You’ve got just over two weeks to enter the best comms industry awards in the UK. But don’t take my word for it, read what a former winner has to say about them and the benefits of entering…
by Alex Mills
I love the UnAwards. Easy to enter, cheap to attend but unquestionably tough to win, they shine a light on the brilliant work that overworked, undervalued comms teams are serving up all the time. Every now and then some of that work properly knocks your socks off.
I attended an UnAwards Winners Masterclass in Leeds last year and saw the work that Sarah Ford and her small team at Transpennine Express had done to help share their organisation’s new vision and values with staff. It included a brilliant, poetic video putting a human face on the work of their frontline colleagues in a meaningful and inspiring way.
Working for a fire and rescue service, frontline staff (and by that, I don’t just mean firefighters) are at the heart of what we do. But all too often, like so many organisations, we default to using our most senior leaders to tell our story.
That’s why, as part of our work to communicate our new long term organisational narrative (which we’re calling ‘Our Story’), we’ve put the words, voices and faces of our people front and centre. The aim is to inspire our staff so that every single person, regardless of rank or role, understands the part they play in what we do.
You can watch it here…
We’ve been using the video internally for a couple of months and shared it publicly this week. The reaction both times has been brilliant.
But more important than video views, media pickup and praise, is the impact we hope it will have on the pride and purpose of our workforce. Internal communication outcomes are notoriously hard to evaluate- but that’s why we’ve built in some simple measures right at the start of the process so we know how successful we’ve been.
We’ll be following these up in a few months time to see how things have changed.
Alex Mills is head of communications at South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue
You can enter – and nominate for - the UnAwards18 HERE.
They close on 25 October (midnight)
image via Florida Memory
