My original beginning for this blog piece was going to be something along the lines of ‘it’s summer, isn’t it lovely when the sun shines, let’s think about effective communication over the summer’. Then 2 nights ago we had an extremely heavy rain and thunder storm where I live – the garage flooded, the porch … Read more
Last month I ran a session at the LUPC-SUPC conference in London – this is a specialist conference for University procurement professionals. The full agenda for the day covered a vast range of topics including supply chain, modern slavery, economic trends and the position of the Higher Education sector. My break out session was towards … Read more
I’ve recently done some work with a small education charity to help them improve their termly schools newsletter. It was a classic situation of something they knew wasn’t working as well as it could, but as a small and operationally busy team they simply didn’t have the time to step back and look at how … Read more
At the weekend I was lucky enough to go along to a painting class with the wonderful Jane from Be in Art. For some time now I’ve been looking for a class like this, so when I saw this one via a tweet from a friend, I jumped at the chance to go along. Jane’s … Read more
Today is World Health Day and I am delighted to introduce a guest post from Lucy Whitehall, a positive psychologist and masters-level coach from Transform and Thrive. She has kindly agreed to share her top tips for keeping your employees healthy. I was privileged to attend the Mind Workplace Wellbeing Index awards last week and … Read more
Despite living in an urban area, I am lucky enough to have a beautiful lake and nature reserve just 2 minutes’ walk from my front door. Today, as often, I took my notebook and pens over to the lake and spent a productive couple of hours working away in the sunshine. It is a wonderful … Read more
**spoiler alert** This piece contains a reference to something that happens in the book ‘Anne of Green Gables’ by L M Montgomery. If you haven’t read it yet and you don’t want your enjoyment spoiled, look away now! Today is World Book Day. It’s a day to celebrate authors, illustrators, books and, most importantly, reading. … Read more
Until I started working for myself, nearly 7 years ago, I had no idea how many membership organisations there are. I was aware of professional membership bodies, such as the Institute of Internal Communication and CiPD, but not of the multitude of others. Since then I have come across many more, including CharityComms (one of … Read more
The literacy charity for which I am a trustee, ABC to read, was recently awarded the Investing in Volunteers quality mark. Like many organisations, we are only able to do the work we do, changing children’s lives, because of our amazing volunteers. So we were delighted to receive recognition for the support we offer them. … Read more
I have just started a communications project with an organisation that has a high profile with the public, with content regularly appearing in the traditional media as well as on social media. This coverage can be mixed in terms of being positive and negative, based on fact and based on rumour and hearsay. It means … Read more