Whether you’re a small, medium, or large business, a clear vision, mission and values should be the backbone of your strategy. They should be aligned to your ultimate purpose as a business and seen as a key enabler to long term growth and success. However, according to research carried out in this area, 52% of employees don’t know what their company’s vision is and 1 in 5 employees don’t feel their employer’s values are reflected in the daily behaviours of staff.

With many communications and HR teams busy planning their internal people conferences, here are some top tips to make the process easier and your conference a big success!

When budgets are squeezed and resources reduced, how do you continue to operate as an effective communications function?

Having worked in PR and communications for nearly 25 years, it’s fair to say that I’ve written and reviewed a fair few PR strategies. What I’ve learnt over the years, is that a good PR strategy doesn’t need to be hugely complicated. It doesn’t need to include hundreds of wordy sentences over multiple slides. It shouldn’t require a master's degree to uncover what the actual suggested approach and plan is and it shouldn’t require a small fortune to deliver. So what should you include?

In this month’s blog, I wanted to provide a handy checklist for those of you that have lined up a media interview, or are at the stage of deciding whether the opportunities presented to you are the right ones.  I’ll take you through my top ten tips for a successful media interview and consider what to do when dealing with an issue or a crisis.

The beginning of the year is often full speed ahead but before you get caught up in business as usual, it’s important to take a step back from the day-to-day: to look forward to the year ahead and check that the activity you’ve planned, the initiatives you’re launching, and the projects you’ve decided to focus on will really make an impact. So what should you focus on?

We frequently work with clients who realise that their communications need to feel less corporate. They need to be more friendly and approachable; they need to feel more authentic to who they are as a business, and they need to connect better with people on a human level. So how do you do this?

September is often the time businesses launch new projects and review business performance. In doing this against the backdrop of a challenging economic climate, companies will naturally be looking at their budgets.

Are they spending wisely? Do they need to make changes, cut costs, or re-distribute current spend across different departments?

It’s times like this that it can be tough for businesses to assess the value of their communications spend and it can be hard for in-house communications team to demonstrate the value they bring, especially in financial terms.

As we change the way we're connecting and engaging with employees, do intranets still have a place in today's workplace?

Has the intranet had its day? Or does it still have a place in your people communications toolkit?

Over the last year or so there are a number of words and phrases that have become part of our common vocabulary. Social distancing, new normal, hybrid working, furlough and lockdown are just a few that spring to mind and there are many more.

One of the words that’s really stood out for recently is the word RESILIENCE. But what does this mean and how can we create resilient organisations?

Employees now expect their jobs to bring a real sense of purpose to their lives and organisations that have a clear purpose – beyond making money – are seeing the rewards. Beyond imaginary worlds, understanding your true purpose as a business and building a narrative and communications strategy that articulates it, enables your organisation to tell its story with impact, imagination and clarity.