Dan Slee

It’s July and there’s the threat of a local lockdown in parts of the Black Country borough of Sandwell.

Urgent action has been taken with Sandwell Council leading the charge for people to take extra precautions.

There’s a range of channels to get the message out but how is this playing out on Facebook?

One Saturday morning I mapped the first 10 pieces of content in 10 different Facebook groups across the borough.

It starts on Sandwell Council’s Facebook

As the decision gets made by the public health the council posts to their page with 39,000 likes – that’s notionally 11.9 per cent of the borough population.

The visuals are eyecatching, chime with the national pandemic campaign but crucially are different. They stand out as being Sandwell.

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Text heavy they carry the Sandwell Council logo and have four key bullet point calls to action.

There’s 1,600 shares of this update and another 800 of the change to the header image with identical information.

Okay, so sit back and wait?

But what was the penetration across Facebook?

The role of Facebook groups

I’ve blogged before on the important role of Facebook groups. Almost 70 per cent of the population are using Facebook and 50 per cent of the population are using closed groups whether they be groups, Messenger or Whatsapp groups.

In short, groups are where people are in the community.

For this post, I chose 10 groups at random with a combined membership of more than 65,000 – that’s twice the council’s corporate page. It’s an area I know well. I live nearby and for 10 years worked as a reporter in the borough.

Fig 1 Sandwell Council Facebook page followers v population

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Like every public sector organisation they’re faced with a gap between their page and the rest of the Facebook-consuming public. One way they can fill this gap is by creating shareable content that then can connect with people in groups.

Did that happen here? Let’s see.

The role of Facebook groups spreading pandemic information

So, how was the news landing with people in Facebook groups?

I went and counted.

And yes, there was the council content being shared.

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But also push back in some quarters. The council-critical I Live in West Bromwich group admin surprisingly criticised the posting of the public health message.

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And of course, there was comments claiming people were asleep and just blindly following the media.

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So, should the public sector be scared off by criticism and misinformation? Absolutely not. The fact its there makes the need to be in those spaces even more important. It’s clear that for important matters people are willing to share the messages.

But local news media

What really caught my eye is news media’s very deliberate use of Facebook groups to share their content. The Facebook group is now the newspaper street corner seller and media companies know this. So, BBC local democracy reporters are often in groups and sharing their news.

Here’s one shared by a resident

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Overall, what were the figures?

Logging the first 10 posts served across 10 Sandwell Facebook groups 35 per cent of them was COVID-19 related. Unsurprising as the borough was in the news. But what surprised me was that most of the discussion wasn’t instigated by members themselves at all. Just 4 per cent was started by residents.

Instead, the posts and the discussion that followed were prompted by sharing public sector content (8 per cent of all posts) and above all local media (15 per cent). Alternative media and national media were neck-and-neck at 4 per cent each.

So, having sharable content means that people will start a conversation on the topic you’ve posted about.

Fig 2 COVID-19 Posts in Sandwell Facebook groups

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The remarkable role of news media in community groups

It surprised me, but in this pandemic snapshot local media is playing the most important role in the debate. Almost half of all content on the topic comes from news media. The Express & Star and Birmingham Mail – latterly Birmingham Live – are big in the region.

But thinking about it, this chimes with national data that says people are more trusting of news brands in the unfolding emergency.

But the single most important take away is that content is a conversation generator. Without the content your message is unlikely to be shared. By all means make your own but in the pandemic this data shows a revival in the fortunes of the local journalist.

Ironically, this media revival is taking place against a backdrop of job cuts in journalism,.

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In a long-running incident you need breaks to recharge your batteries.

Stress leads to mental fatigue and poor decision making.

Four months into COVID-19 the first burst of adrenaline is long gone replaced by the slog of long days.

A quick straw poll in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group showed 71 per cent of public sector communicators acknowledging a poor work versus life balance as opposed to 25 per cent having it sorted. That’s a big number of people making stressed decisions.

In many comms teams, tackling COVID-19 has been replaced by tackling COVID-19 plus the everyday and very soon things are starting to give. ASs Jim says, there is a temptation for normality which means the day-to-day ends in your inbox.

