Live and direct from the Summit part 3...

By Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcrum

Day two of the SCM Summit in London got off to a busy start. The Fifth Business ran a breakfast session very early in the morning about onboarding new employees at T-systems. Followed by Bill Quirke, leadership communication expert and managing director of Synopsis Communication Consulting, who presented on how to recession-proof the internal communication function. As I write, Bill is running the first Melcrum Member Clinic on manager and leader communication.

Following delegate feedback from last year, we’ve got more stream sessions this year, providing more options so that people can choose between hot topics. I’m currently sitting in stream B and have just heard Nicola Bowles from the Foreign & Commonwealth office talking about global communications. Nicola told us how the Office is leading stakeholders through a major three-year change program -at the end of which the organization plans to be “More foreign, less office”. The internal communication team at FCO aims to drive engagement by targeting groups of employees better, being more inclusive and encouraging accountability.

Nicola also spoke about the organization’s leadership gathering where they bring all the ambassadors together from around the world to discuss policies and new initiatives. Last year’s gathering included UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as one of the speakers. You can actually read about this in the latest issue of the Strategic Communication Management journal.

Right now Liz Wiggins, who spent a large part of her communications career at Unilever is presenting on managing change communication. Liz comes from a psychology background and the subject is forming the focus of her presentation. It’s an interesting angle to take. She’s spoken about the change curve and how it is relevant to organizational change.

Liz’ says it’s important to distinguish between the different kind of communication required at different levels of the change curve. For example, when the change news breaks, and when the change news actually sinks in. For the latter, Liz suggests that provide venting mechanisms, for example, a “Scrawl Wall” can be very effective for employees as it’s a hugely cathartic experience for them and will help them deal with the change.

Lunch next, and in the afternoon there will be round table discussions, more member clinics and presentations on engagement from Janet Croissant from Transport for London, and managing corporate reputation by Peter Jones from Bupa,