Engaging students in the midst of a pandemic

Work and play

Making a real difference to local government

Real difference

Engaging diverse audiences for the NHS

Your NHS

A global challenge

100% you

The social mobility challenge

Be the apprentices

The pandemic has changed student engagement in a number of different ways. Virtual has become a norm &#8211; to attract as well as assess students. And it seems that employers are determined not to go back to old methods, but to embrace a more hybrid model. But this means different kinds of challenges &#8211; breaking through the digital noise, grabbing the passers-by, reaching out to diverse audiences and creating connected experiences that students want to be part of. We are here to support employers and help them transform engagement &#8211; from school years to graduate alumni, from initial contact to webinars, social engagement and more.

/get-ready-for-amazing-virtual-campus-experiences/

Get ready for amazing virtual campus experiences

/events/employability-roundtable-focusing-on-interdisciplinary-learning/

Employability Roundtable

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is possibly the biggest challenge and opportunity facing the majority of organisations. We work with employers to engage diverse audiences, build strong communities, create peer to peer content and run events that put a spotlight on what DE&amp;I means to organisations and to their people.
Talk to us about:
• DE&amp;I insight 
• Targeting and campaigns 
• Content 
• DE&amp;I events 
• Influencers

DE&I

Today social is a way of life.  It influences our decisions in everything we do, from the music we listen to, to the food we eat. Talent brands need to socially immersed, creating and co-creating content, engaging with students, standing up for what they believe in, and showing the culture and values of the organisation.
Talk to us about:
<ul>
<li>Social media strategy</li>
<li>Content development</li>
<li>Social management</li>
<li>Influencers</li>
<li>Social measurement</li>
</ul>

Social

We are a brand and engagement agency; so we focus heavily on how a brand story can evoke the right emotions in the audience and provoke action.  We are master storytellers, using all the tools in the communications box to engage and inspire our audiences, from the first contact right through to life inside an organisation.  Remember, communications that engages really connect with the right people and builds the brand is as much about the science as it is surprising audiences.
Talk to us about:
<ul>
<li>Concept development</li>
<li>Student targeting</li>
<li>Campaign management</li>
</ul>

Campaigns

We&#8217;ve seen a seismic shift in the way we might work in the future – and it is more virtual and more digital, relying less on the traditional engagement opportunities.  Now more than ever brands need to invest in digital experiences that cut through the ever-increasing noise and engage people in novel and relevant ways.  It is no longer enough simply to have a website.  What is your social strategy?  How can you use Voice or AR?  What will help and support students in the best possible way?  Lots of questions.  We can help you come up with the answers.
Talk to us about:
<ul>
<li>Website design and development</li>
<li>App development</li>
<li>AR, VR and Voice</li>
<li>Social media engagement</li>
<li>Digital marketing</li>
</ul>