It was a pleasure to welcome Jim Whittington as a guest speaker in the Headspace Zoom session. Jim has worked in fire comms in the North West of the United States and is now a consultant. 

His area of specialism is known as wildland fire. In short, thats dealing with huge areas of land on fire. His largest incident was helping tackle a blaze three times the size of London.

The good thing about wildland fire is that they’ve hard won experience of staffing long running incidents. 

When the Twin Towers collapsed the city’s fire department shaped how they would respond through a broad process that drew insight from wildlands fire knowledge. They learned to pace themselves in their response in the months that followed and were more effective by doing so.

While the heart says run at the incident, wildland fire thinking knows the need to think, plan and be calm. 

Here are some pointers from Jim’s session.

1. In emergency mode, for every two hours worked take an hour off. You can work 14 days like this then you need a day off. Then you can work another seven. Then you need two off. Stress drives mental fatigue. You also need to realise that this can only be done in bursts. Real life goes on.

2. Those in charge of the team need to stop and plan to stop you staying solely in react mode.

3. Jim is clear that planning helps manage stress as does having a good, inclusive team process for sharing information, making decisions, and communicating those decisions. You want the stress to come from the incident, not from everyone trying to figure out how they will manage the incident, so ideally, those team processes are worked out beforehand.

4. If you manage stress you make better decisions and are less likely to burn out.

5. You have to take breaks and be honest with yourself when you need those breaks.

6. If you now think you need help you’re probably too late just as if you’re thirsty you’ve been too slow to grab water.

7. When youre planning build in slack so people can have that unexpected day off they didn’t know they were going to need.

8. When you’re planning you need those around you to be totally honest and share the information to help you build the picture. Jim calls this building a common operating picture – or a COP – and for him that’s key. Why? Because if there are gaps or an incomplete picture, individuals will naturally fill those in based on their own experiences, their own role, fears, etc. If that happens, he says, you can have a team thinking they are working together but are actually headed in multiple directions. Once you realize this, it then takes a lot of energy to realign for future actions.

A COP also helps with communications because it standardizes the language and imagery everyone on the team will use in their conversations. We all have experiences where something came back to bite us because something a team member said was not quite right or not expressed in an easily understandable way. Like the COP gaps, if there are gaps in the description of an incident, things can spin out of control quickly even with folks working with the best of intentions. Also, a COP is dependent on every member of the team contributing their expertise and knowledge of the situation, with comms people carrying the burden of putting the political-social in context.

9. Pay attention to the elected members and media as they’re going to be stressed too. Help them manage their stress.

10. When you’re talking to senior people make a conscious effort to talk slower and deeper. Quieter, too. It’ll generate a response thats likely to be more calm and more relaxed.

11. When you’re talking to senior people, be clear at the start that everyone is on the same side and wants the best for everyone.

12. When you’re having awkward conversations with senior people, don’t make it about their glaring flaws but instead how we can do things better.

13. When youre having awkward conversations with senior people involve them with the decision making, too. So, explain calmly that you can do X but not X and Y. So, help me out. Should we do X or Y? 

14. When you’re talking with senior people about the X you can do manage expectations.

15. When you’re talking to the reporter educate them in how tricky the decision making is rather than give simple soundbites. People aren’t stupid. Experience says they’ll see through you and they’ll know matters are more complicated than they seem.

16. Ambiguity is what you’ll have to work with. Things are uncertain. That’s your truth.

17. Faced with misinformation stay true to yourself. Even when some of that misinformation may come from a source in another part of the public sector.

18. When your working remotely, you may need to be more explicit than if they were in the room with you and you were reading their body language.

