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<h2>By <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-mckeon-230aab139/">Daniel Mckeon</a></h2>
At an early careers event, we were trading stories about the main challenges faced in modern recruiting. One woman was discussing the disappointed feeling she’d get when candidates would “ghost” her in the middle of their application that caused a ripple of recognition and agreement from the others in the circle. They seemed at a loss to explain why they would just disappear without thinking about the person on the other side. But as someone who started their career in the modern workforce, I could completely understand why they would ghost.
The application process has become incredibly dense and increasingly gamified (not in a fun way…). LinkedIn notifications need to be set to let you know right away when an opportunity becomes available; even an hour later and you’ll be lining up behind hundreds or even thousands of other applicants. You’ll be staring down the barrel of at least three rounds of interviews and a task that’ll take you likely 4-5 hours, hoping that it’s not a way for them to <a class="app-aware-link " href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/job-interview-tasks-payment" target="_self" data-test-app-aware-link="" rel="noopener">use your ideas for free</a>.
Once you complete all that work, you have no indication of when you’ll hear back. I still receive emails from job applications I sent off back in September last year. Usually, the emails can’t give you more feedback because of the sheer volume of applicants so you don’t know why you weren’t picked. Then you’re back to the grindstone to reach your quota of ten applications a day. If someone wanted to walk away without so much as a ‘thank you’ email, I’d respect it if anything else.
This is also not exactly a new problem. It would be completely normal for students at my university to swap tips and tricks for navigating the algorithm. Some would go as far as copying and pasting the words from the job description in white font so that the software would scan it through so it would at least get read by a person. For every system you put in place, opportunists will figure out ways to get around them.
More recently, as I found out, these tactics have escalated to using ChatGPT to <a class="app-aware-link " href="https://archive.ph/TChRc" target="_self" data-test-app-aware-link="" rel="noopener">write their cover letters</a>. It doesn’t surprise me that generative AI is already embedded <a class="app-aware-link " href="https://insights.ise.org.uk/research/blog-student-use-of-generative-ai-will-undermine-traditional-recruitment/" target="_self" data-test-app-aware-link="" rel="noopener">among today’s early careers population</a>. But how can we begrudge candidates using it given how faceless and intimidating this process can come across, not least to say that <a class="app-aware-link " href="https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/use-of-ai-in-graduate-hiring-soars-as-grade-requirements-relaxed/#:~:text=More%20than%20a%20quarter%20(28,to%20relax%20graduate%20grade%20requirements." target="_self" data-test-app-aware-link="" rel="noopener">a quarter of recruiters are doing the same</a>.
Innovation in the recruitment space doesn’t have to mean incorporating the latest technological advancements at every stage. Many organisations are moving towards CV-less applications, such as The Spectator’s no-CV <a class="app-aware-link " href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spectators-2024-no-cv-internship-scheme-is-now-open/" target="_self" data-test-app-aware-link="" rel="noopener">internship scheme</a>, proving you can find talent without overly bloated methods. If anything, it shows a company’s commitment to actively hiring inclusive talent.
The recruiters at the roundtable were let down that candidates were using AI in this way but the truth is candidates feel a similar lack of personal touch in almost every application they send off. The anonymising nature of these process doesn’t just turn our candidates into faceless numbers, organisations become equally ‘unreal’ to them in the process. So in a relationship mediated by automated technology – is it any wonder we’re all ghosting each other?
Ensuring companies have a human face will continue to be difficult, requiring consistent attention and understanding of your processes. The benefits of a strong employer brand are not just in attraction but in retention, cutting through the noise and laying the groundwork for an attentive and considered employee journey. It starts with something as simple as thinking about how this process would make you feel.

Ghosting The Machine: Does Recruitment Need More Automation?