Digital

Student Marketing

SXSW made its debut in London, Shoreditch, this year with mixed conferences, installations and musical performances. I, Valeria, 106 Motion Designer and Videographer, found myself in East London to learn from the cross-disciplinary minds and their visions of the future instead of haggling over second-hand cameras.
I had a thirst for knowledge and freshly stretched calves to begin the faster-than-usual London speed walk across venues all week, dodging the usual crowds of tourists and vintage bargain hunters as I became one of the thousands with pink and grey lanyards on the necks of Techno-culture innovators and the businesses who are finding new ways to stay ahead of the curve.
<h2 id="ember187" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Deepak Chopra on models of realities and the stories we tell ourselves</h2>
The first talk to set up my SXSW London week was by the incredible Deepak Chopra, who shared his wisdom on science and spirituality. The conversation was heavy at 10:40 a.m., but I like a challenge and a challenge it was.
<h3 id="ember189" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-3">Here is what I learned:</h3>
From the 7 versions of ‘humans’, we (Homo Sapiens) are the least travelled, less imaginative, and most bound by rules &#8211; ouch. We are still incredibly unique to other species (that we know) with our ability to form stories and have an active imagination with no limits. Humans can create ‘models of realities’ that are influenced by our present reality and inspired by older ‘models’ which dictate how wider society functions such as money, GMT and happy hour (why does every venue have a different time?!). These ‘models of realities’ are all forms of stories that we humans have made up and serve no purpose besides telling a wider story that no one knows the ending to. Heavy right?
As existentialism now clouded the warehouse, Deepak instructed the room of what must have been 600 seated people in a group meditation. 10 minutes of sitting silently, eyes closed and deep reflection we were reminded that we are all shared materials, and we should remember that as new models of realities emerge (including technological development and innovative marketing campaigns), we are still simple homo sapiens and all we ever have are stories to connect us.
Deepak was a unique addition to a line-up that consisted of activists, musicians, actors and engineers. His 30-minute lecture left me with a profound sense of peace that, despite the rapid developments of society, technology and culture, we simple humans always crave a good story, and if a story no longer serves its purpose, we can write another. 
<h2 id="ember193" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Thomas Wolf on intelligent use of AI, dreaming, and accessibility of tech</h2>
From human consciousness to the future of AI, I found myself in a smaller warehouse with Thomas Wolf leading a lecture on ‘The Future is Open: AI, Ethics &amp; the Next Frontier’.
Thomas Wolf represents the alternative reality of AI, robotics and technology. His foundation, Hugging Face, is creating a new model of reality built on open source and accessible technologies to share with the wider society. He spoke with such passion and sincerity (almost convincing me to buy the $100 3D printed robot arm) on the importance of accessibility. He said that “everyone should be able to participate in AI development” as it presents an opportunity for innovation to become a natural phenomenon, as well as promoting new learning opportunities to whoever is interested.
Wolf kept emphasising that “AI is real”, “AI is our new reality” and “AI poses the question of what it means to be human again”. A refreshing narrative after a few years of forced AI integration and no manual (I am looking at you Whatsapp AI feature). I learned that AI is not going anywhere and if companies will not enforce more responsibility on the products they put out to the world, we as consumers hold a degree of responsibility on how we use it.
AI and robotics are designed to interact and challenge humans in creative ways, not only as a form of quick convenience. We should be using these tools to present challenging issues and promote further innovation through the trust of our creative brains. AI can be a tool to unlock human potential and we should not stop dreaming because it suddenly became easier to do so.
Thomas Wolf concluding message of reassurance &#8211; AI is not inherently evil nor should we hold a guilty conscious from the resource waste of using the product handed to us, but we should “apply a bell curve of intelligence” when using these tools as a means of reducing back-end processing and in turn, less waste is made.
I also came to the realisation that if we are all using the same tools, for the same reasons of convivence, how do we stand out of the crowd if not by dreaming?
<h2 id="ember200" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Poppy Wood on breaking free from the algorithm and embracing diversity and difference</h2>
My final insight came from Poppy Wood from Reset Tech, a global non-profit realigning digital media markets and internet democracy. Poppy emphasised the importance of maintaining culture and more regulation on the algorithms, and how these simple math equations have built a digitally curated world of personal views and interests, reinforced.
“If we lose our cultural identity [independent media] as a country, how can we drive innovation?”
If we are constantly being shown, told, and engaged in materials that reinforce our personal beliefs, do we have an opportunity to dream up something new? How can we respond to briefs uniquely if we don’t engage in content that challenges our interests and biases? Poppy Wood and Reset Tech connected a loose fuse I hadn’t realised was off. Technology is great, we are more connected than ever, and convenience gives us space to practice creativity. We are living in the comforts of these new tools and devices, years of data, our interests commercialised and feeds an algorithms that validate our beliefs.
It is also important, now more than ever, to recognise diversity and difference are worth engaging in even if we do not agree with it all. This offers a necessary challenge that drives innovative responses and outputs.
SXSW&#8217;s addition to London allowed the city to celebrate its unique story. A story built on enterprise, passion, and distinct cultural identities. The last day of the festival coincided with Eid. Restaurants consistently packed, now closed early and beautiful lights of stars and moons lit the cobbled-stoned roads of Shoreditch and Brick Lane. In that moment, SXSW London demonstrated that our cultural success is in our differences. The mix of restaurants down one road, to the variety of cultural events in one evening. Our large selection of choice and a rich history to lean on. Our unique stories driven by enthusiasm, passion, and sleepless nights in this concrete jungle that we dare to dream a life of entrepreneurship and experiments.
Dreams become stories become realities. The mixed talks on technological development, looking to nature to drive sustainability, music from emerging artists born or later arrived and the first monarch to attend the event. SXSW truly has the London look.

