HR Headliners with… Jane Garnsey, People Operations & Internal Communications Director, TalkTalk

In the first edition of our HR Headliners series, Kerry White, Executive Search lead at Macmillan Davies talks to Jane Garnsey, People Operations & Internal Communications Director at TalkTalk about why Internal Comms should be at the heart of any business.

Tell us about your career to date

My biggest passion in life is people. So, I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve been able to carve a career following my heart and true passion. I’m very grateful.

Over the years, this has seen me take on various people-related roles and now, after 14 years at TalkTalk, I’m People Operations Director – overseeing HR, Health & Safety, Workplace (Facilities) and Internal Comms… so almost every aspect of people in the workplace. And I absolutely love it!

14 years in one organisation is a really long time and I’m someone who gets bored quickly – so it sounds counterintuitive. But it’s gone so quickly – I’ve not had a second to get bored. I’ve been challenged and able to try loads of different jobs and have added lots of different strings to my bow as I’ve gone along – expanding my remit and responsibility over the years to what it is now, for example, taking over the Internal Comms function a couple of years ago, which I’ll tell you more about in a second.

Having enjoyed that personal growth journey here, I’m also a big advocate for helping others grow. A couple of months ago, alongside my role, I also completed my Level 5 Coaching Apprenticeship, so that I can further develop myself and help others do the same – working with them 1:1 to grow their careers with TalkTalk. I’ve loved having a busy and varied career here at TalkTalk and I feel privileged that I get to help others experience the same and get the best out of themselves and their career.

Over the past 12 months, you redesigned the internal comms division at TalkTalk. What was the thought process behind this?

This was largely born out of the pandemic. As an industry, internal comms went through such a vast change during Covid, didn’t it? And not just within that period – the future landscape of internal comms changed for good on the back of it. In Covid, internal comms really came into its own – everyone could appreciate the value and the pandemic gave us, as internal comms professionals, the chance to galvanise our function, evolve it and carve it into what we wanted it to be post-pandemic.

It was also during that period many people took the time to think about themselves and their own priorities and what they wanted in their careers. With these two things happening in parallel, what we saw in the existing TalkTalk Internal Comms team was some natural attrition and with a changed landscape ahead, it felt like the right time to refresh and restructure the team and build on the fantastic work done by the existing team. We’d launched new company values in the Autumn of 2021– We Care, We Challenge and We Commit – which had been well embedded within the business, laying excellent foundations for what we were about to do.

In March last year, when I restructured the team, we moved to a business partner model, with each business unit receiving bespoke support from a personal comms business partner – a model that was really backed by our Exco. This means the comms business partners are really well embedded within the business units they support, have built excellent relationships with their stakeholders and are experts in how their unit contributes to the business’ One Plan strategy.

But, at the same time, the team also gets the opportunity to come together to deliver Group activity as a unit and large-scale comms campaigns and events too – something they love coming together to do! They’re a lively bunch when they get together and it’s a pleasure to see their positive energy in action – it’s infectious… and loud!

How did you go about restructuring the function?

I’ll be honest, picking up the Internal Comms team was a baptism of fire! HR is my bread and butter but as I said earlier, I’m always looking for how I can grow, stretch and learn without leaving the business that I love. So, when I was approached to take on the team, it was a no-brainer. However, the timing meant it was a much steeper learning curve than even I was expecting. It was just a couple of weeks before Covid hit. So, I definitely went on my own personal journey with it and, with the help of the Internal Comms team, learned a lot within a very short space of time.

Once we’d come out of Covid and started thinking about the future vision for the function, I went out to hire experts in the field – experienced internal comms professionals – for the business partner model. I did every single interview, as I wanted to ensure the team would work well and gel together. As a leader, my style is to lead heavily on emotional intelligence. Being a people person and seeing the value that this team brings to an organisation, I invested a lot of time in not only bringing people with the right skills on board but people with the right values – values that aligned to We Care, We Challenge and We Commit.

Fast-forward to March 2022 and I was sitting in a room with an almost brand new Internal Comms team, with one more due to join. That day was a really pivotal milestone in our journey – it was our first off-site as a collective – a new era had dawned on Internal Comms at TalkTalk.