Another bright and beautiful day in London to return to the Duck and Waffle for our latest IC Leaders Breakfast. A collection of internal comms professionals from a range of sectors rode the elevator up to the 40th floor to discuss tips and tricks in modern communications.
With the Gherkin sparkling behind us and our mugs full of strong coffee, it was time to get down to business. 106 Founder Henry got things started raising the challenge of finding and maintaining purpose at companies. Finding the happy medium between unremarked upon values and overly complicated pillars of an organisation can be tricky, especially when it comes to communicating concisely.
Luckily, we had Murray Phair of M&amp;G in attendance who has ample experience in launching and embedding values. After checking which stage everyone at the table was at with their purpose building, he took us through his own experience in internal communications. He emphasised how important it was that employees can phrase the company values in their own words and that strategic survey questions revealed the different interpretations that can arise if communications are consistent. In this way, Murray defined engagement as connecting the dots between individual contribution and the bigger picture a company holds.
The value of data was another crucial aspect that we came onto. Any debates about employee alignment can be brought down to brass tacks and kept values oriented in reality. Alongside that, it showed the work that the comms team was carrying out as well as building the precise wording of these ideas with step-by-step feedback from the workforce. Short, memorable, and applicable statements were what resonated most.
If comms are more scattered, it leaves room for differing opinions on how employees should conduct themselves. The day-to-day and the overall mission need careful alignment otherwise key motivators fall by the wayside. One particularly salient point was relating stakeholder decision-making to the values and purpose of the organisation; in other words, concretely relating strategy and vision.
This discussion grew into considering how behaviours can have meaningful impact on understanding purpose. This ranged from schemes that gave people the opportunity to rise up in the company, regular cadence of comms through a variety of mediums, and building networks of people at all levels that catalysed focussed changed and value-based behaviours to celebrate.
The common thread in everything we talked about was not just how much business acumen can be bolstered by impactful comms but also how and why we uphold work standards at all levels. Company purposes are only as good as how they’re carried out, and senior leaders should be just as mindful of this as everyone else.

106 returns to Duck & Waffle for the infamous IC Leaders Breakfast

Your organisation’s culture is like the soil in your garden. Just as soil provides the foundation for your plants to grow, your company culture acts as the foundation upon which your people (and goals) operate and thrive. A healthy culture nurtures deep, strong roots that helps a company maintain stability during times of change and uncertainty. Ultimately, it stands as a rich foundation upon which your organisation builds identity, values and practises. So we need to get it right.
As your organisation evolves and adapts to changing environments, the need for cultural transformation will inevitably arise. Whether it&#8217;s embracing innovation, fostering inclusivity or enhancing collaboration, culture change is a complex endeavour that requires a carefully-strategised groundwork.
Your secret garden tool? Internal comms. 
<h3 id="ember43" class="ember-view">Internal communications will bring colleagues on the journey and answer the all important question: ‘why?’</h3>
Effective communication of the ‘why’ behind the transformation is fundamental in garnering employee buy-in and alignment. Culture change happens because we want to give people the best opportunity to do their best work. By articulating the rationale behind change and how it will helpcolleagues, we can align teams on purpose in a sustainable way. Whether it be through email, newsletters or intranet portals (or all of the above), leadership must be visible throughout this process and shown to be invested in and role modelling change. Be transparent. It’s not easy, but it pays dividends.
<h3 id="ember45" class="ember-view">Internal comms helps dialogue and engagement to bloom &#8211; creating avenues for two-way communication between leadership and your people.</h3>
Cultivating a culture of openness and inclusivity is paramount in fostering trust and collaboration during times of change. Platforms such as employee forums, suggestion boxes, and interactive workshops will naturally encourage feedback, insights, and ideas from employees at all levels. Actively listening to employee concerns, addressing their apprehensions and incorporating their input into the change process will empower your people to become co-gardeners of the new culture. This sense of ownership not only enhances employee morale but also cultivates a culture of accountability and resilience in the face of change.
<h3 id="ember47" class="ember-view">As the Romans said – “repetition is the mother of learning”.</h3>
Your internal communications strategy works to reinforce cultural values and behaviours through consistent messaging and storytelling. Consistency will instil a feeling of dependability into the way you communicate and encourage growth in your people – and it will naturally embed the target cultural norms into the fabric of the organisation. Whether it be through employee testimonials or success stories, you can showcase real-life examples of individuals embodying your values. You can celebrate your peoples’ milestones and recognise those who exemplify new cultural norms – this will reinforce the importance of living the values in day-to-day interactions.
<h3 id="ember49" class="ember-view">Even the healthiest garden needs constant attention. We need to be transparent and communicative, to engage colleagues in a meaningful way and demonstrate action in response to feedback. Change is often perceived to be negative, a pointless exercise that causes more work and nothing changes. But if you help everyone in your organisation grow a green thumb, to take ownership of their own actions and believe in the wider purpose, your culture garden will flourish into the future.</h3>