Top takeaways from SXSW London

Every year, we look forward to our return to Bishopsgate for Gallagher’s Communications Summit. It’s a wonderful event bringing together a broad church of communicators, HR specialists, and more to delve into the latest challenges, successes, and innovations in the world of internal communications.
Hosted by Marc Wright and Jennifer Reischel-Berg with panache and a touch of showbiz magic, it was an event chock-full of amazing insights and effective comms tactics. This year, the 106 team was lucky enough to attend in force, allowing us to cover the full agenda.
Across the days, we noticed four emerging themes: the importance of action after listening, the language we use matters, the role of emotional intelligence and finally, structure as strategic enabler.
<ol>
<li>Action over lip service </li>
</ol>
One major facet was the need for communicators to cut through the noise and tackle the immediate and real challenges organisations are dealing with. Modern workplaces need concise, clear, and aligned communications. As the world becomes more volatile, organisations can’t afford to mislead or obfuscate the realities on the horizon.
Directness 
For some, this was in a much more literal tactic, like with Claire Williams, formerly of Williams Racing, who spoke about how she conducted one thousand 1:1 meetings with her colleagues because:
‘If you can’t communicate effectively across your team, you won’t have a high performing team.’ – Claire Williams 
She did so by showing her belief that people are not assets and communicating follow through to show change. It was a means of demonstrating the leadership investment in people as she went out of her way to hear concerns and make people feel heard.
Reasoning and outcomes 
This directness was further expressed in the ‘Is DEI Dead?’ panel featuring Advita Patel from Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe of the Cabinet Office, John Clegg of Whirlybird Comms, and Sarah Black of Athru Communications. As the conversation went on, there was a clear sense that DEI could no longer afford to be performative and needed to demonstrate clear progress through visible change. It can’t be something that was overly spoken about without clear actions taken.
A similar tactic came up in Henrik de Wit’s Refresco case study on ‘launching an ESG in an age of dismissal’. Often organisations see climate commitments as a risk drive because it comes down to what is a more bankable investment of resources. But net zero ambitions affect the whole supply chain. A more realistic strategy is in embedding ESG policy within existing corporate strategy, marrying ethical imperatives with business acumen.
Practically, at Refresco, this meant their position on the climate crisis could be tailored to regional and specific frameworks as well as communications that:
<ul>
<li>Educate</li>
<li>Enable</li>
<li>Energise</li>
</ul>
The sense of obligation for organisations to “do the right thing” can stimy the drive to complete tasks effectively and a crucial aspect was invigorating people to get excited about what the company is doing.
Responding to negative feedback 
Carmen Coombs from Nationwide was even more active. In her conversation with Chris Andrew from Gallagher about how Nationwide evolved their EVP, she spoke about how folding in uncomfortable commentary helped to better meet the needs and expectations of their people. They spoke with colleagues at all levels to dissect and understand where they needed to go and answer the question of how we want the business to be seen by colleagues.
While not always positive, hearing the dissenting voices in the company made for the most proactive and effective comms to create the building blocks of their new EVP. This emerged from a thorough culture survey to build out their people narrative. Because there were so many conflicting demands for a company like theirs, they wanted to return to what they could fully offer their people.
A major motivation was the logic they held that this couldn’t be done without understanding the scale of the project and starting from the ground up to apply this new focus on their existing processes.
<ol start="2">
<li>The language we use and why it matters </li>
</ol>
The second major theme was around the language we use in our internal communications. Time and time again, new articulation was a tool needed to better tackle the challenges of disengagement and wider market fears more tangibly.
Data comprehension  
Vinny Foreman had a clear understanding of utilising all types of data sets in maximising strategy reach and creating more intentional comms. As the way we incorporate these data findings evolves, our language around it must evolve with it. High open rates could no longer be relied upon as clear signs of adoption. Rather communicators needed to translate to detailed online persona creation to better observe ways colleagues use platforms.
Because of the endless options and lack of context in survey findings, many organisations settle for the easy thing, rather than intentionally finding the hard metrics that give a clearer sense of the puzzle.
Data was also top of mind for Sharn Kleiss when she took the participants through Gallagher’s 2025 Employee Communications Report. The most razor-focused storytelling comes from understanding data points. Crucially, this did not need deep technical knowledge but rather having a sense of how to read and articulate what you’re seeing.
The logic of language 
Similarly, Stephen Welch of Archetypical felt we needed to view influence within an organisation as different kinds of languages. While he spoke Spanish, German, and English, he could recognise when someone was speaking Chinese, even if he didn’t understand what they were saying.
His RECIPE model was a way of understanding different influence preferences to better capitalise on motivating and activating different departments. These included:
<ul>
<li>REWARD
<ul>
<li>Showing you understand that internal actions of the organisation affect the individual and rewarding them justly.</li>
<li>Showing you respect your coworkers time and that the energy they put into the company isn’t for nothing.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>EXCHANGE
