Sarah Conlon, Digital Communications Consultant at air traffic control management company NATS has been in the comms space since 2006, working first in PR and Marketing before moving into internal comms. Prior to her current role at NATS, she was the Global Programme Communications Lead at HSBC.

simply's Content and Community Manager Aish Rajavelu, and Content and Communications Director Patrick Hulbert caught up with Sarah about the challenges of working in internal comms within the aviation industry, NATS’ intranet and digital transformation project, and her tips and tricks on how to engage employees while going through organisational change. 

Listen to the full interview below.  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aniisu Verghese PhD has been writing about communications for over a decade with his blog and newsletter while working as an in-house practitioner for globally recognised brands. Predominantly based in India, Aniisu has led communications for brands such as Tesco, Accenture, and Sabre.

Listen to the episode to hear his tips for multi-national communication strategies, what inspired him to start his own communications blog, which was the first IC blog in India, and his pro-bono work in the field of IC.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annabel Dunstan MPRCA is the Founder and CEO at Question & Retain.

With a degree in anthropology, Annabel began her career as a lumberjack’s assistant before becoming a ski guide and then a sailing instructor. She then joined the marketing team at Gulf Air, promoting the Gulf States as a tourism destination at the time of the first Gulf War. She then went on to various roles in the marketing and PR sector, including at 3 Monkeys Communications. She was appointed MD three years after she joined, overseeing the growth of the award-winning top 50 PR consultancy to £7.5m revenues with 75 consultants, with clients including Coca-Cola Enterprises, Microsoft and Three.

Annabel left the PR space in 2011 to found her own consultancy, Gain & Retain, (G&R), to help businesses looking to grow through attracting and developing talented people and winning great clients. Question & Retain (Q&R), was launched in 2012 adding measurement tools to the mix; specifically in the employee experience, client and membership satisfaction sectors.

simply recently interviewed Annabel on what inspired her to transition from a career in marketing and PR to focus on internal communications, the concept of Pulse Check and how it helps organisations to understand their workforce and communication strategies, and what trends are emerging in the world of work in 2023 and how organisations should prepare for these changes.

Listen to the episode to find out more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Hawkins is the Head of Communications at waste management company Biffa, where she is responsible for both the internal and external communications. She joined Biffa in 2019, and has since worked on many exciting projects, including rolling out new values, a new champions network called Biffa Involvement Group, and Biffa Beat, their employee engagement app.   

She also has experience working in communications at Shanks Group and Renewi. 

simply's Head of Content Patrick Hulbert and Content Executive Aish Rajavelu interviewed Helen about her experience, how Biffa are engaging their frontline workers, and how she engages employees and gets them to believe in the company’s strategy.  

Listen to the full podcast episode to find out more. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lorna Shaw is the User Education and Knowledge Manager at financial services firm Blackrock.  

In her role as User Education and Knowledge Manager, she leads on the education and knowledge management around their upcoming migration from on-premises to Microsoft Cloud (Exchange Online) and Outlook Mobile, delivering an integrated and better user experience for colleagues. Before working at Blackrock, Lorna was Communications and Engagement Manager at NatWest, leading the comms on their Resource Augmentation Programme, a large-scale bank-wide transformation project. 

simply's Head of Consulting Sonya Poonian and Content Executive Aish Rajavelu spoke to Lorna prior to her panel at simplyEXP to find out about her experience working in comms and engagement, what her role at Blackrock entails and some of her learnings over the years communicating through digital transformation projects. Listen to the episode to find out more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Kelley, Internal Communications and Engagement Director at Inmarsat spoke with Content Executive Aish Rajavelu on the simplypodcast.

Helen has around twenty years of experience working in large, complex organisations in both the private and public sectors. She started her career in internal comms working for the BBC, and has since gone on to work for the likes of HMRC, Anglo American, and International Airlines Group (IAG), leading change comms projects within those organisations.

When she started her role at Inmarsat five years ago, Helen set up the centralised internal comms and engagement function from scratch. The business now has employees in over 22 countries across the world, and the IC team have successfully navigated their employees through various growth and digital transformation projects, as well as a global pandemic.

Listen to the episode to learn more about the challenges Helen has seen over the years working in IC, her tips on communicating change within organisations, and exciting upcoming projects she's been involved in at Inmarsat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode of the simplypodcast, Content Executive Aish Rajavelu caught up with Steve and Cindy Crescenzo, founders of Crescenzo Communications.

Both Steve and Cindy have been in the comms space for over 20 years, and work with IC professionals to take the 'corporate' out of corporate communications and replace it with 'creative.' They have delivered their own talks and workshops across Europe, Canada, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, and have completed consultancy projects with companies in a broad range of industries worldwide.

Listen to this episode to find out more about their key learnings over the years as comms professionals, some of the challenges they are currently seeing in the industry, and more about their upcoming session at simplyEXP and simplytraining workshop.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo Hobbs, Global Head of Internal Communication at Ocado Group, spoke with Content Executive Aish Rajavelu and Head of Content Patrick Hulbert on the simplypodcast. 

Through the podcast, we discussed Jo's previous working experiences in journalism and public relations, before moving across to internal communications. Starting out in newspapers and radio, she then moved to "representing organisations as opposed to challenging them" in PR. 

After two decades at Bedfordshire Police as Media Relations Manager and later Head of Media, she saw first-hand how the force changed its outward and inward communications, and was interested in how comms shifted more towards authenticity and collaboration. Her interest in internal transparency and moving to a two-way dialogue and the effective storytelling she could focus on was very appealing to her and one of the key reasons she shifted to internal comms. 

In the podcast, she also focuses on what Ocado Group does and how it should be distinguished from the well-known online food retailer in the UK, and how she has been connecting with people disparately located in 12 markets across the globe. 

She also looks at how the business has scaled at pace and yet kept an agile mentality. 

Jo is a judge for the simplys, our awards programme taking place at the top of The Gherkin on 24 November. You have until 22 September to submit an entry. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As part of the ongoing Women in Comms series, simply interviewed Himangini Khanna, Head of People Engagement at tech unicorn Epidemic Sound.  

In her role as Head of People Engagement, Himangini is a champion of communication with experience supervising executive corporate and department communications, including tone of voice, with a speciality in impactful messaging that allows company culture and employee engagement to meet seamlessly. 

Prior to Epidemic Sound, she worked as Strategic PR Consultant for London based agency The Crowd&I, where clients in the tech scale-up sector included iZettle and Love Home Swap.  

Listen to the full episode below to find out more about her experiences, some of her learnings from her role as Global Head of People Engagement, and some interesting upcoming projects at Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzie Robinson, intranet and digital employee experience consultant at ClearBox, has worked with intranets for 14 years and has practical experience with all aspects of an intranet lifecycle, from research to implementation, to ongoing governance and overall strategy. Suzie’s experience has grown out of the roots of internal communication, so she has a particular focus on employee experience and engagement. Remote and difficult to reach users are often the core user-base for the intranets Suzie managed, so she has extensive experience at finding ways to engage and connect a broad audience range, with knowledge around which intranet solution is ideal depending on a business’s requirements. Suzie is a published author and editor, and she is active in the internal communications community.  

In the past, Suzie has worked for companies such as Waterstones and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, and the intranet she managed at Waterstones won a Gold Digital Impact Award for Best Intranet. 

Listen to the podcast below to find out more about Suzie’s experience, some of her learnings over the years, as well as some of her advice to those looking to enter our awards. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.