Why Everybody Hates You

Daisy talks to Dr Adam Read, External Affairs Director for SUEZ Recycling & Recovery UK, about how crucial it is that we talk about waste - and why it is hard to do. Along the way, this discussion touches on Roman waste-management practices, the huge changes in the sector over the past decade, the power of communicating through images, and the need for cross-industry co-operation.

And what does it all mean for you? Adam's main pieces of advice for communicators in unglamorous sectors are relevant for all of us: 

• Hang in there, don’t give up. Gaining recognition can take years – decades. 
• Demonstrate the value of your sector in really simple, earthy terms. Think about what it is that you do that makes you valuable, even if you’re out of sight, out of mind. If you stopped doing your job, what would they notice?
• How do you communicate that value? It's about real people, real lives, real opportunities, it's about small change. Engage your stakeholders, whether that is one-to-one or in focus groups, to understand what they really think and care about. That could be quite resource intensive but it pays off.
• In parallel, you need national campaigns. Cross-sector campaigns can play an important role in changing perceptions and allow space for individual firms to spend more time thinking about local interventions, including…
• Find champions. What's your ‘in’ in the sectors that you're thinking about? Who's your gatekeeper? Who's your champion? Who's your infiltrator? There are people out there that do get it and do want to do it, and you need to give them the information and support they need to help take the community on the journey.

You can find the all the data and analysis from the BRODIE Public First Sustainability Sentiment tracker here: http://www.publicfirst.co.uk/sustainability-sentiment-tracker.html

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Hayley Baines-Buffery, a Director at sustainability agency BRODIE Consulting talks to Daisy about why it matters whether we talk about net zero or carbon neutral, how climate talks have changed over the past decade, and what all of this means for businesses.

And what does it all mean for you? Our key takeaways are: 

• Companies that really look at their impact holistically (for example, B&Q) think about and measure emissions from products they sell and help consumers change behaviour
• But the general public would not feel confident explaining terms such as net zero, carbon neutral, so it is really important that we find better ways to engage with people on these issues and start to cut through the jargon
• Even if COP26 doesn't live up to expectations we can still be hopeful for the future. Copenhagen paved the way for Paris, and we wouldn’t have the commitments we do have now without Glasgow as a deadline
• Businesses have leaned into COP26 and it's been a great hook for their campaigns - the best way to keep momentum post COP is to commit to long-term, clear plans

You can find the all the data and analysis from the BRODIE Public First Sustainability Sentiment tracker here: https://www.publicfirst.co.uk/sustainability-sentiment-tracker.html

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Angela Halliday from Sodexo talks to Daisy about how best to measure impact, how to choose what you focus on – and whether customers care. 

And what does it all mean for you? Our key takeaways are: 

• Make clear commitments where you can get some depth and meet those commitments publicly in order to drive impact
• Don't just measure the easy KPIs - try to measure what matters most to your stakeholders. That might be best tracked as a qualitative, nuanced feeling instead of a ticked box
• We've got to be realistic that most businesses are here to make either a profit or a surplus. That means demonstrating the return on investment of 'social' programmes  for the business, for clients, and for communities.
• We cannot look at environmental performance without looking at social. And in doing so, the economic debate almost takes care of itself.

Find the full Sustainability Sentiment Tracker report here: http://www.publicfirst.co.uk/sustainability-sentiment-tracker.html

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Georgie Erangey from BRODIE Consulting talks to Daisy about how new human rights is as a concept, what the reputation risks are for companies, and whether there is any upside to getting this right. TLDR; don't do this for the accolades, do it for your conscience and as risk mitigation. Human rights and supply chain due diligence passed swiftly from a novelty to becoming a hygiene factor. You will rarely get credit for getting supply chain right - but it will protect you from supply chain instability, legal threats and reputation problems down the line.

And what does that all mean for you? Our key takeaways are: 

• Understand where you have the greatest leverage and greatest potential for impact - this will be unique to your company.
• Focus on that sweet spot because that will also be what you can communicate most credibly.
• Think about all those audiences that might have questions about that, whether that's your consumer, your peers, the regulator, investors - credibility is what will win.

Find the full Sustainability Sentiment Tracker report HERE

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Daisy why retail is a lot like working in politics and also offers lessons on leadership - as well as gems on reputation and communication.

Five key lessons stood out – three about leadership and two about communications. Let’s start with leadership:

• Define what you believe in, your starting principles and use them to inform all of your decisions. It will make those decisions easier – because you aren’t starting form scratch – but it also sets you up for the holy grail of reputation protection, the moment when your stakeholders begin to believe that even if you did something wrong, you were probably doing it for the right reasons and will sort it out.
• Explain your decisions and share the pain. Give the bad news yourself, as well as the good. That simple step will help build trust internally and externally.
• You team are capable of extraordinary things. Every interviewee this season has described feats of stamina and ingenuity. So how can you help? Make clear the problem and the constraints. Let them wow you.

And for communicators in particular,

• If you want customers to ‘vote’ for you with every purchase, you need to understand them, and that means having a team that reflects them and is curious to understand their needs. Sometimes that is going to mean engaging with some more extreme elements to get a feel for whether this is the start of something big, or a viewpoint that is truly peripheral – to make that judgment you can draw again on those core principles, but you also need a team that has a feel for what really matters to your target audience.
• And finally, vitally, don’t undersell yourself. Communicators often feel stifled in the boardroom because they are different to other executives but that is why you are there. Learn to speak their language but never forget they need you to be the voice of your stakeholders into the business – as well as the line of communication out.

