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Comms Room had the privilege of interviewing Mark, who shared his valuable insights on the importance of communicating with a purpose. In this interview, Mark delves into how communicating with a strong, inspirational purpose can significantly influence and unite teams, stakeholders, and the wider community.
How has the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai influenced your approach to defining and communicating your organisation’s purpose?
Many years ago, I met Dr. Jason Fox with his brilliant, quirky and rogue way of engaging leaders and I was inspired by how he creatively encourages people to choose a ‘word of the year’. A word that you can lean into throughout the year to inspire, motivate or amuse yourself. After honing into many words each year, my word for 2024 is ‘Ikigai’ from the beautiful Japanese philosophy of living your purpose by doing things you love and are good that the world needs.
Ikigai has driven many personal decisions this year but has played an important role in how I have been communicating the purpose of the environmental government agency where I work. Integrating why people love working there and amplifying why they love doing what they do through our internal and external channels in a simple key message has shifted our narrative. Moving from simply being a ‘regulator’ to one of ‘environmental stewardship’ based on why we do what we do has been inspiring to bring to life with the team.
How do you ensure that your purpose-focused communications are inclusive and resonate with a diverse workforce?
As a communications professional, one of our core areas of responsibility is to ensure we are always using language that is simple, accessible and clear for all audiences. It is easy to become swayed by the technical expertise of your organisation and for that to become the common-speak. However, I am always looking to foster pride, understanding and respect through my communications to ensure everyone is welcome and included.
This is why, as a purpose-driven organisation, the purpose should not only resonate with the workforce and what you are aiming to achieve, but it should be led by the workforce from all pockets of the business. Engaging everyone from the beginning of the journey in redefining the purpose and narrative is so critical to ensuring a true representation of the collective voice.
How do you measure the effectiveness of purpose-driven internal communications in your organisation?
Measuring communications effectiveness and evaluating its success is one key aspect to see how we are shifting the dial from a metrics perspective. At my current workplace, we have our annual employee engagement style survey, pulse checks and regular Slido’s where I am always looking for data and insights from that data to guide future decisions for our internal and external communication approaches and messaging.
However, for me, it is not just ‘outputs’ and metrics we should be measuring but bigger picture ‘outcomes’. How are employees not just accepting the language, narrative and communication messages, but how are they adopting it in their everyday communications, meetings and reporting? How are the leaders infusing purpose across their 1:1s, their emails to the wider group, and the language they use everyday to inspire their teams? How are the people coming back asking for more ways, examples and ideas on how they can embed our purpose-driven communications to their stakeholders? These are some of the questions I ask when measuring the success of our purpose messaging.
How do you ensure continuous alignment of purpose between different departments and teams within your organisation?
Consistency, repetition of message and finding creative ways to keep the message fresh is always a good start. Not all team members, however, value messaging, narrative and purpose-driven communications the same. And so it is not just consistently pushing the core messages and relating to our purpose, but constantly looking for divisions that are exemplifying living and talking about our purpose through their work that I find works the best.
Empowering employees to take and live the language, showcasing it on our channels like Viva Engage or LinkedIn is where we can emphasise best adoption practices and thereby encourage other divisions to do the same.
What challenges have you encountered when aligning internal and external communications, and how have you overcome them?
Part of my role is aligning our internal and external communications to ensure we achieve our Corporate Affairs mission of building trust & engagement. We have an incredible workforce who are not just brand ambassadors but believe in the work they do with many working here living their ‘ikigai’ to protect our environment and community. One challenge we face is redefining our social media policy to ensure we provide appropriate guidance on how to share work content. Building best practices on how to become informal content creators that align to our communications is also part of the challenge, particularly when not all personal social media channels are relevant for work-oriented messaging.
I am fortunate that the Marketing & Campaign Communications now sits within my team. There is a great opportunity to further leverage the brilliant work of the marketing messages that align with the environmental outcomes we are trying to achieve through behaviour change. Aligning and sharing more of these marketing environmental and purpose-driven messages through employee advocacy will form part of our strategy in the months ahead.
We hope you found Mark Pallot’s insights on purpose-driven communication as enlightening and inspiring as we did. His expertise and passion for effective communication are truly commendable, and we look forward to hearing more from him at the 2nd Annual Public Sector Comms Week. Stay tuned for more interviews and articles from industry leaders, as we continue to explore the transformative power of communication.
More on communication: Honouring Differences: Making Public Communications Work for Everyone
Adrianne Saplagio is a Content Producer at Comms Room, where she combines her passion for storytelling with her expertise in multimedia content creation. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for engaging audiences, Adrianne has been instrumental in crafting compelling narratives that resonate across various digital platforms.