Grow a green thumb and tend to your corporate culture garden

As the dust settled on a busy week, our Content Specialist, Daniel McKeon, signed in to Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ 2024 Inside Summit and checked out some select sessions focussed on internal comms. We’ve selected three in particular to expand upon that most resonated with the chatter we’d heard within the sector. As expected, strategy alignment and communications impact was the main focus as well as connecting the throughline of where communications can maximise operations. Read on to get some of the key insights from a range of communicators.  
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<h3>Purpose – the connection to leadership, culture, and influence </h3>
We began with a talk led by Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, Head of Engagement for the Cabinet Office, who outlined how impactful communications always came back to clear company purpose. She took the Japanese concept of Ikigai, the secret to fulfilment in the daily routine of life, looking at how a similar approach could guide career decisions and even wider company purpose. This holistic approach can bring overarching understanding of your Impact on the world outside of products and services.  
In the ongoing shift of bringing greater credibility to communications, Thomas-Sutcliffe stressed that leadership and confidence in our abilities would be crucial. The issues communicators engage with are complex but more often than not, we have a sense of the solution. The trick is in selling this solution to other departments, trusting services, and understanding business acumen to back up our insights.  
One particularly interesting point was Thomas-Sutcliffe’s discussion of how to bring change ambassadors along with you in your communication strategy and how integrating a feedback loop could help reach colleagues where they are. This was a formalisation of effective listening and a reframing of the leader and colleague relationship to find the true voice and purpose of organisations.  
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<h3>IC: The glue that keeps strategy and organisation together  </h3>
Christina Fee built upon Thomas-Sutcliffe’s notion of the throughline of interconnectivity. She began by setting out the current landscape, remarking on the ripple effect of the pandemic, emerging internal and external threats, and the barriers to IC executions that continue to impact creativity. It was inspiring to hear her talking about the power of comms to bring organisational purpose to life.   
To further expand on this, she referred to two case studies from her work, one with Bupa and one with AA. These demonstrated her proposition that impactful communications had to straddle both operations and strategy to maximise results. Rather than just talk about the need to be more strategic, she pointed to communicators asking to see business plans to inform a tactical delivery approach of your internal comms. If you don’t have the business plan, ask for it and use it to understand key systems within the organisation and ways of working. In doing so, you break down the interchange between employees and entire departments and can better showcase the contributions of the part to develop your purpose.  
Fee emphasised a more high-minded idea of the company emerges from this methodology. Fee emphasised that as well as enabling high change readiness and establishing clear foundations, this type of transparency demystifies strategy and encourages the sharing of ideas across hierarchies.  It enabled a healthier culture – an outcome we all strive for – and it was a wonderful example of how developing business acumen doesn’t sacrifice the overall vision of what an organisation can mean to its internal teams.  
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<h3>Panel discussion: A strategic approach to communications  </h3>
To round out our observations, we stepped into a virtual panel discussion between Shalini Gupta of Arup, Alex Kinnear-Mellor of Doncaster Group, Nicki Dyson of T. Rowe Price, David Manning of Curry’s, and Sharn Kleiss of Gallagher. This was a brass-tacks application of what communicators need to be acting on to maintain relevance and bolster their positioning.  
The panellists discussed the tangible steps to understanding process for more effective internal communications, a functional distinction that actually worked to highlight the human nature in all business operations. Colleague networks and employee resource groups enabled recognition of contributions from people of all positions and abilities. It also leant credibility to campaigning for upper management, harnessing a variety of skillsets whilst keep an eye on the ultimate outcomes. It felt like a vision of the feedback loops that stop comms feeling like top-down imperatives by responding to concerns and giving appreciation for raising them before resolving. 
Alex Kinnear-Mellor offered a particularly salient point, saying successful pitches were never just a simple yes but rather involved compromise and collaboration as people ask for alterations when they want to contribute to the vision. Such responses mean investment – stakeholders want to feel part of the solution and we should be embracing these rather than shutting them down. 
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<h3>It’s clear that communicators have a lot of work to do in the next year to progress on some of the challenges raised by the Gallagher state of the sector report. Coming out of the CIPR conference, however, I feel invigorated seeing such a cavalcade of ideas presented to make tangible in-roads to shape more positive and effective work cultures.   </h3>