19. Be true to yourself.

20. Keep training your team.

21. Jim has written on what US fire people call ‘parrhesia’. This is a kind of speaking truth to power:

Yes, it’s all terribly subjective–but the job is tough and even tougher to categorize, which makes it near impossible to develop objective criteria. Thus, it is all the more important to open the conversation with sincerity and honesty, which is why I like the notion of parrhesia that Preston Cline brought to our community. Parrhesia is an ancient Greek word thathas classical definitions in rhetoric but was recently adopted and altered by special forces units so that it applies to performance during stressful and dynamic situations. In this sense, parrhesia means a brutally honest conversation that has demands of both the speaker and the listener.

The speaker is obligated to convey truths that may be harsh and difficult, but always come from a respect for the potential of the listener. So much so that it is an honor to enjoin the conversation. The listener is compelled to hear the words in that same regard and understand that through the exchange, they will learn more about themselves and ultimately perform better in tough times, both as an individual and a teammate.

– Jim Whittington.

You can follow Jim on Twitter @jimwhittington and read his blog here. Huge thanks to him for the Zoom event and for shaping this.

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This week I had the privilege in talking to people through the CIPR about how you can use TikTok during the pandemic.

I’ve blogged before on the health warning you need to be aware of before using the platform.

Good data is hard to come by and in the most recent stats TikTok themselves give more than three million users predominantly under 24.

Here’s some pointers you’ll need.

The basics

TikTok is a video platform that’s best described as ‘real short video.’ It’s shot upright and the app itself has some really good editing tools that you can mess around with before you post. In particular, adding text is really helpful. It’s also got access to a pile of music tracks that you can use freely on the platfoim.

It’s also about creating something bespoke for TikTok rather than re-purposing existing footage. But the good news is that it needn’t be slick and polished.

In fact, it’s better if it isn’t.

Example 1: The team in the personal TikTok account

A user who happens to be a nurse enlists the help of her team. They each hold a card that makes a wider point.

Why is it good? It’s not stuffy and plugs into personal networks to launch it.

Example 2: The personal account shot solo

Here the paramedic gives his take on wearing a mask in a car when you’re on your own.

Why is it good? Again, its informal and quick and plugs into wider networks.

Example 3: The scientists’ own account

Dr Lucy Rogers is a scientist who says on her website has got a doctorate for making bubbles. She also thinks science should be fun. That’s an ethos that entirely chimes with her TikTok video. It’s a kitchen sink experiment that shows how soap can be effective.

Why is it good? Fun, informal and shareable.

Example 4: The politician

Here UK Health Minister Matt Hancock gives a 10-second piece to camera with text added. It’s an elevator pitch. The video was posted by TikTok UK directly as part of their efforts to do the right thing.

For me, the time has probably passed in using politicians. We still trust doctors, nurses and public health people. Elected people? Much less so.

Why is it good? At least he’s trying. And it is short.

Example 5: Using TikTok as an organisation

The UN’s World Health Organisation have used TikTok with a corporate channel. Good work for trying and while a global organisation does have global reach in a local lockdown that isn’t the case.

Why is it good? At least they’re trying and they’re reaching an audience that may not be navigating through to the WHO website.

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Commscamp is back and I’m taken aback at the response of people to it.

Yesterday, 160 tickets were snapped up in nine minutes for the online version of the event we’re calling #commscampstayshome.

To say me and the organising team are taken aback is an understatement.

Thank you for your support if you grabbed a ticket. Bear with us if you missed out. There will be other ticket releases.

I’m writing this as a brain dump about where it is.

What I think the role of an unconference is

Everything now is uncertain.

Jobs that looked set for life in March have gone forever. The high street is a ghost town but online shopping is booming. Change always hurts but brings with it excitement and fear.

In this new landscape, I think people who have a lightbulb over their head and will think of new ways of doing things will float and those that don’t won’t.

I’ve said many times that an unconference in 2009 made me think differently. It fired the starting pistol on the career I’ve had.

An unconference is a place where the agenda is a blank piece of paper. It gets shaped on the day by attendees themselves. The people in the room decide what they will talk about.

Here’s what an unconference does for me.

It tries to work out how to crack the problem that’s right here and right now.

A traditional conference gives a sanitised take on something that happened six months ago. That’s absolutely fine. There’s a place for that. But with the world changing so rapidly what worked last month is already dated. I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting six months to be told what to do. We just need to work out what to do.

