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You’re a recruiter, you do this day in, day out. You know what a good candidate experience looks like, you know what needs to happen to catch the best talent, you know what a fair hiring process looks like.
Your hiring manager doesn’t.
Your hiring manager has one hundred other things on their mind; they are trying to deliver on their existing demands, lead their team or department and the hiring process is just another thing on top. But if we communicate well and collaborate, we can not only ensure they have the best opportunity to find the perfect candidate, but we can also uphold a fair hiring process and best represent the organisation.
We all have unconscious biases, and as recruiters we know both the importance of being cognizant and the strategies to mitigate the risk of slipping into them. Not only is it ethically critical, there are also legal implications. Get your hiring manager alongside you in the cockpit, help them recognise their biases and understand the importance of best practice in equitable hiring.
Equitable hiring practice is everyone’s responsibility
Recruiters are trained to spot blind-spots, to reflect on biases and use fair processes. It’s crucial that in the very first meeting with the hiring manager, a conversation is had around fair hiring.
Some hiring managers might have preferences based on previous colleague experience or they might have leads gained through their network. Give them the space to discuss their initial ideas – some of them will be helpful! – and then work with them to gently highlight potentially problematic preconceptions and strategies for broadening the net.
Create the scorecard in collaboration, bringing together their technical expertise and your recruitment best practice. If you and your hiring manager are working from the same criteria you’ll have the best chance to fairly judge a candidate and have constructive conversations around suitability.
The interview is critical. Go through the interview questions with hiring manager before the interview to ensure the questions are appropriate (and legal!). When you’re reviewing candidates together, help the hiring manager focus on the relevant skills, strengths and weaknesses and avoid drifting towards biases.
Get hiring managers engaged with the employer brand
Employer branding is not just for potential talent. The hiring manager doesn’t need to be able to quote the full narrative, but they do need to know and get the primary messaging. It’s a powerful tool to help them and you describe the organisation in a consistent way and connect the dots between the wider company culture, expectations and aspirations, and the job role and team.
As a recruiter, you are also charged with protecting the employer brand, and without an engaged hiring manager there is reputational risk. Slow responses, cancelled or rescheduled interviews, ghosting – a poor candidate experience can cause problems down the line, especially in a tight specialised market where word spreads fast.
Ultimately, it’s in the hiring manager’s best interest to be engaged if they want a high performing team with the best candidate. Fair hiring practices benefit everyone, and without that education from the recruiter and collaboration across the process not only do they risk poor talent outcomes, they also risk unfair processes and reputational damage.

From cowboy to copilot: getting your hiring manager out of the saddle and into the cockpit

Imagine being handed the keys to a car but told you can only drive it on one road, at one speed, and only during daylight hours. It’s still driving, but you’re restricted by so many rules that the freedom doesn’t feel quite so&#8230; free.
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The reality is, this is what work can feel like for someone who is micro-managed or controlled to the point that those leadership skills they spent so long developing can’t be put to use. It’s a lack of autonomy &#8211; you&#8217;re given responsibility, but with little room to make your own decisions or take your own path.
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Autonomy is a driving force behind employee satisfaction, innovation, and productivity. And, in a world where flexible working is now the norm, autonomy is quickly shifting from a “nice to have” to a must-have for organisations wanting to attract and retain top talent.
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Autonomy fuels innovation: When employees are given the freedom to approach tasks in their own way, they’re more likely to think outside the box and come up with solutions that might not have surfaced under rigid oversight. Research from the CIPD highlights that employees who feel trusted and empowered are more likely to be innovative, contributing to new ideas and processes that drive the business forward. <a href="https://www.achievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dyson-Case-Study-APAC-2.pdf">Take Dyson</a>, the British tech giant. Known for encouraging its engineers to experiment, the company allows its teams a significant amount of autonomy in how they approach problems. The result? A reputation for innovation and a string of industry-changing products.
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At its core, autonomy is built on trust. By offering your people the opportunity and freedom to make decisions, leaders signal that they believe in their team’s abilities. This reduces the need for micromanagement, which is often one of the biggest barriers to employee satisfaction. In fact, a study by the University of Birmingham revealed that <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2017/autonomy-in-the-workplace-has-positive-effects-on-well-being-and-job-satisfaction-study-finds">65% of UK workers felt micromanagement negatively impacted their performance</a>. When you hand over the reins, you’re not only fostering a culture of trust, but you’re also freeing up time for leaders to focus on strategic thinking rather than day-to-day oversight.

