Meet Kayley and Lisa
(Part 5 of The WFH Report)
When navigating a crisis like C-19, the role of communications feels more important than ever before. We interviewed Kayley Marchant and Lisa Mudge, two participants from the WFH study who are working in internal communication.
MEET KAYLEY MARCHANT. Senior Internal Communications Manager at London North Eastern Railway.
She currently works in a team of two as a Senior Internal Communication Manager for London North Eastern Railway, responsible for keeping the 3,500 workforce informed in a clear, succinct and timely way.
She believes ‘there is no such thing as too much communication at the moment’ as long as it’s clear, informative and has a clear purpose.
She has seen her colleagues and stakeholders really valuing her advice and what she has to offer and her role has even transformed into more of a supportive, advisory and counselling role throughout this crisis.
‘It’s amazing to see the penny drop in other people’s eyes — my peers have really understood the importance of internal comms over the last few months.’
Kayley’s team have spearheaded a (very necessary) digital-first approach which has seen the organisation (and their love of printed collateral) adapt quickly in lockdown. Swiftly realising that a slow, out of date and fairly inaccessible intranet was subpar, a microsite was born and launched within 24 hours.
This internal site is now used daily across the entire workforce and has had over 50,000 hits in the first three months. LNER has also seen the read rate of emails from internal comms vastly increasing and the internal Yammer site is busier than ever. With unprecedented levels of uncertainty and anxiety, internal comms teams have been a vital cog in the wheel when it comes to employee mental health and retaining a calm workforce.
Kayley and her team have used internal channels to connect with employees around their mental fitness. As well as a new ‘Monday Motivator’ channel which is a light-hearted weekly email for all LNER employees, a weekly internal health and wellbeing survey gathers employee feedback to ensure appropriate support is being provided throughout these changed times.
In addition, every LNER employee and their family members were given a free Headspace account at the start of lockdown to ensure they had the tools at their fingertips to support things like anxiety, resilience and better sleep..
All in all, Kayley feels that they ‘have proved that going digital can work for LNER and [she] hopes this can continue in a post-COVID world.’
A born storyteller with a passion for writing. After gaining a First Class Journalism degree, Kayley began working life at global insurance company RSA. It was here she fell in love with all things communications. Helping stakeholders tell their stories, transforming the complex into simple and developing new, impactful channels quickly became her passion. After helping deliver a digital global upgrade, she made the move to the railway industry. Here Kayly has communicated big change, implemented new channels and led on the transition from Virgin Trains East Coast to London North Eastern Railway. And she’s never lost her journalistic nose for a great story.
Who are LNER?
LNER is the rail company that operates on the East Coast mainline. They took over after Virgin Trains East Coast in June 2018 and have ambitious plans to change the face of train travel. “We want to create a service everybody loves, that our people are proud to work for and that helps the communities that we’re part of to flourish” says Kayley. “We kept our promise to maintain a seamless transition between old and new. While doing that, we launched the future of rail travel, with our new Azuma train. It’s already a great success, introducing more seats, more space and above all, more reliability. Whether you’re nipping to your auntie’s for cake and a cuppa, braving a meeting with the boss or treating the kids to a day of candy floss and sandy toes. We’re with you. Making it happen. Connecting towns and cities, people and places with pride.
MEET LISA MUDGE. Senior Director, Employee Communications at LinkedIn
LinkedIn moved fast at the beginning of the pandemic when many people moved to remote working environments almost overnight.
They provided free job posts for all UK hospitals and nonprofits working on coronavirus disaster relief, as well as essential services (supermarkets, package delivery, warehousing etc) and platform members with information and access to free learning opportunities to support their shift to remote working. Much support and leadership was required internally to support their global workforce of 16,000 people with the transition.
We interviewed Lisa Mudge, a Senior Director of employee communications at LinkedIn, who shared how her team and the wider organisation responded to the C-19 crisis. Lisa and her team have played a front-stage role in providing opportunities for the entire workforce to feel more connected and internal communication has increased significantly as a result.
Quarterly meetings are now monthly, and what was monthly has become weekly. At the beginning of C-19 lockdown, the internal communications teams, in partnership with HR, launched a weekly virtual meeting which all 500 LinkedIn managers in Lisa’s region (US and Canada) were invited to. This channel allowed managers to bring questions that were at the top of their team’s agendas and get relevant real-time information, in a format more akin to a chat show.
The real-time Q&A nature of this format was hugely successful and as a result, these meetings between internal comms and managers take place across every region of the globe.
Looking forward however, Lisa feels that once peers have settled into new routines and become familiar with working remotely, the frequency of communication can revert to a cadence closer to precovid times.
But she’s unsure how sustainable this way of working is. As a leader, Lisa recognises the negative impact that continuous remote working can have on employee wellbeing. With this environment likely to continue for some time, Lisa and her team believe mental health and sustainable working habits are crucial. She often tries to encourage less screen time, meetings without rigid agendas that build connections beyond the working day and makes more of an effort to facilitate them in an inclusive way.
This allows everyone to feel connected, listened to and contributing. It is clear that internal communication has played a fundamental role in every organisation in this C-19 world and it’s Lisa’s hope that ‘this field [she’s] so passionate about will gain visibility and respect far and wide’.
“ Remote working could become quite taxing if our new habits are not sustainable. Our mental health is more important that ever before. ”
Lisa has 15 years of strategic communications experience at global companies like LinkedIn, RSA Insurance and O2 Telefonica. She started her communications career with O2 UK leading brand experience programs and more recently moved to San Francisco to lead employee communications for LinkedIn’s Global Sales organization. She loves employee communications because no day is the same. But most importantly, it comes down to people. From coaching senior executives to inspiring her colleagues to live LinkedIn’s culture alongside her team, the best group of communications professionals in the industry
Jenny Burns is an Executive Partner at Fluxx. We help companies like Condé Nast,Thames Water, HSBC, and Addison Lee Group, bring big ideas to life. Check out Fluxx Studio Notes for more stories. Are you interested in learning the secrets for sustained, repeatable innovation models, from expert practitioners? Check out The Innovation Starter Kit. Stay tuned with all that’s Fluxx by following us on LinkedIn or signing up for our WTF Newsletter. Get in touch at Jenny.Burns@Fluxx.uk.com.