An unconference unlocks things. It gives people permission to walk into a new room where its okay to think, have an opinion, disagree or agree, share and to unlock. Job titles are left at the door.

Trust the process

Several years ago I heard a podcast where one of the great internet experimenters Lloyd Davis was talking about the open space principles that underpin unconferences.

They are simply:

• Whoever comes are the right people.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• Whenever it’s over, it’s over.
• Wherever it happens is the right place.

Lloyd made the observation that if 100 people come to an open space event the majority love it but will often suggest a minor tweak. If you have 100 minor tweaks you get a very different thing. It’s far better to just trust the process and I absolutely agree with him.

Lloyd, incidentally, has been generous with his time and thinking in shaping #commscampstayshome. I absolutely recommend you look him up.

There’s been a temptation as we work out how to make commscamp work online to stray away from basic open space principles. I’m glad we’ve always veered back.

Huge thanks to sponsors Touch Design who were so quick to back the fledgling idea weeks ago.

Yes, we will encourage you to think of session ideas

I always find the pitching process at the start of an unconference is always uncertain.

We always encourage people to debate ideas if they want to to see if there’s any interest in the session idea. For commscampstayshome this will be in the commscamp Facebook group.

But the first few seconds until people come forward with ideas is tricky. But people always do come up with ideas because we trust the process.

What #commscampstayshome will look like

The event will have a large room online to start, a pitching process where people can bring ideas they want to talk about and then lots of break-out rooms.

We’re also looking at creating break-out space where you’d find it at an unconference. The corridor. The spot by the catering table. The benches by the canal.

I genuinely don’t know how this will play out. Is recreating an offline space online the answer? Are there other things we can do? Sure, but I have to tell you this my fear of failure is precisely zero and I can’t stress this enough. If it works, then brilliant. If we do something and it doesn’t work, that’s fine.

Making it diverse

At the first ever commscamp in 2013, Lorna Prescott pointed out that everyone who was suggesting session ideas were white males. I’m glad she made that intervention because it encouraged more women to come forward.

In 2020, how do we keep encouraging women, people of colour or people from working class backgrounds where public speaking isn’t part of the curriculum to come forward?

Share the success

The good thing working as a team is that you can road test ideas and what you build tends to be better for it.

So, for this I doff my hat to fellow organisers Bridget Aherne, Kate Bentham, David Grindlay, Sweyn Hunter, Arlene McKay, Emma Rodgers and Kate Vogelsang. They’ve each brought different skills along.

We each know that on the day we will be one of 250 or so people that will make the event work. If it is a success then we each have a one two hundred and fiftieth share in that success.

Events shouldn’t be carols in August

I’ve long thought that an event should exist for a time then go away. Christmas in August is boring. It’s a house guest that’s outstayed its welcome. We should herald its arrival, get people excited and then go away again. I really hope that commscamp does that. We’ve tried to avoid that.

The easy part is done but the hard part is ahead of us

Getting 160 people onboard in nine minutes is tremendous but the hard part is ahead. How do we make the technology work? How do we explain the technology? How do we encourage people not to sit back and be spoon-fed? How do we encourage introverts? How do we encourage people to use the law of two feet and get up and go to another room?

I’m absolutely loving the idea of working it out.

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It looks as though we’ve only half fallen out of the office.

Four months into the pandemic and with 49 per cent of the population working from home there have been some joyous predictions of the death of the office.

The office, invented in 1726 to run the British Empire overnight has been killed by COVID-19.

We’d never go back after we experienced the joys of home working, one line of argument has gone. But the history graduate in me never tires of pointing that history is the great teacher. The First World War saw women answer the patriotic call to take their place in armanent factories.

By 1918, 90 per cent of workers working in the munitions industry were women but an act of Parliament gave returning soldiers their old jobs back and women were nudged and forced back into the household and menial jobs in service.

So, the office

According to a deeply unscientific poll in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group, just two per cent want to go back to the way things were, 26 per cent want to carry on working from home and 71 per cent want a mix of home working and office.

