Making Kindness Matter

When I think back over the last couple of months, the stories that have overwhelmed me and even sometimes brought tears to my eyes are ones of kindness and community. One that springs to mind is a friend's partner who saw a 90-year-old woman visibly upset and struggling to find essentials in a sparse Sainsbury's. He asked the shop assistant if thes...

Internal comms pro Matt Batten reflects on his experience of managing his physical and mental health in the workplace – and the greater support that employers can offer. If you follow me on Twitter (@CommsGuyMatt), you'll already know I talk a lot of b*llocks. I had testicular cancer about three years ago and I have been on a mission to remind men ...

#WeMatterAtWork What matters to me at work? Gosh, I've been contemplating this topic a lot recently. It may be my middle age! It may be the fact that I worked for a charity, with a strong purpose at its heart. It may be that in the last couple of years my life and priorities have changed significantly. Or it may be that in this strange Brexit limbo...

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Week in May, we hosted 'Let's Talk: Conversations that Matter' events at three of Wiley UK's locations. Led by the local leadership team and supported by HR, we invited all colleagues to take part in a discussion where they could share their personal reflections on wellbeing at Wiley.  In a world that ...

As a creative communications agency, we plough the majority of our time into helping businesses communicate better, coming up with ways to make their employees feel valued and considered through creative and exciting content. But how can we ensure that we're doing the same for our own business?  The IoIC's #WeMatterAtWork campaign has encourag...

When you work in Comms, you know the mastery of editing. When you are vying for people's time and engagement, there is no room for waste. Being thrifty and economical with words so as not to turn people off or fail to get the message across. To condense, to purify is an artform and internal communication professionals are experts in it. But this co...

That the Gender Pay Gap has widened in favour of men was small surprise to anyone who has followed this anticlimax of a watershed policy. BBC figures last week showed that in the 12 months since large companies became mandated to publish their pay gap, almost half have seen a swing towards men; eight in ten still pay men more than women, and a quar...

STRESS. Stress to me is the start of a very slippery slope into full blown anxiety and its insidious partner, depression. I thrived in high stress environments for years and years. I worked well under pressure, was motivated by deadlines and a high workload. Loved a crisis, enjoyed the adrenaline rush it brought. That worked for me. I did well at m...

Condensed highlights of a career in internal communications: In 1996 I was squabbling with engineers about technical jargon in an all-employee newsletter. In 2006 I led comms for significant change and restructure programmes. In 2016 I rebuilt a new internal comms team from two to four business partners plus a permanent channels manager. Writing th...

So here's a thing. I have 8,760 hours in a year (you probably do as well). I sleep for about seven and a half hours a night (assuming I'm not woken up by one of my children… which I frequently am… but let's say seven and a half). So that's 2,750 hours when I'm not conscious. Leaving me with 6,010 hours of time to actually do stuff. I spend about 10...