Last week, team UC touched down in Amsterdam for the annual Internal Communications Conference. Victoria and Alys shared five secrets of successful culture change and were joined by an impressive roster of speakers from organisations across Europe.
Chaired by Henrik de Wit from Refresco, a panel featuring senior directors from Coca Cola, Mars, and ING opened the conference. Their insightful discussion highlighted the ongoing importance of listening to employees and understanding what they really want, and the power of engaged leaders who lead and listen with curiosity. Steffan Turk stressed the importance of training and developing those leaders by providing adequate communications training so that they could truly stretch their “storytelling muscle”. Wenka Boy added the importance of providing adequate context, underlining that what matters to leaders is often very different to what’s important to an employee today.
The morning session closed with Maria Tsekoura, Director of Marketing & Communications, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group who gave communicators an insight into the mindset shift required to truly embrace AI.She shared a host of new platforms with delegates, suggesting that many communicators may need to move away from content creators to supporters, curators, and facilitators of content instead. Maria also underscored the need to build trust in established channels to counter disinformation, and to lean into and stay ahead of AI regulations as they are introduced.
The focus of the afternoon, chaired by the charismatic Véronique Schmitt-Ruppert, Head of Communications EMEA, Bayer, turned to the strategic role of internal communications within organisations and the urgent need to inspire real action from employees. Panellists shared their experiences of engaging the c-suite and highlighted the importance of shared accountability and true inter-functional collaboration. They also candidly discussed the need to balance employees’ priorities while maintaining profitability, conceding that hard decisions sometimes needed to be made to ensure success.
The day was a fascinating insight into the current challenges faced by communicators around Europe, and with ongoing disruption and uncertainty, it was clear that the importance of engaging employees and strengthening corporate culture have scaled the corporate agenda once again.
