Alex Aiken
It’s something of a cliché that professional communicators are the worst offenders when it comes to highlighting their own achievements. Well, now we’re changing all that with Comms Exchange.
Comms Exchange
Throughout April, Whitehall Directors of Communications are opening their doors to the GCS community across government and showcasing exceptional government communications. Comms Exchange is a programme of department run master classes and speakers events open to all government communicators. Events already confirmed include Home Office on strategic planning, DWP on internal communications and DEFRA on social analytics. A full listing of events and details of how to book will appear on the GCS website next week.
Comms Exchange is not only for Whitehall departments: we want as many quality events as possible across government, so if you’re based in local government, the NHS or the emergency services and have an example of exceptional comms and skills to share, then why not join in? We are keeping it simple: identify a subject, book a room, let the GCS team know the details and we will list your events and handle the bookings. We’ll even send you a delegate list and away you go.
Public Service Communications Excellence Awards and Comms Academy
It is also a double first for GCS and LG Communications who have joined forces for Comms Academy 2014, our first joint central and local government communications conference to be held in Manchester over 11 to 13 June, which will form part of the Civil Service Live 2014 learning programme.
And we’re also launching the Public Service Communications Excellence Awards – the first ever public service communications awards for public sector communications professionals developed and awarded by the leading professionals representing GCS, LG Comms, Fire Pro, Association of Police Communicators and media partner the Guardian Public Leaders Network. This is the perfect opportunity to stop hiding your light under a bushel and highlight your achievements. The Comms Academy and Civil Service Live programme will be released next month.
The new awards celebrating excellence in public sector communications campaigns and programmes; are free to enter; and are open to all public sector communications professionals in central and local government, health, emergency services and wider organisations.
There is only one category for the awards – excellence in public sector communications campaigns and programmes. Regardless of discipline, budget and channel, we are seeking the best of the best from large budget TV to low/no budget campaigns, grass roots community engagement or organisational change communications.
It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is exceptional. Find out more and how to enter.
GCS Internal Communications conferences
Keeping with the theme of firsts, I had the pleasure of speaking at the first GCS Internal Communications conferences in London and Manchester. It’s time for some long overdue recognition of the vital role that internal communicators play in helping government deliver its policy objectives.
There is some great work going on in this sphere, but if we are truly honest with ourselves it’s inconsistent – as the Capability Reviews have shown. We need to continue to raise our game in internal communications and the GCS internal communications excellence programme will address this. We learnt much from the events. Critically that internal communications has to raise performance in the workplace; must be part of the business strategy and should demonstrably involve employees.
An early step in the excellence programme is the new IC Space, an invaluable bank of internal communication best practice resources. To paraphrase one of our conference speakers, Rachel Miller of All Things IC, there is finally a new tool in the internal comms cupboard. Please take time to review it, comment on it and contribute to the continued development of IC Space.
Blog post from Alex Aiken, Executive Director of Government Communications
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