Fig 1: Preference for working from home, July 2020

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Research says some of us are more productive at home

The Guardian reported that research shows that we’re on average 13 per cent ,more productive working from home. But the trail was with people with spare bedrooms and didn’t measure homeschoolers. Despite this after the nine-month trial was over half wanted to go back to how things were citing loneliness as a factor.

Stop looking for one size fits all

All of this is conflicting for heads of comms looking and plugs into the one universal truth of this pandemic. There is no one single experience. Some people are worked off their feet and others have spent months twiddling their thumbs. Some have been ill. Some have not.

Whatever the future holds, this will be done to teams rather than shaped by wholly shaped them. Which is depressing until you realise there’s not much you can do about it.

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If you’re wondering how to run a staff awards bash in the middle of a pandemic you’re probably scratching your head.

Go big or small?

Go for prizes or not?

Go for COVID-19 or recognise everyone?

It was a tricky topic tackled in the ever fascinating Thursday Public Sector Comms Headspace Zoom chat. Helena Donkersley from Wakefield Council posed the question and a big thank you to everyone who took part.

As the discussion unfolded, yet again I was struck that the pandemic ihas been an uneven experience. Some are working so flat out with the pedal to the metal that burn-out city is in view. Some are furloughed and doing nothing. Your workforce are not all heroes but neither are they feckless scroungers.

It feels as though the mood has changed

We’re done with clapping. We’re being told to go back to the office if we can. But this isn’t normal let alone a new normal. Services across the public sector are being cut. People are starting to see services disappear and that’s the background to your celebrations.

Don’t go big on a venue

While those who have kept the wheels turning in a pandemic deserve Wembley Stadium the mood music of splashing out on a big venue isn’t right. In fact, any venue doesn’t feel good timing wise unless maybe its outdoor.

Don’t go big on prizes

While the staff member who telephoned people to make sure they are alright deserves the world on a stick the FOI for the £3,000 spent on cut glass vases would be tricky to defend if services are being cut. That’s the unfortunate reality.

An extra half day leave is a possibility. But when staff aren’t able to take what they’re already entitled to that seems a bit hollow.

Don’t go big on sponsorship

In the past, the annual staff awards shindig could have been covered with sponsorship. The lighting contractor could have been good for a couple of grand. But I’m not so sure that pool of money is as deep or plentiful. Which all points to scaling down.

Don’t ditch the everyday

At the council where I worked, there was the change programme and everyone else. The change programme were the golden people constantly mentioned in despatches. It led to those not in the golden circle feeling devalued. As tempting as it is to throw everything at COVID-19 is that really the right thing to do?

But go really big on saying ‘thank you’

In what was a surprising turn in the discussion, it became clear that actually what people really wanted was not a big prize. What most people would value over all would be to hear their boss and their bosses’ boss say ‘thank you’ and mean it.

The NHS chief executive who wrote to the children of key staff to say ‘thank you’ to them and their Mum or Dad was a hero I think nailed this.

I love the idea too of the chief executive driving out to say ‘thank you’ to individual staff members and hear direct stories from people who deserve celebrating.

As my Mum used to say, manners cost nothing. A ‘thank you’ is free.

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The annual State of the Profession report has landed as a snapshot of the profession before the turmoil struck.

The 38-page report from the CIPR shows where the profession stood before lockdown.

Former CIPR President Stephen Waddington has already blogged here on the limitations of the report as a live source document. Reading through it, it’s hard to disagree, Like a reel of film taken in more carefree times it can read like a message from another time.

That said, it’s still useful as a broad set of pointers and its true value will be 12-months on when we see where the graph has taken us.

Public sector and the State of the Profession report

The report says that 30 per cent of those surveyed belong to the public sector. That’s the largest group of people that belong to the profession.

There have been dire warnings of job losses across the profession not just from the PRCA but also the prospect of 3,400 redundancies amongst the 4,000 central government communicators. In Whitehall, job descriptions will radically change for those that are left.

