Category: Public Sector Communications

How do you prove you’re resilient? Work in the public sector

A depressing entry in the Guardian’s cutsblog suggests that the image of public sector workers as plodding, risk-averse jobsworths will count against them when it comes to taking some of the  2 million jobs that the private sector is poised to deliver any day now.

Enough recruitment consultants have been quoted in PR Week saying that public sector-ites will be at a disadvantage in the jobs market to have spooked me into attending a CIPR/VMA event looking at how hard it might be to move from public to private sector.   Inevitably the hardest thing to prove when you’ve worked in the public sector is that you have the commercial acumen to make it in private business.  Otherwise, it seems  the skills that employers are looking for are, encouragingly, the ones that you develop as a means of survival in the public sector –  resilience,  managing change, leading teams, influencing stakeholders,  a willingness to push back against difficult managers (Lord, have I got some stories to tell…)

Transferable communications skills

Having worked in comms in both sectors, I’d say that the skills you need to succeed are pretty much the same for either.  My starter list would include  a continuous focus on the audience, a sound understanding of the market you’re working in,  imagination, flexibility, tenacity, a sharp eye for managing budgets and people, an understanding of strategy (and how it differs from tactics),  a willingness to get stuck into delivery (and the practical know-how), a healthy respect for deadlines,  the political nous to navigate  layers of management, good writing skills and an eye for detail.  I see no reason why having the skills to work in one should somehow bar you from working in the other.

The importance of social networks

I was struck by how few people at the event said they felt confident  using social media as part of their job-hunting armoury.  Sadly, opting out isn’t an option.  Research suggests that 100% of recruitment consultants use LinkedIn as a tool to identify (and weed out) candidates for posts, and that the size of your network is important.  Something like 85% of them use Twitter for the same reason.  Not having an online presence suggests that you haven’t updated your skills in a decade and aren’t really playing the game – not having a LinkedIn account now is like not having an email address was ten years ago.

Barbara Gibson – our social media guru – recorded this  on her phone at the event I went to, demonstrating a neat way of gathering content for a blog or website at the same time as cementing a link with a potential contact – wouldn’t you be flattered if she asked to interview you?  And wouldn’t you put the link on your site too and link back to her?  Genius!

Communication isn’t the same as spin

Pop quiz: what do these   stories have in common?

The answer is, of course, they are united by rushed policy-making, an airy attitude to making announcements without expecting to be questioned about the details, and  spectacularly bad communications.

Ironically,the thing I like about this government  ( the only one) is its sense of urgency and its refusal to accept that there are any sacred cows that can’t be slaughtered.  I wish the last lot had been so bold.  But change on this scale needs to be based on sound evidence and detailed policy work, else it has a tendency to blow up in your face; and if you can’t explain what you’re trying to do, you can’t build the support you need to get it done.

The comms thing really pains me: poor briefing, confused messages, over-promising what cannot be delivered, insensitivity to the needs of important stakeholders,  confusion about key areas of policy.  They  need  good communications support and the need will get more acute as policy starts to be implemented.  Some optimists think that they are going to start realising this quite soon.  Regular readers will know, however,  that I am not  by nature a glass half full kind of a girl.  Government communication is firmly linked to spin and smears (Cameron said it again in his  leader’s speech yesterday).  The notions of PR, lobbying and campaigning are such an anathema to Ministers that they are effectively forbidding people to do it (even though an estimated 15% of new Tory MPs have a background in lobbying).  CIPR are trying to raise the issue of the value of public sector comms, but I doubt that will be enough.  They need comms help – how do we convince them?

Update:  I’ve just re-read this.  It worries me that it looks as though I think comms can or should be used as a cover for bad policy. It can’t and shouldn’t. My point is that if the government has a coherent strategy  that is driving what’s being done,  they have no chance of letting us know what it might be without a marked improvement in their comms.  The fact that it looks increasingly  as though no such coherence exists is worrying on many levels…

Where’s the audience for local TV?

Thank God I got round to finding out about local politics in Tower Hamlets. It’s  Dallas meets the Borgias with Oyster cards round here.