<ul>
<li>Capitalising on transactional sensibility</li>
<li>Suggesting to your people that they can gain a lot from working with you.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>CONNECT
<ul>
<li>Connecting emotionally with colleague motivations.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>INFORM
<ul>
<li>Finding facts and communicating as plainly as possible the intelligence you have</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>PICTURE
<ul>
<li>Setting goals for the next 3-5 years</li>
<li>Big picture distillation to connect with the wider organisational ambitions.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>EXIT
<ul>
<li>Communicating that if an aspect of the strategy does not bear fruit that we have another route to take.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Bethany Joy picked up a similar sentiment on her talk about rediscovering your secret brand voice. In her communications, she noted that instinctive reactions to particular words could give clues to the language you should be using. In her experience, there was too much focus on language for clients/customers and not enough for the workers, even though clear internal brand voice could help teams work closer together.
<ol start="3">
<li>Emotional intelligence </li>
</ol>
To facilitate more cohesive comms strategy, greater emotional intelligence works as a guiding light to better build culture, vision, and greater employee experience.
What makes us emotional at work? 
Richard Clarke from Evolved Ideas was specific in the emotion he wanted to talk about, namely happiness and how to diagnose it at the workplace. For him, happiness was a science, and within the workplace that is made up of five factors:
<ul>
<li>Protection from harm</li>
<li>Opportunity for growth</li>
<li>Connection &amp; community</li>
<li>Mattering at work</li>
<li>Work-life harmony</li>
</ul>
You can diagnose people’s unhappiness through these factors and recognise how best to treat it. This was vital because increased happiness is increased retention, higher productivity, and better behaviour modelling.
Compounding this point, Joss Mathieson wanted us to start using the f-word more at work – feelings. He explained that all organisations have an emotional culture, even if it’s one that’s unaddressed, and that we need to address this particularly during change transformation programmes.
The human response to change is to perceive it as a threat so communicators need to recognise how to position the change as rewarding, even when this isn’t rationally the case. Identifying these key emotions was as simple as understanding the positive emotions you wanted to feel and the negative emotions you don’t want to feel.
Strategic benefits of emotionality 
As much as emotionality was positioned as a work benefit wholesale, many speakers also made the case for more strategic use of emotions. Advita Patel (CIPR) took us through her methodology of building up leadership confidence.
This began in small habitual changes to encourage in leaders so they could talk themselves into the confident headspace they needed to be in to enact and lead people with drive, determination, and skill. This ‘ripple effect’ worked like a Couch to 5k strategy, using repetitive practice to instil positive patterns that you took forward into the organisation.
Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe utilised a similar framework in her talk ‘Why does organisational purpose matter?’ This was about using language to align personal purpose with wider organisational purpose, and Deepa cited Ikigai, the Japanese concept meaning ‘A reason to jump out of bed in the morning.’
This alignment more practically speaking came through audience insights and an honesty with yourself about when the organisational purpose felt inauthentic. Even when working across multiple countries, there was a means of doing this through:
<ul>
<li>The induction process</li>
<li>Volunteering opportunities for employees</li>
<li>Good employee engagement</li>
</ul>
Internal representation, making the people who embody the values most clearly more visible, was integral to spread this sense of culture around and gives literal examples to colleagues about how to live their purpose.
<ol start="4">
<li>Structure for strategic leverage</li>
</ol>
Communicators have always been told how vital it is to make the business case for their programmes and are encouraged to invest in effective measurement tools to better show the value of what they do. This conference was no different as many speakers made a pointed effort to show what publicising policy and internal frameworks could do for clearer and more empowering comms.
Lack of governance 
In Sonya Poonian’s talk on AI, she showed that most organisations, despite having a keen desire to utilise AI at every turn, have woefully small amounts of governance or guidelines in place for their employees:
<ul>
<li>2 in 5 communicators reported having no governance in AI.</li>
<li>Only 36% had a dedicated group or individual with responsibility for AI in the business.</li>
</ul>
Communicators need to push for greater guidelines and understanding of the organisational position on AI in the business, as the usage is going to continue at a high pace. In a wider point, communicators need the language and knowhow of involving them in these more concrete policy and cultural issues.
Having a plan 
The value of knowing these frameworks was readily apparent in Carolyn Bowick’s session on crisis comms. Mapping out all potential options and having clear processes in the wake of every eventuality made for the most streamlined and effective crisis comms. This emerged from knowing the organisation’s duty of care and responsibilities, again highlighting the need for specific contractual operations and communicating those to your people meaningfully.
In the same vein, in the ‘Is DEI dead?’ panel, communicators could more effectively show colleagues where the organisation stands if there is a clear guideline in place. Having the backing of top brass regulation means employees have clear guidelines so they can manage socio-cultural differences well, with their good intentions supported by a framework.

