Ellwood Atfield and Engage International hosted ‘The Five Rooms of Internal Communications Workshop’ on 13thSeptember, which was run by Masgroves communications agency.
Jenni Field, CIPR Inside Chair, kicked off the workshop, after an introduction from James Murphy who runs Engage International. Jenni talked about how the rise of social media and the amount of ‘noise’ from emails, social media, etc that we are subjected to every day makes the job of an internal communications professional even harder, as the need to ‘cut through’ this noise increases.
Tony Cosgrove, Director at Masgroves asked everyone which advert people remembered seeing in the last 24 hours to highlight the point that we are bombarded with so much information. Hardly any of us could remember. He highlighted that humans process 32GB of information every day and internal communicators need to get messages heard, remembered and actioned. This is no mean feat.
Masgroves took everyone through an experiential workshop, traveling through five rooms. Participants had to determine the theme of each room, which concluded in a simple, memorable, internal communications methodology:
- Objective – stick with your original objective throughout your project
- Audience – tailor your message and your tone to your audience
- Channels – chose the right ones for your audiences
- Who – determine the right person to deliver the message
- Message – keep it simple, show it matters and ensure it’s the right tone for who is delivering it; what the objective is; the channel it’s going through, and your audience.
Jenni reminded everyone about the CIPR Inside’s Annual Conference on 1 November 2017, which is set to be another great event.
If you haven’t already read Ellwood Atfield’s Changing Face of Internal Communications report, researched in conjunction with ComRes, you can download it here.
If you would like to discuss your career, or need to hire into your team please contact me at lottie@ellwoodatfield.com.