The Melcrum Blog: Diary of an internal communicator

By Rachel Allen, Head of Communication, London Overground Rail Operations (LOROL)

Rachel Allen has just completed her first week as the new head of communications at London Overground Rail Operations Ltd (LOROL) a company launched in November 2007 and train service that links 20 of London’s 33 boroughs. The service is managed by Transport for London and operated by LOROL, a joint venture company between MTR Corporation of Hong Kong and Deutsche Bahn AG of Germany. Previous to joining LOROL Allen was Internal Communications Manager at Tube Lines.

Her challenge? Rachel is the first communications professional ever to be hired by LOROL. Previous to her joining the company did not have a communication plan. Her mission? To start from scratch and build on two successive years of pleasing employee survey results that showed a desire to improve internal communication in the company.

Rachel will be writing an exclusive diary for Melcrum for the next four weeks revealing first hand what it’s like to create and implement an internal communication plan and strategy from scratch, the people and challenges she’ll face along the way and the highs and lows she’ll come across on her exciting new journey. It will make fascinating reading for any communicator out there.

Here is her first entry:

Tuesday 11 August
First day is here and I wake up with nervous feelings that accompany a new role. However, I was made to feel very welcome by my new colleagues at London Overground Rail Operations Ltd's headquarters in Swiss Cottage. I spent most of today meeting people and introducing myself and got lots of 'aha you're the comms person...this should be your top priority' comments. My ‘top priority’ list is rapidly expanding and slightly overwhelming! I logged into my brand new email address to find 40 emails including seven pitches from agencies that had read of my appointment in PR Week. It is a rare opportunity to enter an organisation with a fairly blank canvas for communication and I’m excited by the possibilities.

My own priority is to understand the current state of play. This means asking lots of questions to get the views that prompted the employee survey results that showed a desire to improve internal communication and ultimately led to my role being created. I hot-desked today in three different locations, so met lots of people. I spoke to a design company who were recently briefed to refresh the LOROL logo and can see it would be useful for me to create a comms toolkit and branding guidelines – another priority for my list. I received my PDA and am planning to spend the train journey home investigating how it works (and yes, checking out the ringtones) and transferring my contacts book into it.

Wednesday 12 August
Hot-desked again today as the company is having a reshuffle in the office to accommodate the rapidly expanding workforce and my desk isn’t quite ready yet. I got to sit with and meet more teams and took the opportunity to quiz them about communication. It’s so interesting to hear the variety of views and the notion of what communication is and who is responsible for it. I’m encouraged by the enthusiasm my appointment has caused and also slightly bemused by one comment of “ooh communications, that’s a poisoned chalice” - interesting view! A team briefing process was set up recently so I've arranged a meeting on Friday morning to hear their thoughts on how it is working and what can be improved. I met with Steve Murphy, our managing director, today and ran through the latest version of a recently established newsletter that grew organically as people recognised the need for something to be produced.

I think it is a good starting point but it definitely needs a corporate voice to tie it together – another one for my list. I’m encouraged that the company sees the value in communication and in lieu of anything formal, created a newsletter and team briefing as a way to connect employees and cascade information. My head is buzzing full of ideas of what I could do here and I'm pleased by the hunger shown by everyone to want to make communication a priority.

Thursday 13 August
I didn’t sleep well as had so much going round in my head. I have a vision of how I want communication to be here and need to identify the steps that will get us there, which my mind decided to concentrate on instead of letting me sleep properly. My Twitter and email account went crazy overnight when Melcrum announced on its blog that I’d be keeping this diary – now I have 27 approaches from different agencies and suppliers. I need to work out what I want to do first before I can think about commissioning relevant agencies, but it’ great to have such a choice and I was impressed by the displays of innovative solutions I was sent to browse through. I have kept them all safe to refer to when the time’s right. Today I met with some of the management team and deputy MD for one-to-one meetings to quiz them on their feelings about internal communication. There are so many good news stories that are trapped inside teams that could be shared with the whole business.

It’s exciting to hear the fantastic work being done by employees and I can’t wait to set robust plans in place to share that success and help everyone recognise, collaborate and learn from each other. I’m going out on the network tomorrow to meet employees on trains, such as conductors and drivers, and in stations. I'm looking forward to that as I believe in order for any communications strategy I produce to be effective, I need to get my head around my target audience and choose the most appropriate approach and channels to implement and champion. I also heard today that Sarah, the comms executive I’m mentoring is entering the The British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB) awards next week, fantastic news, I’ll be reading through her award entry on the way home.

Friday 14 August
I’m spending this morning hosting a session for team briefers. I'm asking them to tell it to me straight – I want to know exactly how they feel about communication at LOROL – the good, bad and the ugly. It’s good to have the employee survey results from the past two years but I want to get behind those figures and dig out what they mean in reality. Got three more one-to-one meetings with the management team to continue my quest to find out their priorities and then be let loose on the network for the rest of the afternoon to travel our routes and meet some of the frontline employees. On Tuesday I started to keep a log in the back of my notebook of all the acronyms I hear and I'm up to 14 different ones so far. It will be interesting to see how many there will be at the end of the month. I’ll be using them to form a company glossary to help create a comprehensive list of corporate codes so people don't feel alienated by them.

If you have any questions for Rachel please comment below. Come back next week to hear how her second week went as London Overground’s new head of communications.

Comments

Congratulations again Rachel. Your enthusiasm was always infectious during your time here at Tube Lines. I'll keep reagin your blog with interest.

Posted by: John Edwards | August 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM

hi rachel, enjoyed reading your diary and wish you good luck in your new role. I just wanted to point out that within your brief, i would recommend considering how Corporate Social Responsibility messages fit in with your overall comms strategy. CSR is not only about behaving ethically, but also about dialogue, engagement with stakeholders and transparent reporting and communications.
regards, elaine cohen

Posted by: elaine cohen | August 14, 2009 at 12:17 PM