Four major themes from this year’s Gallagher Communications Summit

Data gives us the insight we need to be strategic communicators, to engage people more effectively and in more meaningful ways – and as technology continues to evolve, so too do the possibilities.
Entering its third year, Data Comms Live, hosted by Communicate magazine, has platformed and celebrated the leaps and bounds in activation made possible by new era data software. On Tuesday 20 May, data and comms enthusiasts descended on the Mayfair Hotel to share creative uses of data, measurement challenges, and ultimately discuss how data and technology can improve the human experience.
<h2 id="ember458" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Bringing home the human cost of data breach to encourage best practice</h2>
Our first talk was from Angela Balakrishnan of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – and it began with a barista calling her name wrong in a café. After ordering her coffee at Starbucks, they called her name out as Andrea, an understandable mistake. But little did Angela know, someone working at the conference she was attending overheard and assumed her name was Andrea, so when she arrived they had no pass for her, meaning she wasn’t allowed in to give her talk. [MW1]
This was a hypothetical of how even small data errors can have unforeseeable consequences. It can be hard to grasp the impact of such a small data error, so the ICO took an approach that focused on the human impact of data breaches or errors.
To do so, they worked with communities, Women’s Aid, National Aid Trust, and National Higgins Trust, to understand how to engage people when dealing with data breaches of the most sensitive kind.
<ul>
<li>They developed an outreach programme that was:</li>
<li>Trauma-informed, to avoid retraumatising victims</li>
<li>Safety conscious</li>
<li>Care focussed</li>
<li>Designed to really listen to victims</li>
<li>Capable of giving people agency and choice</li>
</ul>
They found that organisations weren’t recognising the life-threatening nature of data breaches and seeing only the business perspective, describing them as simply “admin errors.” By humanising data breaches, they hoped to show the ripple effect and give examples of these shockwaves that effect people’s lives.
Moving forward, whenever considering data usage, organisations needed to:
<ul>
<li>Be transparent</li>
<li>Stay involved</li>
<li>Understand what is happening with people’s data</li>
<li>Consider children’s information – they’re just as vulnerable to data breaches as adults</li>
<li>Don’t forget training</li>
</ul>
Key comms takeaway: Organisations need to systemically recognise the human impact of data breaches and have a culture of safety when handling people’s personal information.
<h2 id="ember467" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">How data can be your compass with Stephen Waddington</h2>
Stephen Waddington, of professional advisors Wadds Inc. was next on the agenda, discussing consumer research. The specific story he wanted to share was from Brew, a digital marketing agency who was severely struggling during the COVID pandemic. In response, they gathered data on consumer insights, named Pints and Profits, compiled of:
<ul>
<li>A survey of 1000+ pub-goers</li>
<li>Analysis from 750 pub and bar websites from April 2023 to July 2024</li>
</ul>
This created a rich, strategic data set illustrating the challenges pubs are facing and gleaned the drastic shifts in habits for consumers. They discovered:
<ul>
<li>56% of traffic comes from Google searches.</li>
<li>21.5% of traffic come from booking platforms.</li>
</ul>
In both discoveries, there were improvements to make in the user experience as well as a highly visible means of booking in, to provide people with what they want.
Key comms takeaway: Data can be the compass for your entire outreach strategy. Don’t shy away from carrying out your own research and use this data to inform your approach.
<h2 id="ember474" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Two lessons learned from Data Malarkey Live</h2>
Sam Knowles, podcast host of Data Malarkey Live, spoke with guest Nick Ratcliffe from Volkswagen to discuss how to use data to understand human behaviour while creating quantifiable findings.
<ol>
<li>Data on its own isn’t enough – you need actionable insight. It’s about doing what you can with data, it’s about doing what you need. Think about what you want to learn or do, and prioritise your analysis accordingly.</li>
<li>Tackling large data sets can be challenging, but sometimes the reason behind behaviour is startlingly simple. For example, when pushing electric cars on customers, due to the nature of charging the vehicles, they would need a driveway, meaning that a whole subsection was shut out by something small.</li>
</ol>
Key comms takeaway: Ground your inquiries about engagement habits in direct answerable questions to maintain a strategic edge and not get lost in the hypotheticals. Remember: if you can’t action the insight, it’s not effective.
<h2 id="ember478" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Justice in action: The role of data and media in advocating change in survivor landscape</h2>
Trigger warning for sexual assault in this section.
<h3 id="ember480" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-3">Data processes</h3>
The next session came from Katrin Hohl and Jamie Klingler and was a discussion about their ongoing efforts to get the necessary media cut-through for the Operation Soteria survey.
Over the course of a year, they put a huge amount of effort into designing a questionnaire that would reach victims of sexual assault who had reported it to police. 8000 people accessed it and 4000 people completed it. Safeguards were put in place such as allowing people to complete it at their home in safety and that no data was left on their device afterwards to avoid disclosing to abusers.
<h3 id="ember483" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-3">The media campaign</h3>
The guerilla press campaign was focussed on the actual findings, such as that 75% of women reported worse mental health after reporting. For Katrin and Jamie, the problem then became a matter of communicating the data findings rather than talk about specific stories, which often the media would more fixate on.
From a data comms perspective, Katrin spoke about how you try and use it to empower and improve but inadvertently you might trigger the opposite and change opinions through negativity, i.e. scaring survivors out of reporting. There is also the problem with fatigue around the issue as the data was so consistent and didn’t feature many hard and fast solutions to these problems.
It was a powerful and enlightening session following their incredible work on this issue and an explanation on how much data is present in our lives. Moreover, it was a demonstration of the surprising difficulties in showing your learnings from this data, even when tangible next steps are apparent.
Key comms takeaway: It’s tempting when dealing with data insights to focus on specific stories, but the power of data is its ability help us see the bigger picture.  When communicating to your people, be sure to look at what the data is telling you altogether, rather than using surface level instinct to justify strategy.
<h2 id="ember488" class="ember-view reader-text-block__heading-2">Listening to digital whispers with Clermont</h2>
Location was the key to what Clermont do and using data has been critical in underpinning that. With so much content in the market already, differentiation was the name of the game.
In reviewing viral restaurants on TikTok, Max and James had found that when customers come to eat, they want a deeper meaning and attachment beyond just hearing the food is good.
What they had to do was uncover the second story behind the data story. In all these markets there was “digital whispers”: the network of conversations going on around communities online, behind the number of likes they receive.
What they decided to rank instead was the amount of resonance this engagement really had:
<ul>
<li>Engagement intensity over follower count</li>
<li>Conversational depth in online forums</li>
<li>Negative space analysis</li>
</ul>
From the social media data, they went into deeper analysis to understand what it means for followers to engage in this content. The real gold was in finding the difference between the obvious and the obscure, what James called the paradox of discovery. This was to identify new ways of entering the market when it was so flooded with similar content and similar styles of engagement.
In doing so, Clermont could not only better block out how customers plan their trips but demonstrate their expertise and knowledge of the sector, essentially complicating their insights.
Key comms takeaway: You are the architect of your data insights. Look beyond basic metrics and think about the sentiment of the content and deeper engagement behaviours.
Although these case studies covered so much ground across so many sectors, the main throughline was in the humanisation of your data findings. Communicators can learn from the strategic ability of harnessing complex data sets to create nuanced and thorough personas of who they want to speak to and what they want.