But the average salary in PR – £40,000 – makes me wonder if the study has really captured a snapshot of the public sector.

All this makes the data on what PR does in 2020 all the more interesting.

What the profession does

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With copyrighting and editing top of the list, PR campaigns second and strategic planning third this is a recognisable landscape. Media relations are 4th, crisis management 5th and social media 6th.

For the public sector since lockdown, dealing with a crisis has eclipsed everything.

Equality and PR

What the report will be most useful for is acting as a tracker on equality. The profession remains one dominated by white people (91 per cent) who have a degree (76 per cent).

People in PR are almost twice as likely to think their family background will help them while more than 40 per cent think that a less advantaged background is a hindrance.

The pay gap between men and women has almost halved in two years and now stands at £3,658.

All this data is useful but it makes me wish for next year’s figures to see if adversity will lead to a more level playing field or not.

The CIPR State of the Profession 2020 report can be found here.

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If you’ve just been tasked with communicating a local lockdown and wondering where to start don’t worry there are some good lessons from Leicester.

The East Midlands city was the first in the UK to see a spike and counter-measures introduced at the start of July.

Very swiftly the public sector in the county drew-up a plan of attack and started to communicate it.

Chris Kealey, head of comms at Leicestershire Police and Katie Pegg, media manager at Leicestershire County Council, took part in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group Zoom chat to set out some of the lessons they learned to give you a starting point.

Both are keen to stress that this is not a definitive list as each city, town and community across the UK will have slightly different challenges. But they are right in saying this is a starting point.

They are also keen to make clear that there are many more partners involved. Especially Leicester City Council who have taken the brunt of media attention as well as partner organisations who have supported through the Local Resilience Forum.

Here’s a list of bulletpoints from the session.

Work as partners. In England, the Local Resilience Forum is a place where public sector bodies and others come together. Across the UK there are equivalents. Relationships built there in peacetime will more than pay dividends when the time comes.

Pace. Normally, a major incident will see a ‘golden hour’ that is critical for you to shape the response. In a local lockdown this is more like a ‘golden 24-hours’, Chris says. It will feel like slow-motion but you need to pace yourself and manage the flow of information.

See more

Get a map and get it up. Katie was clear to point out that there was a need to clarify where the lockdown area covered. That makes sense. If you’re living on the edge of Leicester, for example, you’d like to know if you’re covered or not. It is the starting point.

Make your media priority local. The world’s media came knocking on the door. Police and County Council, and no doubt others involved, made local media a priority. Leicester Mercury and Leicestershire radio stations were top priority. They were serviced first. This makes sense. Leicester City Council bore the brunt. Police did this for the first 36-hours and while it was tough to hold it makes sense. As time went on they also serviced PA which in turn passed content through to the national media.

Start with your values in your response. If your values are to serve and protect then make that your start point. Chris described this as starting to build from the inside out. That makes sense.

Make public health the core message. It’s a pandemic. The health of the public trumps everything. It’s why there is a lockdown and by keeping that front and centre you keep clarity. In a game of scissors, paper, stone it wins everytime.

Use local voices from your organisation. This makes no end of sense. I loved the idea of Leicestershire using voices from the town starting with their staff in communicating the local lockdown message. I can see this way it’s the town’s lockdown rather than something impose from above.

Use local voices from across your community. Again brilliant. A GP or the Director of Public Health making a point was encouraged, recorded and repurposed. It can only re-inforce the local message.

Use local translators. Leicester is a very diverse city. Up to 12 different languages were used but sanity checking with local staff showed that there was a need for local translation services. Why? Because dialect matters and if people are from a particular community they will respond better to their own dialect.

See more

Use local messengers. Do people know those spokespeople in the community? Are they trusted? Do they have credibility?

Target those most at risk. If you know your patch you’ll know as an organisation how to reach the right people.. So look to focus your messaging – and for the county, where there’s a partial lockdown, this is complex and nuanced. This is local not one size fits all.

The LRF can agree the broad approach and messages. Have something that everyone can sign-up to. Use that as a framework. Across partners meet virtually every day and several times a day if needed.