CIPR Summit 2024 Webinar Recap

On Thursday, 106 were one of an array of companies partnering with In-House Recruitment for their Early Careers Conference.  Armed with monitors, posters, and love hearts, we took to London Bridge to introduce the attendees to employer branding with more love. With a schedule chock full of tips, insights, and strategies to get aid early careers and foster future talent. After some light refreshments, custard pastries, and mushroom rolls, it was time for the main event to begin.  
The whole affair was wonderfully hosted by Natasha Preocanin who kept things moving swiftly with a lightness that put us all at ease. First speaking duties was a two-hander with to Estelle McCartney from Arctic Shores and Steve Norton from Aston Martin who took us through their collaboration and how they’re future-proofing applications.  
Aston Martin had four main challenges when it came to hiring: skills shortage, shrinking talent teams, falling short of diversity ambitions, and candidate experiences. On top of this, they’d seen a marked increase of the use in ChatGPT and that from a survey of 2000 candidates, 72% were using GenAI every week. This was putting a major blockage on finding the right fit for any one role as CVs were beginning to look the same and ChatGPT was found to out perform 98.8% of verbal reasoning tests. This called for an overhaul of Aston Martin’s hiring process. Using the analogy of a tree, McCartney explained that hard and soft skills were perishable and would change over time, like leaves, but that they needed to access core strengths, the roots.  
This involved centring the potential of a candidate, raising awareness of association bias, and creating new ways of assessing candidates that were visual and dynamic that could not be understood by AI. This included a quick time game, half day visits to Aston Martin’s offices for assessment, and stepping away from psychometrics. It was an engaging deep dive into how to break down roles into their core elements and recentre potential in candidates.  
Next up, we were introduced to the shady world of qualification fraud by Chris Rea from Propsects. Chris started his talk with a test of how many people we thought lied on their CV based on a CIFAS survey, showing us at least 1 in 11 and that 4 out of 25 didn’t think it was illegal to do so. What followed was an introduction to the personal and professional damage that scam artists can get away with, including in the NHS, because of lax vetting of candidates. This even included stories of scammers posing as universities to offer false diplomas. Maintaining processes and leading with transparency was how we could undermine the authority of these scammers and protect company interests.  
After a roundtable about our main challenges in recruitment, we had our first panel featuring David Andrews from M&amp;S and Leila Moghadam from Latham &amp; Watkins, chaired by Nicky Garcea discussing emerging talent strategies for 2024. Because of digital fatigue post-Covid, Much of this regarded folding in the employee journey and making sure candidates could feel what it would be like to be part of an organisation. Alongside this, both Andrews and Moghadam had spent time repositioning their brands to make them appealing to newer talent.  
Following them, Karen Smith from ACCA and Jackie Grisdale from SMRS who wanted to show how data-infused creative was the key to unlocking success in early careers. This started with asking if any of the guests had a target value proposition alongside their EVP, many of whom didn’t. Luckily, Smith and Grisdale showed that there was a wealth of data at our fingertips. This could be found through focus groups, surveys, competitor analysis, benchmarking, market and sector analysis, and a whole range of other methods. Alongside this, they took media mapper insights into account, for example finding that 68% of their talent pool was using socials, more specifically that 57% of women in STEM stream video content. This was the kind of nuance they could find in their hiring process and realise in their creative output, repurposing content to appeal to these streams that actually cut through to candidates.  
Then it was time for our second panel about the pros and cons of hybrid, virtual, and F2F assessments. Lauren Williams from TopScore took charge in leading the discussion, with Gwynne Goodfield Bem from HMRC, Paul Sobers from National Grid, Hollie Powell from EDF, and Toby Gordon from FCA. All of the panellists had a lot to cover in this but what struck me was the value of holding the line when it came to overhauling hiring strategy to achieve larger corporate goals. Not only was digital benefits good to sustainability but cut down a huge amount on printing costs, and even upping efficiency meaning candidates got offers 24 hours after the assessment process. After so much discussion of how HR and employer brands can become more agile, it was great to hear how this was being done at organisations.  
Now that we had our imagination sparked, it was time to see what the practicalities were in crafting an award-winning early careers strategy, presented by Gemma Appleford from IPG Media. They had worked with big names such as Amazon, Nike, and Lego, but because of this they were spread thin to achieve their key recruitment goals. This led to constructing a new student pipeline, targeting schools and colleges to help launch an early careers community. This helped to streamline the recruitment process by introducing one way video interviews to prioritise flexibility for candidates. This strategy managed to save £286k in training fees, their in-take rate more than doubled, and a 100% completion rate of their apprenticeships. It was another lesson in how hiring is not just the job of the recruitment team but needs to be a cultural concern for all in a business.  
After some more roundtables and coffee breaks, where we actually shared some success stories in hiring practice, Frances Bennett and Holly Fey, a dream team from Burges Salmon, took us inside the firm’s trailblazing apprenticeship scheme. In a familiar background, their apprenticeships were not truly representative with only 18% of candidates from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This led to more attentive processes of teaching potential candidates how to apply through coaching sessions, allowing for all types of questions at regular intervals of the hiring pipeline. When actually in the apprenticeship, they would have designated contact for support and allocated individual leadership supervisors. The biggest takeaway is their apprentices now could benefit from a career with longevity at the firm because they took the time to recentre their experience and foster talent where it was needed.  
Finally, the day rounded out with Gaby Patenaude from Booking.com, who’s talk on decoding Gen Z and redefining early careers engagement. This began with them identifying key behavioural trends within Gen Z they had found during the hiring process, namely scepticism of anything corporate, being digital natives who craved community, and wanting careers that made a difference. The first they navigated by engaging with real life employee stories and making them the focus of their campaigns. When younger talent could identify with someone on a journey, they became more receptive than from top down explanations. This was one of the many ways they externalised the internal, essentially showing rather than telling. To further this, they founded advocacy programmes that leveraged networks of their peers to increase authentic endorsement of their company.  
This high touch and personal candidate experience allowed them to differentiate from the competition. This included both offline and online applications, in-office experiences, and pre-onboarding nurturing journeys for their applicants. It was an insightful detail into how to repurpose the fundamentals of the employer-employee offer, cutting to the bare bones that resonate most with Gen Z. It was refreshing to see an analysis on this demographic that didn’t play into the stereotypes you often see in retaining their engagement and gave us much to use in future audience targeting.  
By and large, the In-House Recruitment Early Careers Conference was a heartening look at the different forms personalisation will take as we step into this new era of company transformation. In terms where the hiring process can become increasingly faceless, these recruiters were going the distance in humanising the employee experience and showing great investment and care in the journey of potential and current employees.