Data Comms Live 2025 Full Write-Up

This past week, a whole host of different communicators and thought leaders took to their laptops to attend Simpplr’s Employee Comms and Experience Virtual Summit. Covering a range of topics from robust IT decks to leveraging AI to boost corporate comms, it was also an opportunity for Simpplr to present their own findings in the sector.
Survey and report findings at a glance 
Specifically, this involved their state of intranet technology research, which was a comprehensive look at the state of the industry today, surveying 700 comms professionals to identify what they’re struggling with in the new age. In brief, these findings included that 91% of people using intranets had better business outcomes across the board, with 70% reporting that their internal comms were excellent or above average.
For this session, Regan Zuege, Internal Comms Lead at Simpplr, chaired the panel, which featured Jill van der Poel of Moderna, Lauren Hultz from Domtar, and Kerilynn Pajer from Agero.
A strategy that worked at your company 
To kick things off, the panellists discussed what really worked in their comms. Jill made the case for embracing experimentation. Social media and news cycles move so fast that the way people consume information is constantly changing, meaning we need to evolve with it.
Jill’s advice? Trial run new formats, new channels, and react quickly to metrics and feedback to see if it cuts through. If it works continue, if not try a new strategy:
<ul>
<li>Piloting</li>
<li>Measuring</li>
<li>Adjusting</li>
</ul>
A recent win for Keri was a shift in strategy, finding a way to deliver it to organisations and help people understand their role within it. To do so, they let themselves be led by employees on which way they wanted to be communicated to and using one intranet hub as a main source of information proved a huge help.
When launching a new intranet, Lauren emphasised the real need to do an intranet audit. Taking the time to fully comprehend the myriad ways colleagues receive information was the means to streamline comms and create more cohesion.
What are the biggest mistakes companies are making when it comes to adoption? 
Forcing adoption stood out as the main error many organisations are still making and Keri recommended taking a more Field of Dreams approach: “If you build it, they will come.” Incremental building of new comms structures before launch and incorporating feedback means you can tailor the experience to employees.
It’s also important to understand what users are searching for and what they’re not getting. Jill built on this with an anecdote about how one of the most successful tools they used was built on one team noticing another team’s usage and adding it into their workflow.
What took off in your comms strategy and what didn’t work out the way you wanted? 
One challenge Domtar had was when they were trying to bring three separate companies with three separate intranets post-merger. This was successful given that their adoption averaged out to 89% of users on it, post-launch.
Lauren chalked this success up to their community focus over communication focus. This transformed their activity from making sure people had the resources they needed to giving people the opportunity to reach other departments and collaborate across the workforce.
Where is the real impact of AI? 
80% of respondents believe that AI would become an important tool at their organisation.
The crucial framework was understanding when to use it and when not to use it. Jill had leveraged it as a great tool to achieve agency-level thought without having to use an agency budget. This included:
<ul>
<li>Test messaging</li>
<li>Pressure test strategy</li>
<li>Simulating focus groups to test what resonated with employees</li>
<li>Content development and refinement</li>
</ul>
She quoted the adage that those with AI skills will go much further than otherwise. She’d even used it to improve relatability to avoid staring at the same paragraph as well as democratising content creation.
What was a small simple shift that changed how employees consumed information? 
Lauren had found moving from top-down delivery systems to fostering a more human interested based type of content creation and delivery.
This prompted Jill to discuss her own experience in podcast production, which included a “fun question” to level the playing field and present your leaders as human. She found her content views doubled with this simple tactic.
Keri responded by highlighting the importance of mission communication; the mission is the reason people stay in their roles for years to come. Your intranet drives this experience so needs to incorporate employee understanding of the mission authentically.
What metrics are more vanity than value? 
There’s a myth that IC can’t be measured but we’ve learned that it absolutely can. Taking a step back and realise that the effect of internal comms goes so much further than intranets or updates, instead facilitating culture and enabling productivity.
Effectiveness can be assessed through
<ol>
<li>Email opening</li>
<li>Click rate</li>
<li>Intranet usage</li>
<li>Employee survey results</li>
</ol>
Be very intentional about what you’re listening to and learn to ask the kind to questions that cut to the heart of what colleagues connect with. Questions such as:
<ul>
<li>Do they understand the strategy?</li>
<li>Do they understand objectives and key results (OKRs) and the feedback systems?</li>
<li>How do you understand behavioural change?</li>
<li>Do leaders understand what colleagues understand about the business?</li>
</ul>
All the data you gather can be built together to understand what’s working and what’s not.
Paint the story and connect it together 
Keri also commented on how unscrutinised data points could become vanity stats, such as assuming because emails are opened means good click through rate or because people have logged into the intranet that that equals usage.
The real insight is in the nuance of these findings, tracking how many articles are they looking at, driving connection, engagement and success.
What are some internal comms myths or best practices that no longer work? 
Frontline assumptions 
In all cases, Lauren argued that you had to leave all assumptions behind. Given that Domtar is a paper production company, 70% of their workforce is in the forest, manufacturing sites, or in paper mills.
There was an assumption that the frontline wasn’t on the intranet and didn’t want to use a mobile app on their phone. This was not the case and they found the data to prove it, and more than that union bosses wanted to incorporate it.
Cascading doesn’t work 
Coming in with her self-described “hot take”, Jill asserted that cascaded comms don’t work. The intentions behind it were always good but you’re relying on a lot of people contextualising communications in the same way, which is unreliable.
On top of that, it has to come from the top and reach colleagues from a multitude of different entry points. Consistently, in Jill’s experience, people don’t get their information in a way that ensures it’s all been registered.
Do colleagues care about the big picture? 
The myth that Keri wanted to bust around IC was that colleagues don’t invest in the big picture of any organisation and prefer targeted specific messaging. It’s a myth that underserves everyone because colleagues want to know what the organisation is doing and where it’s headed, particularly as big transformations affect their operations.
How someone contributes to the company goals and the overall strategy is a motivation for engagement and drives people forward.
What’s something you’ve experimented with in IC strategy? 
Moderna gamified learning through a news quiz show to see how people were keeping up internally. 15 winners were selected at random and won a prize, spiking interest and helping the comms team strategically push key information in a fun and vibrant way.
What’s one big internal comms shift on the horizon?
Simpplr found that 38% of the people they spoke with attend webinars to stay ahead of trends.
Lauren believed that the pivot to video that’s long been rumoured is here to stay. Video communication was a great tool to bridge the gap between leaders and employees, allowing people to interact with it in real time. This doesn’t need a huge amount of video production to create engagement and can be a great machine to produce external content where appropriate.
If you had to give one piece of advice for someone evolving their strategy?
<ol>
<li>Working with IT teams was a great way to streamline your comms systems. Lauren told us to take the time to understand:</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>Security review</li>
<li>Microsoft platform integration</li>
<li>Network bandwidth</li>
</ul>
In doing so, you can connect better with IT teams and better translate functional user experience with overall vision. Alongside this, you can keep learning and use existing connections to stay on top of these developing trends before they’re too immediate.
<ol start="2">
<li>Jill believed consistency was key in communications, particularly in how you use the tools that you have and the data you present to show values to leaders.</li>
<li>Finally, Keri said that it’s important for communicators to recognise they don’t have all the answers. Situations are always evolving, but you will also always benefit from an employee listening programme.</li>
</ol>