New readers wanting to catch up with a story of political double-crossing, conspiracy theories about religious fundamentalism,  suspicions of electoral fraud and  backroom deals in smokefree rooms can start here.  Those with a taste for a more analytical take on it all can pick it up here.

With such rich source material a local TV station broadcasting news about the area should be a hit – there’s a  news programme /soap opera combo just begging to be produced already.   But, even in Tower Hamlets, I fail to see  local TV of the type Jeremy Hunt was proposing on the Today programme this morning taking off.

As he explains it, the market has failed to give us a truly plural local media so he proposes to stimulate the market by relaxing ownership restrictions and allowing media companies to start hyper-local TV services to fill the gap.

He gave some examples of where local interest might be strong enough to make programming worthwhile.  It won’t fill a schedule, but, yes, football fans in Bolton may well want coverage of their team’s performance against Man Utd  (as long as ESPN/Sky/MUTV are prepared to share the rights – and Wanderers fans don’t already have access to the BBC, the internet or a newspaper).  People in Middlesborough may  want to see their Mayoral debates televised – a bit more of a stretch this one, but I can see the public interest argument for giving them the chance;  but it’s hardly going to be stripped through a week’s programming at 7pm – and if there isn’t a regular local channel for people to go to, how will they find it when it’s on?

It  may be a massive failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t see where the audience demand is for these services, or what the business model for a local TV service might be.  The  obvious conclusion is that creative use of the internet is the best way to achieve the  kind of services that Jeremy Hunt has in mind – a conclusion he seems to be reaching himself, if this speech is anything to go by.  Odd that he didn’t try to share this with us on Today.

Singing the public sector blues

It’s unlikely that 38Degrees will be organising flashmobs to protest about the cutting of marketing and consultancy budgets in the public sector.  There won’t be a harrowing Boys From the Blackstuff sequel showing the  impact of unemployment on the PR consultant communities of north London.   Newsnight’s package last night about the potential impact of cuts to services in Sheffield has already been called “lefty bollocks” by one esteemed Tory blogger, so I’m not holding my breath waiting for an outraged  backlash from the commentariat either.  But, other than the Guardian (inevitably), no-one much seems to have noticed that cutting the government comms budget is going to have a hefty impact on the private sector too.  Lots of small consultancies  mixed public sector with private sector work.  It helped them to stay in business so that they could employ their own staff and sub-contract printers, designers, writers  and event management companies.  It paid for ad space in print and on TV, direct mail, web development , exhibition stands and a multitude of other things.  The money got spread around and (whisper it) a lot of the campaigns it paid for did a lot of good.

It’s not that I didn’t expect cuts to comms – an obvious target if ever there was one, and much more sobering cuts were also made yesterday.   I’m just concerned about what happens when you take £270m worth of business out of an industry containing a large number of  SMEs that’s just coming out of a recession.

Belts will be worn tighter this year

(But only by some)

At the risk of committing career suicide by teasing COI, I thought the NIB in this week’s PR Week summed up everything you need to know about  how things work in Hercules Road:

COI is being restructured around six client themes.  A briefing from the COI suggests that the reason is planned cuts in public spending.  The move will see the COI make 12 new appointments – six group directors and six group strategy directors.

Press officers in an age of twitter

Great post here about whether (and if so, how) press officers within government should respond to stories/debates circulating among digital communities on blogs and via Twitter.  Inevitably there is real frustration about how slow press officers can be to react to the head of steam which can build up around key issues online before they hit the mainstream.  The argument that online inactivity damages departmental reputation must be right.  But it does misunderstand, I think, the key reality of a press officer’s life, which is that they must please their Minister.  On the whole Ministers still don’t get  this stuff and don’t believe that their constituents do either. Some of them blog, a couple are on Twitter (Ben Bradshaw and Harriet Harman, take a bow) But generally their key concern is tomorrow’s front page – in particular the front page of the Mail – or Newsnight, which is why so much activity is short term and reactive rather than designed to build relationships and alliances and deliver a long-term strategy.  Many press officers find this frustrating – although a frighteningly large number still don’t get it either. There’s a serious job to be done in some departments to educate press teams as well as policy leads on the possibilities.

