’ve been able to get together as a group it brings back the dynamic nature of our business. We even provided space for clients who might not have been able to use their own office or were based outside London. It is a way of saying ‘you’re part of us’. When we have been back in the office, food is a really good connector and a way for people to enjoy themselves in the office too. We’ve got to have the banter back again, those water cooler moments.”
For Laura Colantuono, internal communications manager at Kraft Heinz, part of the challenge was giving people a reason to return to the office. “We ran a campaign called The Big Ketchup to provide employees with resources and support to help them feel comfortable to be back.”
The digital dividend
We’ve all had to become comfortable with digital platforms whether we like it or not and Hunt considers the acceleration of “our digital capabilities” as a significant upside of the past two years.
He added: “We’ve delivered compelling, engaging, fun content to very different audiences. Leaders are now comfortable filming themselves and posting on our social platform which encourages comments and activation. So there’s trust and visibility around what’s on people’s minds.”
Colantuono believes that there is a growing confidence among employees to ask direct questions of leaders in virtual ‘town hall’ events. “But there is so much we still need to do. As communicators we need to be creative in the way we do things.”
Online onboarding: go above and beyond
There are no simple solutions. Halpern said: “We went over and above to establish our culture online but it hasn’t been easy.” Colantuono believes businesses have to “ensure that onboarding is still exciting for people joining remotely” and recreate as far as possible “the beauty and the energy that we all feel when we’re together in the physical space”.
Motivation and inspiration
At Halpern, there is a ‘joyfulness division’ with the aim of bringing energy and fun back to the workplace. At Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, the sustainability team delivered a community programme last summer designed, according to Hunt, “to help teams reconnect and meet their desires to get back together in a safe way, outdoors while doing something and having fun together”. Around 700 volunteers engaged in 6,500 hours of volunteering across 90 events. “There was a real buzz around the business,” said Hunt.
You can teach old dogs new tricks
The workforce is hungrier than ever for skills and training. “We’ve invested in having a permanent member of staff always ‘on’ to train our team,” explained Halpern, “because we’ve listened to them and they want to feel they are upping their skill set all the time.” But, said Halpern, the ones with the most tech knowledge are often the youngest members of staff leading to “reverse mentoring” where juniors are teaching their seniors a thing or two.
Malouf sees a greater ease with the digital world among younger employees who “have found it so easy to adapt”. He added: “We have to find ways to apply our best learnings going forward because we’re not going back to the traditional setting.”
Make wellbeing a top priority
Malouf admits that in Saudi Arabia, where he is based, mental health is barely even recognised as a concern. Thankfully, the last two years have shifted the dial in the UK. All the panelists had positive input here.
Colantuono talked of Kraft Heinz’s ‘LiveWell’ and the increasing number of employees trained as Mental Health First-Aiders. “One thing that we learned is to make our people’s well-being a top priority,” she said.
“Everyone, myself included, is more relaxed about recognising it’s OK not to be OK sometimes,” Hunt said. “That has to be one of the few good things to take from the last two years. One goal this year is to help people managers communicate with their teams so that messages are trickling down from the top and landing in a consistent way. We’ve had a very active conversation recently around the menopause and helping people feel comfortable to talk about that.”
Female health is a major focus for Halpern, who co-founded the Lady Garden charity in 2014. Her agency recently increased the family benefits packages on offer and she said: “The openness and vulnerability is an incredibly important part of our culture in the agency.”
Diversity and career visibility
Set up in 2012, Access Aspiration is another of Halpern’s projects that gives students from state schools and academies work skills through placements, training and networking opportunities. “There’s a fear factor about how to enter the workplace,” Halpern explained. “And an issue about visible careers because so many of the careers that we all do aren’t taught at schools.” There is a definite change in attitude towards diversifying the workforce and hiring fewer people “looking like me”.
