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Creating a communications culture internally
- Set up a short-life working group to review how well you communicate your work internally and externally. Limit the group to a maximum of two meetings - one to outline the brief to the group members and one to report back their findings. Ask them to use the ESRC toolkit to help frame their thoughts.
- Turn the group’s findings into a simple action plan, which can be implemented over the course of a year. Make the plan achievable rather than overly ambitious - otherwise it will only put you off implementing it.
- Develop the concept of ‘communication champions’ asking team members to act as a champion for each area of communication activity. For example, one member with experience of running successful events could act as a sounding board for this activity, while another could provide advice to team members on media relations.
- Include "internal and external communications" as a standing item on team meeting agendas. This will help group members to think of communications as integral to what they do, rather than as an add-on.
- Share knowledge and learning. If you have done something well, archive the information on your intranet or shared drive so that other members of the team have access to the information and don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
- Celebrate success. Communicate every success - from being quoted in a news story to producing a new report or speaking at a conference. If staff know this is important to the director, they are more likely to give it a higher priority.
- Include communications - and reference to the ESRC communications toolkit and training programmes - in your induction programme for new members of staff.
- Circulate contact details for the ESRC communications team to staff at least once a year and make the contacts available from your intranet site.
- Let your university’s press office know about the ESRC communications toolkit and ask one of them to attend a team meeting to outline what advice and support they can provide you with.
- Could others learn from your best practice? If so, why not make it available to the ESRC as a download for the communications toolkit?
- Consider employing a communications professional to help your team of researchers maximise their communication impact.
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