Inside internal comms: The state of intranets today

Some people know very early on what their calling in life is. They have a dream from a young age of what they want to be when they grow up and they’re eager to fulfil it. Others have that lightbulb moment, suddenly everything makes sense, and it all falls into place. On the contrary, there are some people, like me, that have only just found their direction after years of it sitting right under their nose. Although my career aspirations fluctuated greatly over the years, the one thing I was certain about was doing something I was interested in.
I chose to study a geography degree because of its versatility and the sheer breadth of topics and skills covered. It gave me the opportunity to develop both written and technical skills and the flexibility to explore my interests of fashion, health and the historical origins of issues through a geographical lense. All without limiting my future career options.
Whilst studying a module titled ‘Just Futures’, I became intrigued about the current and future impacts of climate change on society and the planet. In a nutshell the module examined the idea of justice, highlighting and addressing social, environmental, economic and digital injustices some in society currently face. It explored how concepts such as climate change, biodiversity, gender and human rights intersect and the need to ensure their representation in decision and policy making whilst striving for a just and sustainable future. This is what sparked my interest in sustainability.
Concepts which stood out to me were climate justice and a just transition. The words climate and sustainability typically make us think of the environment however that is only half of the story. <a href="https://www.climatejust.org.uk/what-climate-justice">Climate justice</a> shines a light on the unequal impacts of climate change within countries and communities. It demonstrates how <a href="https://climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/climate-change-matter-justice-heres-why">social and economic inequalities</a> influences a person’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change and their ability to recover.
An example of this is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800906003053">Hurricane Katrina</a>, where areas with the highest percentage of poor people experienced the most damage. With 75% of the damage concentrated within <a href="https://oxfordaasc.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-45713#:~:text=Of%20the%20354%2C000%20residents%20living,American%20households%20were%2C%20facilitating%20evacuation.">African American communities</a> and suffering the highest death toll, the event further entrenched the already existing social and racial disparities.
It therefore is no secret that the biggest contributors to climate change are those who are the least effected whilst the most deprived experience the worst. This age-old debate around whether certain countries are pulling their weight when it comes to reducing <a href="https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/resources/whats-climate-justice">emissions</a> is the very basis of climate justice and where the just transition stems from. Designed with the aim of reaching net-zero, a <a href="https://climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/what-just-transition-and-why-it-important">just transition</a> focuses on achieving it in a fair and equitable way so ‘no one is left behind’.
From studying a just transition, the general take home message is that we need to act immediately. With the horrors of climate change permanently plastered over our TV screens, tabloids and social media platforms, I can see exactly why. Whilst I am not denying the severity of the situation, the repeated message for drastic change can make action seem more daunting than it needs to be. Reading ‘The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide’ by Jen Gale showcased the simplicity of transitioning to a more sustainable way of life. She explains how making small changes in our everyday lives such as being a responsible consumer as well as reducing waste and plastic, is the ultimate cheat code.
The section on waste particularly stood out to me as it described recycling as a ‘last resort’ due to the amount of energy (fossil fuels) the process requires. And as silly as it sounds, recycling is not as easy as it seems. Surprisingly, according to <a href="https://www.wrap.ngo/media-centre/press-releases/84-uk-households-are-unintentionally-contaminating-their-recycling-bins#:~:text=84%25%20of%20households%20are%20contaminating,drinking%20glasses%20to%20their%20recycling.">WRAP</a>, 84% of the UK are doing it wrong and are instead, contaminating their recycling. This is because many are ‘wish cycling’, recycling non-recyclable items in hopes they will be processed.
It is clear the well-loved ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ slogan is hindering effective waste disposal. We must welcome in new concepts such like ‘refusing’, mentioned by Gale, in the drive towards zero waste. Arguably, ‘refusing’ is much easier than recycling, all you have to do is say no. Saying no to freebees and unsubscribing from junk leaflets takes away their demand, resulting in a reduction of miscellaneous items that would probably end up in landfill.
I hope the one thing you take away from this blog is to read the book. Whether you are passionate about sustainability or not, I guarantee that by the end of it, you will be. It’s virtually impossible to hear that ‘household consumption is responsible for 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions’ and not want to do something about it. I encourage you all to make one change and, I believe ‘refusing’ is a perfect way to start the journey to becoming more sustainable!