Stakeholder Management – Lesson One, Not Like This

Government comms isn’t what it was in its Campbell prime; but even accepting that the control freakery of yesteryear is out of place now, the  performance over the Iraq inquiry has been even more dismal than usual.

Even if they don’t care about the democratic principles at stake (depressing enough in itself), have these people not learned anything about dealing with their stakeholders?  Do they not realise that making a major announcement without (seemingly) discussing it with anyone who might have an opinion on it is insane?  Having promised to increase openness to restore public faith in politics, did no-one  think that announcing a secret inquiry with a hand-picked chair   into the most controversial political decision of the past decade was risky?  Didn’t they think to line up some allies to come out in support? (And if they tried and couldn’t find any, shouldn’t that have set some alarm bells ringing?)  Isn’t rigging it so it won’t report until after the election a little, well, rubbish,  presentationally?  Especially as it now looks as though they are rowing back on what they’ve announced – another nail in the coffin of  basic government competence.

When even the Lib Dems are credibly pointing out that the government is “weak and pathetic”  things look pretty bleak.  I  now support the Labour Party  the way my Dad supports West Brom – he’s been doing it a long time, it’s a  habit and a reliable family joke; but he didn’t really care when they were relegated.  At the moment I could seriously use some good reasons to get enthusiastic about Labour.

Bless you

While every one else in the country is absorbed in MPs’ expenses and Joanna Lumley, there is one corner of a Whitehall comms office that is still fighting the battle against swine flu. You can’t open a paper these days without seeing that revolting picture of that man sneezing all over you.

This seems to me to be a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation for government.  If there isn’t a pandemic then they will eventually be roasted for wasting public money. If there is they will be roasted for not doing enough to warn us.  But is it really necessary for DH to have to spend money on a leaflet telling people, with diagrams, how to wash their hands? And do you think they’re downhearted that no-one else in the country seems to care?

If you build it, will they come?

Interesting to see on Emma Mulqueeny’s blog a post about Directgov’s attempts to set up a news site about school closures during the great freeze.  I salute the fact they even tried to do it (so fast, and without a Submission to Ministers first, too!)  The technical problems they had are laid out in the comments to Emma’s original post, but at least it’s there and it works after a fashion, and it will get better.

Problem is,  even though I’ve worked with Directgov in the past – in fact am linked to a project with them right now – it never crossed my mind to go there for news on Monday.  (I went straight to Tower Hamlets’ website and found not very much of use – although it did tell me the library was closed.)  Is it just a matter of time before Directgov seeps into people’s consciousness as the place to go for information – or are we always likely to think locally first about issues which affect us on a local basis?

When I was at DfES some years ago, there were ideas floating around to get schools to set up mass text message services for parents to let them know about school closures.  Anyone know if this is happening?  That kind of very local solution to problems like this instinctively feels better to me than trying to do it on a national network.

Square pegs in square holes – please

Here’s another way the press influences politics – see posts passim…  I’ve been trying since November to bring in  some additional support for a project I’m currently working on.  This is an entirely new, very large,  public sector project.  It is adding massively to the output of the department and generating a lot of additional work which needs people;  experienced and highly skilled people;  to do properly.  If we want to get it right, first time, without causing the additional expense or delay which comes when you have to rub along with the second rate, we have to spend a bit of money.  We don’t have exactly the right set of skills in-house, and the people we do have are already stretched to breaking point.  The fear of the press and the dreaded FOI request (and the shame of having to own up to hiring consultants (boo, hiss)) means that we have to jump through hoops of fire to even get close to justifying having extra people on board.   Even if I finally get the go-ahead today it will be 4 – 6 weeks before we can get anyone on board  if we go through the proper procurement procedures  (which of course we will).  By then it will be getting on for six months since the need was identified.  When the project finally limps into public view, will it be lack of professional support at the right time, or incompetent civil servants who couldn’t run a whelk stall who will be blamed for it not being everything it could be  – first time?