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Liz Edwards, Head of Communications at TUI, tells Daisy about repatriating thousands of customers and why IT systems were actually the biggest challenge that TUI faced when Covid hit. This insight into what goes on behind the scenes at a holiday company was totally fascinating. 

Some key lessons from Liz:

• Put the customer at the heart of whatever you are doing. This is an oldie but a goodie. And it can mean challenging some really important assumptions. For example, customers don't care how you categorize them internally, so don't make that their problem. 
• Allied to this is an important reminder about transparency. Liz asks her team whether they would feel proud to explain a policy or decision on morning TV. 
• Sometimes what's needed is an apology, or at least an admission that things are going to get a little rocky. I think the key word for this whole episode has to be 'journey'. Take your stakeholders, both internal and external, on a journey with you and show them how you are fighting to deliver better for them. 
• TUI's experience shows that even the best prepared organizations get caught out when new systems come under strain. Let this be a useful reminder to look at your own org charts and think about what you would do if any one of those departments went down? Do you have a plan? The key is to do that even for the systems that don't seem mission critical right now. 
• Also crucial to your crisis plan is including breaks for all personnel. That means you too. How would you ensure continuity if something happened to you? How will you delegate more of your tasks swiftly so that you can concentrate on urgent triage and strategy?
  
  
  

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Beth Hart, Vice President for Supply Chain and Brand Trust at McDonald's UK & Ireland talks to Daisy about how it felt to shut down McDonald's - and the important work that went on behind the scenes so that food did not go to waste. This discussion has it all: how to be a responsible member of a supply chain, the difficulties involved in quantifying trust, and even a cameo by Brexit.

Beth shared some powerful reminders that are useful no matter which sector you work in:

• That doing the right thing makes business sense
• That your organization needs to evolve over time in order to not only meet stakeholder demand but pre-empt changes in society and consumer desires
• That the most important way of keeping your teams and your stakeholder groups in the loop is to communicate in a manner that is clear, consistent and frequent – even if there isn’t anything new to tell people.
• Being a responsible business also means showing up at the level of responsibility that your organization represents. McDonald’s have re-evaluated their importance to British and Irish farmers in the wake of Covid and decided to deepen their engagement with that industry so that their commitment is at the same level as their potential impact.
• Finally, Beth echoed what we have heard from every interviewee so far this season – that if they had their time again they would have done more to shield their team from the impact of such a long-lasting crisis. We all hope that covid will remain an outlier in our careers, nonetheless it is sensible to avoid crisis comms plans that rely heavily on a small group of people and don’t make allowances for rest and information sharing.

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Chris Lowe, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at Asda talks to Daisy about what happens at a supermarket when a global pandemic hits, how Covid has changed his relationships with MPs, and the innovations he'll be keeping when the pandemic is over.

Key takeaways include: 

• First, be realistic. In many situations the chances of your organization pleasing 100% of your stakeholders may be zero. So how else can you judge success? Are there better indicators that you can use to understand performance?  
• Second, be wary of the signals you are sending. As Asda improved its Covid security, MPs and civil servants began to assume that they were relaxing the rules. This shows how important it is to look out for hints of the proxy measures that your stakeholders use to assess your performance – something that you should be picking up in stakeholder audits but you will also need to be attentive to in your everyday conversations.
• Third: Be thoughtful about how you deploy your team. Chris told us that if he could repeat 2020 he would be faster to draft in support from other areas of the business in order to safeguard the wellbeing of his team. 
• Finally, we could all do with remembering Chris’ exhortation to pick up the phone – it really can make all of the difference.

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Charlotte Holloway, UK&I Government Relations Director at Zoom talks to Daisy about joining a company that is growing at an extraordinary pace, what happens when Prime Ministers use your product and the importance of agency support.

Key takeaways include: 

• Growing fast is hard but exciting and that communication is key to mitigating any growing pains – that puts an extra burden on us as reputation professionals but also gives us an exciting role to play
• You can’t tell the positive stories unless you've got the core nailed on. For Zoom that core is trust and safety –  what is it for your organisation?
• And finally, what really stood out to me was a perennial lesson about communications: even if you are doing the right thing, you cannot assume that your stakeholders, or your customers will have noticed. You need to keep telling them – over and over again, until you are sick of mentioning it. Only then might you have got the message across. 

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639 

Rebecca Park, Managing Director of Corporate Affairs at UK Finance talks to Daisy about the real role of communications professionals, why working in an industry body is more interesting that you might think and, of course, why everybody hates bankers.

She also dispenses some excellent advice, including: 

• One of the most valuable roles we can play is to be the person in the room who identifies and manages risk. 
• Building reputation isn't about talking to your customers about trust. Instead, focus on delivering what they expect from you - trust and reputation will follow. 
• Don't destroy your credibility by defending the indefensible. 
• Sometimes the right answer isn't to try and grab the headlines: communications takes many forms and the answer might be much more low key than that. And finally,
• Remember that not every decision needs to be taken right now. It might be even better to wait and observe. 

For all this as well as insights into how the financial crisis helped banks to navigate Covid, and sensible thoughts on looking after your team during an extended incident, tune in for our season finale.

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639