The power of people in the transition to a sustainable future

It’s a question so familiar to anyone&#8217;s been in an interview.
Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? 
Only this time, it was asked of the employee experience.
In Gallagher&#8217;s latest webinar, in collaboration with LumApps, the session delved into this idea, led by Marc Wright, founder of Simply, and Elise Rostaing, VP EMEA Marketing of LumApps.
<h2>Four major trends  </h2>
With AI transforming the hiring process, working-from-home becoming a non-negotiable, and pushes to move towards skills-based systems, the employee experience is set to look entirely alien to us by the time 2030 rolls around. In LumApp’s analysis, Elise had found four major trends already emerging:
<ul>
<li>Cohesion of employee environment and employees</li>
<li>AI, specifically the move away from generative AI</li>
<li>The need to upskill employees</li>
<li>Fostering community and cohesion</li>
</ul>
<h3>Cohesive employee environments</h3>
In the past, HR oversaw monitoring the employee experience, but as that has grown and developed, there needs to be an interdepartmental understanding to cut through to colleagues. Employees no longer have a single-entry point into new comms’ systems, meaning their onboarding is often chaotic and messy.
This wasn’t just Elise’s opinion either, as it was backed by McKinsey’s findings that employees spend 2 hours daily searching for information they need. On top of that, a separate Gartner report found that 70% of employees rate their intranet user experience as difficult.
<h4>What is the objective of your platforms? </h4>
For Elise, it all came down to the amount of time tasks took and the consistency of user patterns. For example, tracking one user’s data from a knowledge article to a training course to submitting paid time off would show a clear workflow. But if users are going back and forth between the same online spaces, it shows they don’t have a clear understanding of new situations.
Tech needs to give people the tools they need to be as productive as possible.
<h4>Trend 1: The need for an Employee Experience Designer </h4>
This is where the Employee Experience Designer comes in as an evolution of the internal comms role. This takes us from working with interfaces, apps, and features, and instead mapping out the employee journey incrementally, from the first thing they do in a working day to the moment they clock out.
From that map, you can understand friction points that occur through any typical day and how to smooth them over.
<h4>A typical day one </h4>
Elise then took us through an example of what this mapping would look like, following a new starter, named Jane.
<ol>
<li>Once Jane gets in, she needs to have a lunch at the company restaurant, but she doesn’t know where it is as she hasn’t completed her onboarding. Because nothing is integrated, this takes around seven clicks to find out where the cafeteria is.</li>
<li>When she gets there, she needs to pay with her company card, but it hasn’t been topped up, meaning she has to ask for an advance from the server.</li>
<li>After that, when she gets time, she wants to book in a ski holiday but needs to find an HR tool to request that time off. This means navigating through emails from everybody to find the right place.</li>
<li>After that, because she manages a team, she then has to validate holiday times separately.</li>
<li>Then, she also wants to recognise employees so adds birthdays to the calendar.</li>
<li>And after that she has a headache and needs to locate the organisation’s infirmary.</li>
</ol>
In just a single day, there’s a cavalcade of technical needs that are not readily available in a single space. An employee hub, with a personalised dashboard that enables her to access all the apps is what she needs to complete these tasks more effectively.
In mapping this out, you can work on personas in advance and thereby prioritise what experience is suited for each typology. In Elise’s experience, this included innovation tools that allowed colleagues to use project community groups for consistent communication, instead of the likes of Microsoft Teams, as per their preference.
<h3>Trend 2: Rise of agentic AI</h3>
The next trend looked at moving away from generative AI and into implementing agentic AI. This is about minimising human intervention on low value tasks; again, the issue of wasting time searching for information. People want the same simplicity at work as they get in their downtime.
<h4>Content gardening </h4>
A key pain point in communications is content gardening. As communicators know, there’s a massive amount of content that exists, and certainly won’t decrease with the advent of AI. Maintenance and curation is the new key tool.
Often, teams can struggle with contradictory information within the intranet, but with AI tools, you can scan and flag older content and duplicates, as well as suggesting new ideas and activities to replace them.
After some querying in the chat, Elise also explained how you can both take suggestions from the AI software or actively categorise and remove content through one process, whichever best suits your needs.
<h4>Sentient analysis </h4>
Sentient analysis with AI helps to measure and improve comms by:
<ul>
<li>Tracking employee needs</li>
<li>Evaluating feedback</li>
<li>Analysing the tone of messages</li>
<li>Monitoring sentiment trends</li>
<li>Comparing functionality to market standards</li>
</ul>
In this way, it creates a more proactive and responsive comms system.
Employees already share so much of how they feel in various online spaces (intranets, chats, etc.), which offers an employee data layer that mixes sentiment, employee journey, and how tools are used to understand all kinds of needs.
<h3>Trend 3: Continuous learning</h3>
The third trend Elise wanted to discuss was around the time it takes new starters to ramp up to full productivity. Elise believed this highlighted the urgency for continuous learning to reduce the time it takes to be fully operational, and particularly important for deskless workers.
To facilitate this, LumApps had delivered personalised training that was integrated into workflows in short accessible formats, directly available through intranets. The fundamentals of new IT tools or marketing strategies were still communicated but in a gamified system that was much more easily absorbed.
When used in conjunction with the existing employee data layer the microlearnings can be tailored into employees’ existing career aspirations. They can see where they’re at, coordinate with managers to enable them to take new training courses in bite sized chunks already built into their working life.
<h3>Trend 4: Search for authenticity and the collective experience</h3>
Elise concluded the session by addressing the trend she felt most strongly about; the search for true and trusted social media platforms in the modern age. With so many user-generated content hubs overrun with bots and AI generated content, it’s near impossible to trust those you follow.
Colleagues can find a safer, more authentic space within communities on their intranet and, as she demonstrated in her own work, they often had.
Topics not directly related to work were incredibly popular and bred a more genuine connection with other departments, such as sports and pets’ focussed pages. Returning to the traditional ideas of what social media platforms are for minimises the distance between communicators and teams.
<h2>Conclusion </h2>
As much as the future of communications can be daunting, there is an incredible opportunity for so many to leverage the latest technological advancements to meet employee needs like never before.
Harnessing nuanced data and tailoring your rollout to working habits is the core to understanding colleagues’ needs better than they do, all while boosting productivity in the process.

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