Member spotlight Jon Large

A career change taught me how other sectors think

I am currently a Strategic Communication Manager at Bauer Media Group. My main focus for this role is to develop an internal communication strategy for our Publishing organisation, and everything that you think that might bring. I had spent over 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector and my role at Bauer Media is a proper change of scenery, sector and culture. The IOIC has helped me build a network of trusted people outside of what I know and help me ask the right questions and learn about how other sectors tick.

From PowerPoint guru to strategic communicator

I am going to assume, similar to many of my contemporaries, that this career path wasn’t something we signed up for at school – there was no internal communications pathway sat Smithdon High School, Hunstanton, that I could remember of at least (but it has been a while). At school/college/university, I enjoyed science and some years later discovered that I enjoyed the visual communication of science. I was fortunate to have been working at that time at a small biotech startup, where we all pitched-in – regardless of whether it was in our job description. I found myself involved in activities and initiatives that helped me understand how a business thrives. The sports and social club, the employee representation body, the training team, etc. I was exposed to a diverse mix of people but seemed to have confidence placed in me that I could develop communication materials that could be used. This biotech company gave me the opportunity to change roles and I became ‘the PowerPoint guru’. From here I blossomed into a digital media expert, visual communicator, tactical communicator and to where I am now – a strategic communicator. What do I enjoy? Our world is becoming increasingly complicated. I still love simplifying this complexity; distilling our difficult world into easy-to-understand chunks. Some of the best times for me though, at a tactical level, can be when you do something that people didn’t know was possible or a skill they didn’t know that you had. "I didn’t know you could do that” is the best reaction (I’m an occasional technical expert and this does happen if you get too familiar with a piece of tech or software)."

The East Anglia get-togethers and learning from every walk of life

I didn’t really discover the IOIC until a few years back. I wanted something that appealed to me as an internal communications professional, whereas other memberships organisations covered internal, external and Public Relations. Since I joined the IOIC, I haven’t regretted it. I love the local East Anglia region get-togethers we have. Helen Deverell and Johanna Soyars do a great job with it, and I really value meeting communicators from different walks of life who share their tales and experiences. There’s just so much to learn from people. A couple of dedicated stand-out sessions that I have attended include one about measurement of communications, another about the peaks and pitfalls of AI to internal communicators, and another with a back-to-basics use of Viva Engage. I am very excited to have attended my first IOIC festival this year.

A career achievement that I'm particularly proud of

This is a difficult answer to think of as you’re never sure what might resonate with people. I was proud just to pass my driving test all those years ago (and I would hate to take it now). One recent achievement that springs to mind is from 2025. I found myself on the job market and one question I need to answer was ‘what was I good at?’ I still don’t really know the answer but I decided to take the words that people had kindly written in my leaving card and create a word cloud from it. With nothing to lose I posted the result to LinkedIn. A typical post from me would get a few hundred impressions. This post received over 23,000 impressions. I was proud of that - it gave me some confidence and some answers to work with, plus I’d used a little bit of data viz and visual comms along the way.

My advice to someone just starting out in the internal communication profession

Meet people – face-to-face, Teams, any which way. Learn about how people think, what they say and how they act and ask yourself whether people are consistent and – if they’re not – what makes them behave differently. You will never fully understand individual behaviour, but this will help you understand how groups do.

I was on the Generation Game with my mum

Aged 18 I was on the BBC’s Generation Game with my mum and Bruce Forsyth (one of those individuals is more important than the other). I was too nervous and quiet to enjoy it properly. A few years later I appeared, with my sisters/mum/stepfather on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast hosted by Chris Evans and Gaby Roslin where we were Family of the Week. Now that was just the best fun. They recreated our Generation Game episode, even bringing back the old contestants we played against and expert chef (we had to make fine noodles from a lump of dough in a minute). They also embarrassed me by dragging in one of my university lecturers to have a word about not doing enough work. How my uni-mates laughed when biochemistry was cancelled that morning because the lecturer was currently on telly. They were good times.