The communication challenge

As councils digest last week's Spending Review and work out the impact on their residents, Carl Welham says now is not the time to be scaling back the communications function. I have been privileged to work for some of the best and best-led councils over the last 16 years. I've been employed by a district, two counties, three unitaries, and now a London borough. During that time, the communications remit has changed and expanded. We've been at the forefront of new technology and its adaptation to communicating with our diverse audiences. I started with a typewriter and Tippex, and now we're taking our messages straight to our residents' mobile phones. The standard of the work we're producing on comparatively-small budgets has won plaudits and awards in national competitions against international PR and marketing agencies. We've come a long way – and then in May, everything changed... Now at this point, having built up a rosy picture of the last decade and half, you're probably expecting the kicker. That's what we communications people do – we build up a case for something wonderful then show how it's under threat. So, right here and now, I should be about to warn you how budget cuts will destroy the work we've done, how they will threaten the reputations of our councils, and ruin the relationships with stakeholders that we have so carefully nurtured. Throw in the Government's latest proposal to restrict the way councils can choose to communicate, and surely the rest of this article is going to be all doom and gloom. But I'm not going to do that, because that's not how I see it. There are challenges ahead, without a doubt. The first and most urgent is to keep residents, staff and stakeholders informed about the budget situation. Many councils are going a stage further than just telling people what's happening – they're actively involving them in the decision-making process. And this is testimony to the vastly-improved relationship that councils have forged with their local public. The challenge is to make this an open and honest process which carries credibility, and truly puts the public in charge. The next huge challenge is staff engagement. We can't hide from budget reductions, but we can make sure staff know the council is doing everything it can to drive out inefficiency and treat people fairly. The second internal engagement challenge is with managers. There is a whole generation of managers within local government who have not had to deal with downsizing or implementing redundancies on he scale that we are about to see. They need training, information and support. Bad industrial relations incidents can usually be traced to the inexperienced application of HR procedures by untrained staff. Managing the reputation of growing public sector organisations has been relatively straightforward. Managing the reputation in a shrinking resource environment will be a significant challenge, and will truly test our organisational PR management skills. Messaging will be key. The council's leadership will need to decide what the key organisational narrative is in the changing circumstances. Communications should already have developed this ready for the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announcement. What type of organisation will the authority be following CSR? What will be its prime function and focus? We will still be huge multimillion-pound organisations delivering hundreds of services, so what are the priorities? What is the community's greatest need? And how will we be delivering it for them? The next challenge I want to address is financial. I am not here going to argue for the protection of the communications budget. In fact, I would like to argue for the opposite. I think we should spend less on communications – but spend it smarter. I would like to explain how that is possible. Unlike most other corporate functions such as finance, HR and IT, communications tends, in many councils, to be chaotically and unstrategically funded. Anyone with a budget, anywhere in the council, can spend money on leaflets, posters, bags, adverts and so on. Taking control of that spending by having central sign-off for all communications spending will not only ensure that messages remain consistent, but that huge amounts of money are saved. The next challenge is something which should be happening but isn't, and might actually be a positive outcome from restricted budgets. And that's integrated partnership communications. Maintaining separate management and communications structures in geographically-small areas is neither sustainable nor desirable. And if we look at this from the public's point of view – they actually crave joined-up communications based on their life events, rather than the public sector's silo structures. We should be looking immediately and urgently about how we genuinely join up communications between different public sector organisations. The final challenge is to be true to what we really believe communications is for. Local government has developed a gravitas, a confidence and a success rate that is second to none in the public sector. The Government is asking us, in some cases, to abandon our well-established channels of communication with the public and behave in a lower-key, uniform way. This is a challenge to our relationship with our local residents and partners, and I hope it is one that we will rise to for the sake of maintaining excellent communications with the people we serve. Carl Welham is an interim head of communications working in local government and vice-chair of LGcommunications

Title

WHITEHALL

The communication challenge

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