By Alejandra Salas Communications Officer - UCLG
This year the European Communication Summit took place on 29-30 June in Brussels and the UCLG Communication Team didn’t want to miss the opportunity to learn from other communication professionals and discover the recent developments in communication.
Panelists from the private and public sector, academia or civil society organizations shared with the audience tips, examples of best practices and their efforts and work to achieve a strategy integrating internal and external communication based in collaboration.
After two days of intense presentations it was set clear that the key of a good communication strategy is being transparent, both in internal and external communications.
Collaboration to tackle social problems
Engaging staff in every project that the organization undertakes and keep them regularly updated and informed helps to boost internal communication flows and it is translated to the external communication strategy.
“Keeping employees informed drives better team performance” Sharon Mckoy, Head of Internal Communications at Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Ministry of Defence UK.
If employees feel empowered they feel keener to share information with the rest of colleagues, and more important, with the communication team, and get to see the importance and impact of the external communications of the organization.
Lessons learned: sometimes less is more
Applying what we learned during these days to our UCLG daily work we though would be interesting to try to present more practical cases to tell successful stories of local and regional governments in SDGs implementation and city-to city cooperation. Trying to showcase the added value of belonging to a such a large network as UCLG and what brings to members and cities would help strengthen our messages.
By simplifying the messages and focusing on real cases would help the general public to make a personal link with the organization. Making the messages more accessible to all allows reaching a wider audience. As Mark Byatt, Director of External Affairs IFRS Foundation said “The key is to simplify without diminish the message”.
In order to boost internal communication would be interesting the use of new technologies and simultaneous communication to speed up internal communication processes. Using channel-based communication will allow working in real time with no boundaries and open knowledge, in other words: collaboration!
More information:
- Read the full report
- Visit the Summit's website
- Follow the conversation on Twitter - #ECS2017