From that day, every month without fail, we get together for an entire day off-site. In the early days, a lot of those sessions were heavily based around personalities (not just because I’m nosey and I love people and their stories!) but because we needed to bond as a team and understand how we can bring our best as a collective. Sometimes that means being vulnerable and open with one another, which people can only do in a safe space.

Now, the agendas vary – but it’s a full day a month where we switch off our laptops (I’m quite strict on this rule) and remember why we do what we do and why we love what we do. It’s a busy function, so it’s important to step away and it’s crucial for me to give the team the time to do this. We all joked afterwards that we go away feeling a bit fuzzy inside, with a renewed sense of vigour for delivering our best for the business and one another.

12 months on, what has been achieved and what have the benefits been?

So many benefits! Hands down, the biggest benefit is that everything is more joined up than it’s ever been and just feels slick. Everyone knows what one another is doing and we use our individual strengths to the advantage of the entire team. In terms of some metrics:

• We’ve seen our employee engagement increase within that 12-month period. We’ve also seen an uplift in business units like Tech & Security, which didn’t previously have comms support and since having the business model in place, have seen a 136% engagement uplift
• We’ve seen employee engagement across activities like the Great Manchester Run (62 colleagues took part), a Firewalk (61 colleagues took part), and a Halloween Party (where around 200 colleagues brought along their kids for an evening of fun)

It’s definitely been noticed too. One of our Exco members recently shared that it was “the difference between night and day” in the last year and that’s really humbling to hear. We’ve had a great year and it’s making me a bit emotional actually to go back to that first off-site and think of everything we’ve delivered as a unit since then. But naturally, we’re quite hungry and we want to deliver even more in FY24 and beyond!

On reflection, is there anything you would have done differently?

Oh, loads of things! And as a leader, it’s really important to be humble enough to recognise what could and should be changed.

As I said, I hired on skill and personality, so we’ve evolved the structure of the team with the people we’ve brought into the team. It’s a difficult thing to do – to write a structure from scratch without knowing the people that’ll come to you from a hiring process. So, did I get it right off the bat? No, absolutely not! But we had something to work from. We did a bit of juggling around with what fell into different roles when those people were in situ, workloads, what challenges and projects were on the horizon, different personality traits, personal growth priorities, where strengths lie etc, and how it could work to the advantage of the team in the best way.

That’s part and parcel of evolving though – we’re constantly looking back at what went well and what we can do to be even better as a team. And a big part of that is reflection, and we always spend a chunk of time at the off-sites reflecting and learning. It’s therapeutic!

What advice would you give to ensure internal comms is at the heart of the business?

The Internal Comms function sits within different departments in different businesses – sometimes it’s in HR, sometimes Marketing or Brand. Where it sits, though, doesn’t actually matter. Because, regardless of where it sits, there needs to be a joined-up narrative and relationship between internal comms and every area of the business – and especially between internal and external comms. It’s not an easy ask!

People working in internal comms need to be a bit chameleon-like – they need to be able to build very strong relationships very quickly and flick from being very serious at times (like in a crisis, when communicating strategy or organisational design changes) to being very flippant and fun the next (delivering things like Halloween parties or Pride quizzes). It’s a challenging role – so my advice would be to hire well, then give love and time to the people you do hire because I promise you, they’ll radiate that back to the business. The internal comms team are your cheerleaders and are your two-way mirror from the business and to the business – you can’t have people in that role who don’t feel valued. So look after them, recognise them and their skills and use their strengths for the benefit of the team and the business.

My last bit of advice would be to build a strong culture and ethos in the team – but don’t do it for them. Empower them to come up with their own vision and mission statement – who they are, what they stand for and what they’ll do for the business. It’s powerful to see what they come up with – and even more powerful when they smash it out of the park.

Trust me, I speak from experience, and I couldn’t be more proud!

Get in touch

Should you wish to have a confidential chat with Kerry White to discuss the current HR market or your search for work/recruiting into your team, please contact her directly at kwhite@mdhr.co.uk

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