The Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) Festival 2023 was the perfect culmination of fresh ideas, industry leaders and positive vibes. Across the two days, there were five concurrent streams of talks going on. Although we try, Lauren and I were unable to be in five places at once, so here are the headlines from the content we saw and loved.

What I love about this event is the attention paid to environment. At the beautiful Tewinbury Farm we felt miles away from the stress of the city and could really be present at the conference. Doors in the main room opened out onto a peaceful sunlight courtyard, another room had a vaulted ceiling – proven to enhance collaboration – and another looked over a gently flowing stream.

Stage set, the talks began.

The IC Index with IoIC and Ipsos

The opening keynote set the tone for the conference: meaty and lots of measurement. The IoIC has collaborated with Ipsos to create the first IC Index. They shared headline trends from the research. Our favourites:

• You only have 15 minutes of your employees’ day to get the message across
• Employee engagement drops if the CEO engages less frequently
• Employees want to hear more about pay and benefits stories while DE&I and people focused comms are not universally popular

True to you: Fuller’s EVP Journey

Hospitality faces a unique challenge when it comes to talent recruitment and retention; although a lot of people will at one time work in hospitality, very rarely is it perceived as a career. Through a rigorous internal research phase (300+ employee conversations, 20 1:1s, 500+ survey responses and 6 employee workshops) the EVP ‘True to You’ emerged. This EVP encapsulates the passion of the frontline teams, the ability to be yourself at work, the promise of investment in learning and development to empower you in your career.

The main challenge they faced? Brand! Navigating the need for a fresh and distinctive employer brand with the existing corporate brand can be a challenge – but it’s worth the effort! Some colleagues are even starting to nab the new branding for other work…

Everyone at the table with Ryan Curtis-Johnson and Shani Dhanda

Shani Dhanda – changemaker and disability activist – spoke with Ryan Curtis-Johnson from The Valuable 500 sharing her insights into how organisations can be more disability inclusive, and the massive ableist blind spots that still perpetuate office culture.

Organisations must “see it as an investment – not a burden – to change this stuff” – Shani Dhanda 

When we talk about inclusion you have to be intentional. Your organisation will have lots of different people with a variety of identities, so first you need to understand how some people are being excluded. Does your Intranet support accessibility software? Can your people actually access everything they need? For Shani, the increase in hybrid working or working from home was bittersweet. Disability activists have been advocating for years to improve remote working options for disabled colleagues but met with resistance. When the pandemic hit it took just two weeks for organisations to go fully remote. So clearly it wasn’t a capability issue, it was an investment issue. If an organisation already had the capability to support remote work before the pandemic, it was much easier to pivot. These changes that enable disabled colleagues to work usually end up benefitting everyone – check out the curb cut effect.

Here are your digestible quick fixes:

• Make alternative formats available, advertise that and make alternatives immediately available upon request.
• Use minimum 12point font.
• Use Sans Serif fonts.
• Include alt text for images.

Measuring the Metrics That Matter

Measurement is vital to a successful, effective and streamlined internal communication strategy, yet so many communicators feel out of their depths or lost when it comes to data.

In large organisations, it can be easy to feel that you’re inventing the wheel, but a lot of the time internal communicators find themselves repeating work that is already out there for the taking, so as Eduvia emphasised in her roundtable session on measurement… make friends! Get to know the people and teams in your organisation, rely on experts, because a lot of the time they have the tools and data you are looking for. It’s also important to understand what it is you are hoping to achieve with each campaign, sometimes this might be just audience reach and an increased engagement rate, but often it is something far deeper such as behavioural change or understanding. So, make sure to assess what it is you want to achieve and build out the metrics you need, stopping you getting lost in the data. Lastly, make sure to know where you are coming from, outline your baseline – otherwise how will you ever know what success looks like!

Food for thought…

• Keep the visuals simple so you can share with stakeholders, whether this is in a quarterly report or a bird’s eye view dashboard.
• Integrate a qualitative and quantitative approach to your dashboards/reports so you can get a real flavour of how people are feeling.

Turning Strategy into Everyday Engagement 

 A fantastic case study was presented by Jo Sparks from ATS Euromaster, as she spoke to a conundrum faced by many organisations – how to make high-level strategy accessible and tangible to all. After facing relatively low results in their yearly engagement survey regarding understanding towards their company’s objectives and direction, Jo decided to transform the way they communicated their strategy with the workforce. Enter ‘Destination 2023’, a driving-themed concept used to communicate their 3-year strategy, by using assets such as their Route (one-pager), Under-the-Bonnet fact sheets (key points about the company and strategy), Car Lanes (key objective areas), the organisation was able to translate high-level strategy into meaningful everyday language for the workforce.

Two Top Tips:

1. Discover the theme/concept that resonates with your workforce and be consistent with it.
2. Get rid of jargon and keep it simple.

‘Purpose-washing’ and how to avoid it

“In the rush to stand for something, some organisations have risked putting the purpose ‘story’ ahead of the purpose plan and actions.”

In light of the pandemic, the great resignation and the wave of quiet quitting, purpose is playing a vital role in employee retention and talent attraction. As a result, creating a purpose that is real, authentic and that resonates with your organisation, has never been more important. However, as organisations rush to stand for something, often this can lead to empty words and promises, leaving employees even more disenfranchised and disengaged. Emma Tucker and Benjamin Tucker discussed how important it is for organisations to stop achieving too much, so they can back it up with meaningful actions. They also brought to light the misconception that purpose is a static or fixed idea, when instead it should adapt and evolve with your organisation’s journey and growth.

As Benjamin Watson stated, communicating your purpose is about communicating “why the world would be a poorer place without your organisation.”

And that’s just a fraction of what we heard…

Of course AI is still on the agenda, and we were treated to some absolutely incredible key notes by Mark Pollock (adventurer, entrepreneur, resilience expert), Peter Komolafe (financial wellbeing specialist), and Samuel Kasumu (from politics to authorship, exploring the power of the outsider). We learned so much, we met with brilliant minds and kind people, and we already can’t wait for the next one!

If there are any sessions you’re interested in or want to hear about other sessions we attended, email lauren@106comms.com and we can give you the down low.