Speaker profile: Penny Lawson, British Airways
Penny Lawson is head of internal communication at British Airways. At Melcrum's internal communication change conference this year, she'll be sharing her story of how the airline is helping employees deal with the vast amount of change that its recently experienced, including large-scale restructuring and reorganization, and how her team works with management and unions to communicate with staff during this stressful time.
In this exclusive interview with Melcrum's Kelly Dyer, Lawson talks more about her demanding role, her function's relationship with BA chief executive Wille Walsh and the ongoing challenges she's facing this year.
How do you and your team keep up morale?
We're responsible for helping keep a positive attitude, we're also responsible for creating an atmosphere of understanding of the problem. The internal communication function is usually associated with upbeat comments on everything so we've almost had to go the other way and stress the problems of the recession and international aviation and underline the fact that the company is in extreme difficulty. So at times, we've been responsible for painting a rather gloomy picture and creating a sense of crisis. Now we can be confident in moving forward but people need to be aware that there are thunderclouds overhead.
In terms of team morale, it's important to make sure you meet with your team on a regular basis and share good moments when they happen. We're now much closer to our media relations and consumer relations colleagues as we're going through the pain of public scrutiny and risk. People are really trying to support one another, which is fantastic.
We've almost had to go the other way and stress the problems of the recession and international aviation and underline the fact that the company is in extreme difficulty.
BA is in the news on an almost daily basis. How do you ensure that employees are kept informed of events before they become public?
I think in the days of 24/7 rolling news, we kid ourselves in internal communication if we think we can let our people know before the rest of the world.
We use email and we have a very good intranet to post breaking news. So we work hand in glove with our media relations partners and we announce nothing internally without working closely with them. But we're absolutely committed to publishing things internally at the same time as they become news externally – if we can, a little before.
We've done a lot of work on management communication and increasing the strength of the cascade internally and we tend to get our top 150 managers together more frequently now and brief them. Everything we do is done in conjunction with our media relation colleagues and, of course, our industrial relation colleagues. It's exceptionally important that we're all joined up. The year has been dominated by having to get the attitudes and negotiations right.
What are the main changes you've been communicating recently?
We've been communicating a wide range of changes throughout the company over the past few months. A lot are related to the recession and the aviation industry in general, and our company in particular.
With the economic challenges in mind, we've made changes to some food provisions on board our planes and we've changed the baggage allowance. This affects staff as they're used to British Airways offering one set of standards so we're managing expectations that these standards haven't dropped and we're making use of these reductions in order to save money.
How closely do you work with Willie Walsh?
Willie is just down the corridor and he visits the corporate communication team several times a week. Being so close to him was a deliberate move by a former corporate communications director. The management board recognizes the importance of managing reputation. We speak with him once a week, as we write a column for him in our weekly employee newsletter and we craft messages with him. We're very close indeed. We have a confident and open relationship, which is essential for the company.
Willie [Walsh] is just down the corridor and visits the corporate comms team several times a week.
Is he the sort of CEO who believes it's important to be in touch with his employees?
Very much so. I inherited a terrific structure of big briefing meetings where Willie and the chief finance officer, Keith Williams, would make a lot of time available to senior and middle managers, as well as employee groups. They travel round the company to meet people and have briefings. He's at the airport a lot, meeting people. He absolutely believes that face-to-face contact is vital in a service company so he places a lot of value on meeting people. He's exceptionally articulate and people appreciate that.
We haven't done much on social media with Willie. His weekly column is online as well as in print and we do webcasts. Although we've had to be careful as this has on one occasion been hacked into and the content was taken out of context and shown on a prominent news channel. But within the constraints of there being exceptional scrutiny, he's up for it. We're planning on using social media more externally and then versions of it internally.
What are your major challenges for the rest of 2010?
If industrial action does happen, we're hoping to manage the operation effectively through that and also to re-build a sense of unity after this very bruising period that we're currently going through. Associated with that is the importance of re-stating our brand, which we'll be doing externally as well as internally. We very much want to re-build the company based on the power and popularity of the brand. I can't stress enough how proud employees are of British Airways as a brand. People have huge affection for it. Of all the companies I've worked for, BA has the proudest employees. It's a very well-loved organization. We need to look at who we are, where we're going and how we can come together as a company to grow.
Of all the companies I've worked for, BA has the proudest employees.
The company is also looking to merge with Iberia later in the year and to greatly strengthen relations with American Airlines in a trilateral deal, although both companies will retain their identities and remain their nations' flagcarriers. Both of those are big challenges as they'll affect how people work and it'll affect what we say and how we feel about two companies that were previously key competitors. Those are big challenges.
The other exciting and positive thing we'll be focused on this year is the change from working with UNICEF as our charity partner to Comic Relief. We've worked with UNICEF for a number of years and have a great relationship with them, but we've decided to change to Comic Relief, which marks an exciting new beginning. This is particularly exciting in the run up to 2012 where we're a sponsor for the London Olympic Games. So we'll be doing more preparation for that and using the excitement that people have for the Games to bring people together.
Book your place at this year's change communication conference now.
Have your say
Are you working for a company that's under the media spotlight? How are you dealing with it? What would be your top 3 communication priorities if you were in Penny Lawson's position? Share your thoughts with us below.
Recommended resources:
How BA's comms team learned to write engaging messages
Why you should stay upbeat during the downturn
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