Allowing employees to take ownership of their tasks encourages growth. Your people have the freedom to explore new approaches or tackle problems independently, they develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills that benefit both themselves and the organisation. Autonomy also gives employees the space to identify areas for improvement in their roles and take the initiative to upskill or develop new competencies. With the rise of online learning and professional development courses, employees now have more opportunities than ever to enhance their skill sets—but they need the freedom to pursue these without being tied to rigid schedules.

So, at the same time, how do we ensure this autonomy doesn’t hinder connection? We don’t want to isolate our people. We want to empower them to excel independently – so they can in turn thrive socially. Autonomy doesn’t mean isolation. The challenge is finding the sweet spot where employees feel empowered to work independently, while still feeling connected to their colleagues and the wider organisation. Like a driver who has freedom on the road but needs occasional check-ins at the service station, employees require balance: the space to be creative and self-directed, while also benefiting from collaboration and a shared sense of purpose. Above all, clear goals and expectations will pave the way to satisfied workers, who are simultaneously productive independently, and strong together.

Eyes on the Road: How to give your employee the autonomy they deserve… AND maintain the connection.

<div id="pageContainer1" class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">Communication is a balancing act. With every transmission, communicators are often balancing several, sometimes conflicting, factors at once. At any given time, communicators are talking directly to people with vastly different sensibilities, priorities, and even job roles, finding the throughline that connects them all is always a give and take.</div>
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<div class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">This is most strongly felt in pensions communications. With attention-grabbing and concerning stories making the headlines, pension schemes can be one of the most emotive and uncertain topics to tackle. There’s a lot of negativity around the subject, which can put employees off from fully capitalising on the range of benefits at their disposal. With the majority of Brits either <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/publications/challenges-uk-pension-system-case-pensions-review">not paying in or paying very little</a> as well as citing pensions as the main reason for <a href="https://getpenfold.com/employer-tools/pension-employee-retention-tool">leaving a company</a>, it’s never been more important to inspire employees into action.</div>
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<div class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">Psychologically, pension communications come up against several paradoxes. Government research indicated that life events are cited as good prompting points for employees but not <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/engaging-with-pensions-at-timely-moments/final-report-engaging-with-pensions-at-timely-moments">milestone birthdays</a>. According to Phoenix Insight, <a href="https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/how-to-motivate-mid-life-employees-to-save-for-retirement/#:~:text=Research%20found%20the%20top%20way,%2Dterm%20partner%20(22%25).">Midlifers are best motivated</a> by visualising their futures whilst simultaneously being intimidated to picture growing older. These conflicting narratives to weather mean that it’s not always obvious which avenue to pursue and what maximises impact. On top of this, there’s the question of where you place responsibility. Any good pension scheme offers a range of options for employees.</div>
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<div class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">Technically, it should be within each employees’ control to get the most out of their particular schemes. But at the same time, auto enrolment has worked to provide people with a safety net, with <a href="https://www.cushon.co.uk/articles/94-percent-of-employers-face-pensions-challenges">77% of the UK workforce</a> having a pension because of it. It’s natural for many to feel it’s the responsibility of the organisation to handle these affairs, especially when they see that x amount of a pay slip is spent on it. Again, you have to straddle the paradox of taking control of the situation and giving employees the reins.</div>
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<div class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">But it’s not all doom and gloom, as pension communications present an incredible opportunity to motivate and even upskill employees. Every demographic might want particulars out of their pensions, but everyone can benefit from financial education and toolkits. If anything, it makes these learning opportunities more vital because they’re the crucial throughline across all the personas you want to speak to. <a href="https://www.pensions-expert.com/Defined-Contribution/How-pension-schemes-can-overcome-their-diverse-communications-challenges?ct=true">82% of people</a> like to feel in control of their finances and whatever age your workforce is, you can galvanise them into improving their futures, no matter how close they may be.</div>
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<div class="_page_1ythq_98" role="presentation" data-index="0" aria-label="Page 1">The reason pension comms can be such a balancing act is because it’s the litmus test of how much organisations really care for their people. As much as we talk about fending off competition and holding up good business practice, retaining talent should fundamentally include giving them a better quality of life. Going the extra mile to make sure everyone feels considered should set the bar for all communications.</div>

