New leadership at Ogilvy Impact
April, 20 – We are delighted to announce the appointment of Lorie Helliwell and Mike Beckerleg as new joint managing directors of Ogilvy Impact Australia.
Lorie and Mike replace Tam Sandeman who has decided to return to the UK after eight years with Ogilvy Public Relations Group of Companies – Pulse and Ogilvy Impact.
The appointments reflect a growing trend of companies recognising there is significant bottom line benefit when more focus and investment are placed on building brands from the inside out and driving strong brand ambassadorship with their people.
“With more than 15 years’ experience in the employee engagement industry, Lorie is renowned for the development and delivery of behaviour change employee programs which have driven countless business results. Together with Mike, whose significant insights from his rich experience as one of Australia’s smartest marketeers, the pair will take an already very successful and leading business to new heights,” said Kieran Moore, CEO Ogilvy Public Relations, Australia.
“Tam leaves Ogilvy Impact in tremendous shape and the new team is working in tandem with her to ensure a smooth transition period for our clients and our people.”
Lorie has been with Ogilvy Impact for over a year and was hired from the UK. She has vast experience in employee communication and prior to joining Ogilvy Impact in Australia, led in-house functions for large organisations such as BT, Telewest and Trinity Procurement, a SAB Miller company.
Mike brings 25 years’ experience on both the client and agency sides. He has overseen the brand, marketing and corporate communications divisions of such blue chip companies as Sony, Vodafone and Seiko and spent several years running Telstra, one of Australia’s largest advertising accounts.
They are both looking forward to making a strong Impact… (ahem…)
Being on speed really can be the answer
March, 9 – BY TAM SANDEMAN – This week a trusty colleague and I, stopped building our ark to escape Sydney’s fine weather, in favour of attending the annual MNC HR Team Briefing – an annual gathering of HR professionals from multi-national organisations. The session was great for a number of reasons, not least for two specific reasons for me. Firstly, I heard some new thought-provoking stuff – always good on a rainy day, and secondly, I finally won one of those business card prize draws (which I’ve always thought were rigged – I take it all back).
We heard speakers telling tales of the importance of culture when it comes to getting business results from the card people (Hallmark) and the biscuit and snacks people (Campbell Arnotts). But it was the final speaker, Dr Adam Fraser, who ran a fantastic and insightful session about how high performing organisations can lift performance even higher by getting their people out of what he called ‘grind’ and into a state called ‘flow’ where we perform our best, similar to ‘being in the zone’ for an elite athlete (not unlike myself – ahem). Clearly an important topic for anyone who works in employee engagement, internal communication or HR.
Now, logic tells those of us of sound mind that ‘being in the zone’ obviously sounds like the right place to be to perform at work. But, the most interesting insight for me was around the pace we work at. I know I’m not the only one who has said my biggest challenge is time, and the speed at which I’m expected to deliver, which seems to get faster and faster. My instinct here is to try to reduce my workload. Dr Adam’s comments reinforced my thinking, stating that specialists say the solution is to ‘do less’.
However, his research has proven some of the best, happiest people are those who are living at pace. People who are working at speed. That speed is OK. It’s just about being in the right frame of mind while you’re going at that pace. It struck me that those of us looking at internal engagement initiatives in organisations must work to help people get into the state of ‘flow’, which, as he put, is where we are truly and authentically happy. I loved his idea of looking deeper than the sheer volume of tasks we have on our agenda, and then started to draw parallels from our good internal communication practice.
Some of his points when questioning ourselves were:
- Do we have clarity of purpose? – this is akin to having a vision – a common goal – something everyone can pull behind.
- How about our environment? Can we control this to minimise distractions? similar to decluttering communication in an organisation.
- Are we present? – This is about active listening – really focusing on what’s in hand. In the internal comms world, this is about two way communication – it’s got to be a conversation, not just one way
- Are you positive when you ‘show up’? – being positive has such a good ripple effect on everyone. Dr Adam said, positive emotion encourages different parts of the brain to wake up and so leads to more positivity, more creativity and a culture of innovation – all these can only be good for business
His final point was again something we all know – just how important this behaviour is for leaders. For people to perform at their best, it’s leaders who can make this happen. Our suggestion is that internal communicators / anyone working in employee engagement start looking at these areas as if we get people in this state – this will make the true difference between being good, being great or being a company who is talked about.
NEW RESEARCH RELEASED TODAY
May, 18 – Less than 50 percent of Australian business leaders believe enough resources are allocated to training middle and front-line management, resulting in a significant lag behind senior leadership in communication skills of these lynchpin team members, according to a report launched today.
