Tales from life in an orange bubble

Hi everyone, and welcome to the great big orange world of easyJet Internal Communications! My name is Steve Evans and I am the guest blogger for April on Black Belt Dojo. My aim in my blog posts through the month will be to provide some insight on what it’s like to be an Manager in an environment like easyJet. But first, some history.

I have been a part of the Internal Communications world of for six years now. I started my career at easyJet as a member of our cabin crew; a job which I loved dearly. However as one gets on in life, the enjoyment of getting up at 3am to iron a luminous orange shirt wears very thin indeed.

The opportunity to join the IC team at easyJet came about for me when we announced the takeover of ‘Go’ (initially a low-cost subsidiary of British Airways) back in 2002. easyJet identified a need to have someone come into the team to manage the intranet news and write for the employee magazine ‘Juice’ whilst the IC manager focused her attention on change communications for the integration.

One of the things I have always admired about easyJet is their desire to ‘grow their own’ people where possible. So here I was, with no IC experience being given a chance to embark on a new career. I love the job and have never looked back since.

In the last six years I have gained an incredible amount of experience and I’ve grown into the role of IC manager fairly well. However, it wasn’t until I attended the recent Black Belt course with Sue and Liam that I realised that I still feel like a newbie! There is so much to stay ahead of in the world of IC that it’s quite easy to be intimidated by it. Whether it’s ‘Web 2.0’ which is keeping you awake at night or your ability to answer the question, ‘How does IC add value to the organisation?’ there is much to keep the brain cells ticking over.

So, how do you stay ahead in an ever-changing world? You rely on your fellow professionals. It’s as easy as that. At the Black Belt course, I met people from many different industries and at varying levels of experience within our field. Each and every one of them brought something unique to the table, whether it was an understanding of what life is like in the public sector for an IC professional or the challenges facing a communicator in an industry with hard-to-reach audiences like the shipping industry has. The value I gained from meeting other communicators is immeasurable.

If you don’t have the opportunity to attend events where you can meet other communicators, don’t be afraid of doing it in a virtual world. Melcrum has an outstanding example of social networking for communicators. Go to www.communicatorsnetwork.com to share ideas, insights and problems with fellow communicators.

One of the things we discussed on the course was the power of communications featuring ‘people like me’. See the power for yourself by listening to the experiences of other communicators.

If you have any questions about life inside easyJet, get in touch. steve.evans@easyJet.com

Steve

Comments

[Sue]

Hi Steve, great post, thanks.

To your point about feeling like a newbie, I've been working in internal comms for a loooong time, and I still have times when I feel like a newbie, too - whether it's being on a writing course with journalists way more proficient than me, facing questions about the specific practicalities of social media that I don't know how to answer, or seeing a brilliant idea/case study from someone that makes me think 'now why didn't I think of that, and how did they make it work?'

And I also get brought down to earth with a massive bump sometimes in scenarios where it's not about 'how can we use new viral techniques/the latest social media stuff/story telling/learning maps/ how else can we engage people', but I'm with a room full of line managers saying 'all this communication stuff is very nice, but would you like to tell me how I can actually find ten minutes in my day to talk to people and hold a team meeting when none of my people are in the same place at the same time?' Or IC people saying 'I just don't have the remit to do any of this. What are the simple things I CAN do within the contraints I've got?'

So many different organisations, so many different IC people and line managers tackling different problems. And as you say, one of the best ways to find solutions to help them is to be constantly asking 'what have other people tried that's worked, and can I use it?' Much easier (and less time-sconsuming) than having to be some kind of genius that can personally think up a totally new solution to every problem ...