The Unique Balancing Act of Pensions Communications

The leaves are turning, jumpers are out, and hot teas and coffees were essential at our latest IC Leaders’ Breakfast. Hosted at our offices in Southwark, we brought together internal communicators from across sector (and geographies!) to discuss the hot topics and pressing challenges in IC. Our theme was ‘Developing a culture for success’ – a topic that’s clearly front of mind for many as it sparked brilliant conversation and reflection in the group.
We were lucky enough to have the discussion led by Tor Goldfield from Expedia Group and Mary Jacobsen from Bird &amp; Bird. It was really interesting to hear how the needs of their respective organisations differed, and what function internal communications has in these different contexts.
For Tor, there was a need to streamline the values to their core essentials when their new CEO took over. By and large, the values stayed the same as under her predecessor, but Tor spoke of the sea change in investment and care for their values that motivated a lot more active participation from the workforce. This led to an uptick in overall employee satisfaction as, from their own metrics, team cooperation had reached 92% with a massive increase of overall engagement to a 3-year high.
In Mary Jacobsen’s case, at Bird &amp; Bird, they developed and grew these values in 2023 and have been working to embed them ever since. Scratch. Similarly to Tor, this was triggered by the entrance of a new CEO but combined with the launching of a new corporate brand, something that 106 was brought in to facilitate. This effort led to a multinational investigation into the shared sensibilities across continents. In an effort to avoid a London-centric narrative they were keen to move away from, a research project was launched to bring in as many different global points of view as possible to find what working for the firm meant to all their people.
These two case studies sparked an early discussion about recognising cultural differences when articulating global company values. In that same vein, how important are those values to organisations and how important should they be? Often, when companies expand and join collectives, culture can be lost as new stakeholders come in and new ways of working are developed. Henry, 106 Founder, made the point that this type of restructuring should be seen as a “stress test” for organisations; if you can’t uphold your values on your worst day then they shouldn’t be thought of as your values.
But it’s one thing to state values and another to live them. Discussion moved onto how embed values into everyday operations. Benchmarking is crucial to avoid negative interpretation of values but having clear focuses on what they looked like. As we talked further, we defined disengagement as when values aren’t truthful in how the company conducts itself, highlighting the importance of behaviour modelling.
Companies in general feel the need to be all things to all people but a good point was made about how companies can be tied by the markets they operate in. Given greater global insecurity in recent years, we came to discuss how to navigate complex issues in a truthful manner. One person shared their powerful move to offer an open forum for colleagues to discuss what the business was doing in relation to these external events or topics, in a safe internal space.
Conversation then turned to how to influence leaders and the concept of “authenticity” in communications. A great point was made that workforces don’t look for authentic leaders necessarily but more for credible leaders; they back up what they do with their actions. In light of this, the need to be a collaborative and “critical friend” when working with leaders was necessary to make real impact in communications. In the examples given, this meant that employees understood their role in the wider strategy and felt their concerns heard.
A final hot take with this great analogy that someone shared: employees think comms are like marriage while leaders think comms are like dating. Leaders want to put their best results forward and tell their people what’s great about working here whereas employees want more depth in their comms and greater honesty.
It was fantastic to have so many IC pros together, to hear about what’s going on in different organisations and share some common challenges. Thank you to everyone who came and contributed so openly, it was such an enriching morning.
Until next time!
Do you have a hankering for professional development and Ole &amp; Steen pastries? Come along to our next breakfast! Email <a href="mailto:daniel@106comms.com">daniel@106comms.com</a> with your interest, and we’ll invite you to our next event.