The report, Australia’s Commsoscopy, is the second independent report[1] commissioned by leading employee communications consultancy, Impact Employee Communications examining the effectiveness of medium to large organisations in communicating the employment ‘deal’, or Employee Value Proposition (EVP), to Australian workers.
According to Impact’s Managing Director, Tam Sandeman: “We know that clearly communicating the employment ‘deal’ – what employees get for what they give – is one of the main ways employees are attracted, engaged and retained by organisations. This is ever critical given the talent shortage.
“However, our study found there are some significant gaps in its delivery, particularly in terms of communication frequency and the ongoing role of an organisation’s leadership team throughout an employee’s tenure with an organisation,” she said.
The study also found that while most organisations recognise the importance of communicating the ‘deal’ and believe they have the right communications abilities within their senior teams to deliver this message, they often fall short as they are failing to put the right tools or resources in place.
“Given the vital role people managers play in retaining employees and improving their performance, the resistance from organisations to introduce communications skills for middle or front-line managers is an unnecessary and damaging compromise,” she added.
Social media was also found to be an increasingly used tool in making a difference in the effectiveness of communicating and demonstrating most of the EVP attributes.
“We found organisations that embrace social media perceive themselves as better communicators of their employment deal than those that don’t. This included allocating more support resources for middle and front line management,” said Sandeman.
“Currently, only 29% of Australian organisations are using social media for employee communication. Respondents cited that the slow growth has been due to a range of barriers (46% s believing that it poses too many legal and other risks).
“Considering and including elements of social media as part of internal communication strategies is now a must-have. It can not only engage employees but be used to identify knowledge, ambassadors and talent. It also ensures businesses look as though they’re keeping up with the fast-paced external media world we all experience outside work,” she explained.
These findings aim to help organisations identify some of the gaps in communication and ultimately assist in building this approach. By doing this, they are able to ensure the employment story improves relations between the organisation and employee but importantly, delivers a tangible impact on retention and engagement.
“Organisations need a strong, strategic internal communications plan, and it’s got to be more than a newsletter, the odd roadshow or the company strategy on a mouse-mat,” said Sandeman. “It was surprising to see only 38% of organisations with 500-599 employees had an internal communication approach in place. They’re missing an opportunity. We know companies who are communicating effectively are delivering greater returns to shareholders than those which are not. So it’s a costly oversight.[2]”
The 18 page report can be downloaded here: Impact Employee Communications, Australia’s Commsoscopy
Impact Employee Communications is Australia’s leading employee communication consultancy and is part of Ogilvy PR, the largest and most awarded public relations agency in Australia. Ogilvy PR Australia is a joint venture between Ogilvy PR Worldwide and STW Group, Australia’s leading marketing content and communications services group.
For further information:
Tessa Sexton
STW Group
Ph: +61 421 098 674
Tam Sandeman
Managing Director – Australia
Regional Director (APAC)
As regional director for Ogilvy Impact (APAC) and managing director in Australia, Tam has been developing and driving strategic communication campaigns for a range of major organisations across employee, corporate, crisis and issues management and consumer disciplines in Australia, Asia Pacific and the UK for over 15 years.
Heading up Impact’s major change communication practice, much of Tam’s work focuses on tackling some of the toughest people challenges which come with today’s ever changing business world. Her work has covered complex restructures, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing and associated culture change—ensuring strong alignment of internal messaging with business goals.
Tam’s employee communication clients, many of which have been with her for years, include Nestlé, BlueScope Steel, NAB, Blackmores, Sony Australia, Dymocks and Hudson. And, while they’re diverse in industry, they all have one thing in common: diverse and disparate workforces with tough communication challenges. Her change work has taken her as far afield as South Africa, Korea, Malaysia and China.
Previous experience includes a senior role at Ogilvy PR’s Pulse Communications, eight years at GCI London, two years with an NGO in Central America and Fiji, as well as other in-house marketing and PR roles in the UK.
An exceptional all-round communicator, Tam’s work has won industry recognition annually both in Australia and the UK, most recently winning two global gongs. A 2010 International Gold Quill of Excellence for work with Ford Australia. This work was also awarded the Best of the Best in the 2010 Gold Quill awards, receiving the highest accolade in international issues management – the Business Issue of the Year award. She has been a judge for the IABC gold quills and is a regular speaker on employee engagement. She also drives Ogilvy PR’s internal corporate social responsibility program, So Inspired, and is a board member of Australian charity FebFast.
Tam holds a BA (Hons) in Public Relations from Bournemouth University in the UK. She’s an active member of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) and Australia’s Change Management Institute (CMI).
Outside Impact, Tam enjoys climbing small hills (most recently Kilimanjaro).
