Corporate Communication Policies - Red Tapes or Great Aides.

Dear all,

Happy Chinese New Year to all!

Time flies and this will be my final blog. The experience I had gathered so far has been truly, truly wonderful. More events and happenings have been going on that are keeping me on my toes.

One of which is Barclays Capital internal employee program called "Women Initiative Network" or WiN. This is a great initiative that encourages women in the bank to network and learn together.Of course, men are welcomed. There are sharing sessions such as luncheons with the high fliers as well as self-improvement courses like learning basic self-defence, make-up classes or how to brand yourself. All of these initiatives are geared to improving individual's life skills as well as opportunities to network.

Being new in this initiative, I was tasked to organise an upcoming event- a luncheon with a managing director based in Singapore. I was guided by 2 lovely colleagues and they gave me protocols and what to expect. Brainstorming session went on well until we have to seek Corporate Communication's approval for sending out the invite. One representative from Corporate Communications sharply reprimanded me to "follow the company's template/style" to which I was left speechless.

In a multinational company, I understand the policies in place to standardise communications across to clients, stakeholders, employees and so on. However I think there should be a consideration in the effectiveness of the message, not just on the look and style.

I am still waiting for the invite to be approved and hopefully there will be a greater flexibility in exercising our communication styles in the future.

Regards,

Ginny Chong

14094848

Curtin Singapore

Hello, 你好，Bonjour, नमस्ते (Internal Communications)

Hello everyone.

Have you ever encounter a simple question being "misrepresented"due to cultural differences?

I recalled my very first trip to India whereby I was giving a presentation to a group of local colleagues. After the end of my presentation, I asked if they understood my presentation, and all of them shook their heads. So I repeated the slides and expected them to clearly understand and yet I got the same response when I asked the audience if they understood! Suddenly, it dawned upon me that my nod is the same as the locals shaking their heads.

In the instance as such has already pose such a challenge to a small group of audience, have you ever wonder how does a multinational company or conglomerate deliver key messages to their employees from around the world? What If the CEO is seated in New York, how does he/she address critical issues with his/her staff in Tokyo or Korea for that matter? How does he/she effectively put across that important message without losing the essence in the midst of translation?

During my past four years of working in Barclays Capital, I realised that my company has put in immense amount of effort in reaching out to its employees. Barclays Capital operates in 50 countries with 147,000 employees and to effectively manage its communication is not an easy task. By using the following means, Barcap relentlessly keeps in touch with its employees:

• Intranet
• Email
• Sharepoint site updates
• Quarterly town hall/village halls sessions
• Fortnightly video conferences
• Internal chat forums with moderating (of course!) and option to retain your privacy
• Broadcasting of "live" session with the management at staggered timings
• Webcast for repeated episodes
• All communications to be posted in the above-mentioned channels has to be proof-read and approved by the communications team before being published

Barcap has actively posted news, information, directory finding, phonebook directory in its intranet and employees can customize it by country and the type of information they would like to see. There is a quarterly townhall held in every country by its country management and divisional heads to keep the respective division updated on their strategies ahead. Our CIO (Chief Information Officer) also organises an annual interaction over internal chat system to allow employees of various regions to post questions to him and his management team.

You can see from the listed examples that Barclays engages strongly in technology as the firm stretches its global footprint. Even though technology is highly utilized in Barclays Capital, nothing beats a good pat on the back by your boss for a job well done.

Cheers,

Ginny Chong

14094848

Curtin Singapore

KYC (Know Your Client) - By Ginny Chong, Curtin Singapore

In the investment banking environment, investment advisers are required under regulations to know your client (KYC) in depth. This refers to the detail knowledge that investment advisers should know about their clients such as financial positions, risk appetite, political relationships and investment knowledge in order to protect the firm and the clients. However I believe this should not be just restricted within banking itself.

KYC or know your client is the ultimate advantage that draws you apart from your competitors. Applying it to PR context, it means knowing their risk appetite, financial positions and their PR objectives.

In a recent meeting with a group of clients - healthcare specialists who are keen to review their PR activities to propel their brand further, KYC has imprinted in my mind even more. Prior to the meeting, I was only given the company's acronyms. My objective is to learn the rope and observe how a PR review meeting is about. I tried finding out the name and specialisations through Google, social media avenues and was met with endless permutations which does not seem to work very well.

The day arrived and I arrived the meeting place five minutes earlier than usual and a few of our clients had arrived. Even though I had not met them before, I was fortunate enough to identify them correctly. Breaking the ice was a little tough as they expected me - a representative from my PR firm, to be knowledgeable in my field. Given my limited knowledge about their business, I was tested by them on what I know about their field, area of work, how do I propel their brand forward and why should they use Facebook to reach out to clients?

My mind started racing as I really do not know much about them. But that should never be an excuse to not learn. Slowly I engaged them by sharing my working experience, asking questions about their stakeholders, how long have they been practising their trade and what is their expectation and so on, They also gave me greater insights to their concerns, expectations and financial positions.

Even though I must say it was not an easy task to convince them on the impact of new media, they are starting to understand what social media can do. Similar to investment banking, healthcare practitioners are bound by confidentiality creed and not all social media can be used to promote their company.

All and all, I learned a lot about my very first PR review meeting and am thankful that I had a chance to practice what I had learnt in theory and my working experience from vast industries and apply it. One thing for sure; it is through knowing my clients more in more details, will I be able to render a more effective PR consultancy.

An open-mind goes a long way (Ginny Chong - Singapore)

Greetings everybody!!

I'm Ginny and I'm currently building my PR experience with Flaunt PR & Communications (Flaunt) as well as in my current employer - Barclays Capital (Barcap).

Two weeks back, I was tasked to organise a food-tasting session for one of our clients, The Eastern Restaurant - specializes in authentic Chinese cooking, and identify the right journalists/bloggers to invite. I was really excited initially but only to realize, I am ignorant of who are the prominent food journalists/bloggers!

Even though I was given some contacts to follow up on, most of them were unable to make it due to the festive holidays lurking around the corner. Suddenly I remembered my lecturer from PR Consultancy class had mentioned about getting a copy of the media contact list. Thankfully it came in handy at such crucial moment! Also, I tried keeping myself open-minded when reading newspaper, exploring food blogs and local favourite sites to read up on food reviews and whom the reviewers are.

Even though the food-tasting session did not come through this time round but I was really grateful to one food journalist who had a long list of MUST-DOs which, initially seem rather demanding. However, her being demanding has guided me to rethink on what are the elements of news and information that I can provide for before even approaching a journalist. What I had thought is newsy enough may not really be what the public finds interesting to read about. Keeping an open-mind helps in my learning curve in this exciting industry. Even though the food tasting session has been postponed, I look forward to the next one and will keep you all informed of the outcome!

In the meantime, have a great 2011!!

Best regards,

Ginny Chong

Curtin Singapore