IC Leaders’ Breakfast: Developing a culture for success

Change management has been of the main issues of this year and something that all manner of organisations need to know how to navigate. No company goes through major change without its perennial challenges. Luckily, Poppulo took on the subject and shared a refreshing perspective with their webinar on EVP Misalignment on Change &amp; How To Get It Right.
Our two speakers were Joss Matthieson, Engagement Officer for Change Oasis, and Leona O’Sullivan, Employer Brand Manager for Deloitte Ireland. It was refreshing to see two industry professionals talk so comfortably and confidently on this subject, particularly when referencing their own experience in the sector.
They kicked things off with a quick poll to take the temperature of the call, finding out how much change participants were currently experiencing change at their organisations. Joss furnished this by citing that prior to the pandemic, the average company had 2 or 3 transformational programmes and now, post-pandemic, that number stands at 15 or more.
The solution lay in internal comms teams’ meticulous understanding of a company’s core values and how to position them in relation to specific decisions made in a change programme. For colleagues this creates an opportunity to join the dots and understand where they fit in the context of the wider strategy.
But the greater lessons came from Leona’s own experience of the leadership team at VMware, her former employer and a cloud computing tech company, that was acquired by Broadcom in her time there.
Naturally, as anyone who’s worked through a merger can speak to, there was a lot of anxiety and fear around job security and operations. In Leona’s own words, there was almost no time to catch a breath before they had to start looking at structures and roles within the company moving forward.
This increased vulnerability led them to default to management as new stakeholders increased. Even changes in intranet sign-ins were cause for concern, with many people fearing that a routine maintenance issue or administrative function might mean they were out of a job.
This is where increased leadership communication, even an “over-communication style”, became an essential asset in managing change. Even though much was out of their hands due to regulation and jurisdiction, leaders at VMware would still regularly gather to answer concerns when they could. Investing time, energy, and patience in their people worked to allay fears and reinfuse their culture with trust and understanding. When they had no other options, the best way to manage these anxieties was in this open-hearted manner to create psychological safety.
Obviously, it’s easy to be a human being when it feels like everything is on the line but how can we ensure that connection in our day-to-day? As Leona and Joss’ discussion continued, they talked about demonstrating self-awareness of what colleagues are experiencing and moving away from homogenous messaging was crucial. This culminated in what Joss called the SHIFT Framework:
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<li>Survey emotional culture.</li>
<li>Hone leaders’ emotional intelligence.</li>
<li>Integrate emotions into change strategy.</li>
<li>Foster emotional cultural habits and rituals.</li>
<li>Track and tweak your approach.</li>
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It was a great exploration, not just of how emotional intelligence can make all the difference for our colleagues but how it can be built into functional frameworks. Ultimately, it was proof to me about how much emotional interchanges occur in a business, even where you wouldn’t think it. There’s ample opportunity to flesh out culture and values and communicators shouldn’t limit themselves in what they can build when working strategically.

The Impact of EVP Misalignment on Change and How To Get It Right: Poppulo Webinar Write-Up

Borrowing from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, when two tribes go to war merge, it often turns into point scoring, resistance, obstruction and sometimes all-out war.
Leaders can be vying for power; managers may hunker down and keep themselves protected; colleagues can get anxious or take flight.
And if there’s a vacuum of communication or simply a lack of transparency, expect imaginations (and the grapevine) to be working overtime.
Having been through a couple of acquisitions and worked with several companies going through mergers and restructuring, here are a few insights into some of the challenges and some of the potential answers.
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Align to business strategy
Yeah, sounds like Change Management 101.  But a lot of talk following a merger can focus on a load of processes, changes, projects and engagement that can feel random or simply superfluous to current need.  Focus on what matters now, and is aligned to the strategy.
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Be as transparent as you can
Going through a merger or restructure has lots of change, understandably, a few known unknowns and, in the words of Donald Rumsfield, there will always be a few unknown unknowns.  Some things can’t be shared – whether publicly or people sensitive – but it’s that ability to be able to share what you can and explain why there are some things that can’t be shared right now.  Or some questions that leaders don’t have answers for.
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Make an effort to understand the resistors
It is easy to dismiss resistors as people who wouldn’t be happy with whatever is happening or just like to stir things up.  But their resistance comes from somewhere, and being able to have that cognitive empathy is critical.  Sometimes it’s simply a lack of knowledge or communications; sometimes pure fear; or they feel they have to pick sides – and they don’t want to go against a leader who’s clearly marking his or her territory.
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Make sure leaders stand up and be counted
Mergers, restructuring, change programmes – these are all major programmes that eat up a lot of leadership and managerial time, and that’s without everyone getting on with the day job.  But leaders need to make time to listen – and listen intently; be visible; and encourage colleagues to voice opinions, bring ideas and feel like they are shaping the organisation, at every level.
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Find the glue that brings you together
While company strategy provides a sense of direction, the glue for many is in the culture and sense of purpose.  Again, not at a macro level, but how can we collaborate?  What are the opportunities?  What is the culture we are creating here?  Values help to frame this, and show a commitment to its people, but also give voice and empowerment to teams and individuals in shaping that culture in the future.
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Be clear about the opportunity
Leaders can often speak in broad terms about the market opportunity for the new company; but the excitement of that can often appease quickly.  People want more granular detail – what does it mean for me?  There is always work to be done to be able to show to people at different levels in different departments, what the change means.  It could mean more opportunities, a chance to collaborate with new teams or develop new products, or simply it provides stability for the team.  It doesn’t need to be a moonshot message.
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There is no silver bullet for any merger or restructure.  You have to work in the context of your organisation &#8211; some mergers are much smoother than others, often when there&#8217;s little or no overlap of skills or territories.  And you have to work at it, full stop.

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