But leave space for local politics to play out. Communicators are advised to leave breathing space for politics to play out and if it happens that’s fine. We live in a democracy.

Be prepared to ebutt the same content over and over. In Leicester, footage of a cricket match circulated. It was broken up but claim and counter-claim kept surfacing. Be patient and be prepared to play whack-a-mole.

It’s a long haul so rotate staff. This, I think, is unexpectedly key. There is no sense everyone burning out. Days off should be encouraged.

Keep an action log. Make a note of what you do, when you do it and why you do it. This is brilliant advice. It helps build an audit trail and you will be asked to explain and justify certain decisions. That’s fine. If you have a record you can explain. In all likelihood if you don’t have this, they say, you’ll be put under extra pressure to explain your actions. It also helps you keep on top of things. Top advice.

Create low res short video with whatsapp in mind. This is a good tip. WhatsApp groups are widely used but by definition they are impossible to monitor. Misinformation and disinformation can pass through them unchecked. So, a low-res short video from someone in the community making a point iis a useful tool.

Be prepared to work closely with new colleagues at a national level. They will want to help you manage an outbreak – and they’ll have learned lots of lessons from other outbreaks.  Open your doors and work together.  

Social media isn’t always a barometer it’s social media. Because issue ‘X’ is making a lot of noise it doesn’t mean that this is playing big across your community. This is good advice for all sort of things.

A huge thanks to Katie Pegg and Chris Kealey for sparing the time to share their ground-breaking work.

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Okay, because I’m a sucker for stats here’s some more.

July 2020’s GlobalWebIndex’s Coronavirus Reseasrch for July 2020 data on how people are spending their time during lockdown.

Here you go by demographic.

More time socialising with the family, watching video and creating video.

fig 1. How demographics are consuming media in July 2020 percentage increase (Globalwebindex, global stats, July 2020)

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And also how UK adults are spending their time.

More time watching news, watching streaming services and time on messaging services.

fig 2. How UK adults are spending their time percentage increase (Globalwebindex, UK stats, July 2020)

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All of the data points to the fact that the media landscape has been tossed up into the air and are settling in different ways.

How can this help public sector communicators?

Check what you are doing and don’t stand still.

Picture credit: Flickr / Documerica

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There’s growing uncertainty in post-lockdown Britain and comms and PR people are feeling vulnerable.

The shadow of the first wave of COVID-19 deaths recedes replaced by the fear of job losses.

If you’re feeling exposed and fear redundancy I know how that feels.

Back in the early 1990s two weeks into my working life that was me and it taught me three important things.

Back then, I was working on a newspaper as a dark room technician trying to pay off University debt while working out what I wanted to do with my life. Two weeks in, we were all called into a meeting to be told that the paper was being put up for sale and there may not be enough money to pay the wages.

That was compulsory redundancy.

Six years ago when I left to become freelance it was voluntary but the lessons I learned still applied.

The redundancy process is always painful but when properly applied is equitable. When badly applied it causes resentment and blows the organisation’s credibility.

Here’s what I learned.

There will be rumours. Stop listening to them.

“I’ve heard that X met Y and they say that Z is going to happen.”

From experience, you’ll hear all sorts. Almost all of it will be supposition, rumour and speculation. All of it becomes tiring.

I eventually made the conscious decision to stop listening for the good of my mental health.

Wait for official communication

“This is the picture and it’ll happen by X.”

I found it far easier to ignore the rumour and wait for official communication and a chance to ask questions.

While you’re waiting…

Join a union

“They may tell you X but that’s wrong. Y is what they need to do and Z is the law to cite.”

It is so useful to have someone in your corner and who can spell out to you what the process is in law.

I’ve been a member of the National Union of Journalists for the past 25 years. They represent PR and communications. You can get more information here.

My Mum used to say that one door closes and another opens up. If you’re in the middle of the storm you won’t see this. I get that. This only comes with hindsight. It’s not a nice feeling to have your job under threat and I don’t dismiss that lightly but I hope one day you see a silver lining to it all.

Good luck.