In-House Recruitment’s Early Careers Conference

Early birds get the worm this week at 106 Communications as we were treated to another installment of Haiilo’s Breakfast Club at The Hoxton in Shoreditch. The focus was all around employee listening and what stops companies from addressing workers’ concerns. With the lush spread of bacon bagels, fried egg on toast, and even pancakes, we just about tore ourselves away from the buffet table for the first talk of the day.  
This was brought to us by Howard Krais, co-founder of True, an employee engagement consultancy, and one of the author of Leading The Listening Organisation. He informed all of us that we are in fact living in an age of listening and that communicators needed to be the front runners in demonstrating what good listening is. More than this, organisations needed to make sure they were responding appropriately after listening. Better attention given led to higher productivity, reduction of attrition, and better overall performance. Importantly, Krais pointed to the fact that listening was not a core capability and that surveys were far too passive to respond to company concerns in an agile way.  
Picking up the baton was Haiilo’s very own Alex Henry who’s talked was more concerned in how to action these comms points once they were understood. He kicked things off by blowing through corporate comms buzzword bingo, demonstrating that simpler approaches to communications work far more directly than otherwise. Companies needed to set realistic and transparent expectations to avoid being vanity metrics.  
To this point, he looked at interpretations of different impact analytics; click through rate doesn’t mean read and read doesn’t mean understood. People within an organisation have discreet reasons for their feelings and behaviours, even when we have to use them as signals. To conclude, he emphasised the importance of qualitative feedback and that we as communicators should consider how much we ‘re listened to and how comfortable we feel expressing our concerns.  
After a quick coffee refill, it was time for Sharn Kleiss to delve into what the Gallagher State of the Sector Report 2024 truly meant for communicators. There was a consistent give and take between achieving comms success and how teams were going about it. Majority of professionals wanted more measurement when it came to comms but only 53% were using business cases in their comms for more strategic alignment.  
This seemed at odds with the fact that Gallagher found more business alignment made for more receptive, more agile, and more successful communications. By the end of Sharn’s talk, it was clear that comms needed to embrace business mindset and strategy to garner themselves the influence they need to make lasting impact on company culture.  
The roundtables were incredibly productive as the nitty gritty of what interpreting broader signals of behavioural data meant and how to personalise comms without making them to repetitive.  
It was a wonderful morning and gave us lots to use in our own campaigns as well as sparking curiosity for further insights.

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