When the Essex Partner's Group began developing its vision for the Future of Essex the council knew its corporate story needed to reflect the wider ambitions for the place. Head of Communications Andy Allsopp, explains how the communications team worked together with partners across the council and the wider Essex Partners Group to ensure consistency while making sure the council’s corporate narrative stood alone as an engaging story. This case study forms part of our corporate narrative resource.
Although Essex County Council had always had a corporate narrative, by the end of 2016 it was in need of a refresh. Our previous narrative had focused on embracing innovation to meet the challenges facing us between 2012 and 2016, but as we headed into a new chapter, we needed a new story that reflected the changes we needed to make in the future, specifically around encouraging and supporting growth and making the area a great place to live and work.
At the same time that we were beginning to think about this, the Essex Partner Group had commissioned some research into the top twenty challenges facing Essex as a place. The results of that survey showed that similar ideas of growth, community wellbeing, housing and employment opportunities were challenges for Essex as a place, not just the council. The Partners Group responded to that research by starting work to develop an Essex-wide place brand and vision and we decided to align our organisational strategy and corporate narrative with that so our audiences and communities could understand our organisational activities and decisions within the wider context of our ambitions for Essex. We wanted people to see the council working to achieve the ideas set out in that vision, but also be clear about what the council would be responsible for and what would be the remit of other partners.
The solution
We began by arranging fortnightly meetings between the communications team and the transformation team who were overseeing the Essex Partner’s Vision for Essex project. Timetabling regular, face-to-face meetings meant that we were able to keep up to date with the insight coming out of the Essex Partner’s Group consultations, savings the council’s communications team the cost and time of running our own engagement and consultation activities. This regular flow of information meant that we were able to get a better understanding of the issues that mattered most to local people, helping us to make sure that when we began crafting our organisational priorities they reflected the issues that our communities wanted us to focus on.
We also looked closely at the language that was being used to develop the Vision for Essex place brand to make sure that our vocabulary and style was sympathetic to that. We wanted to develop an organisational strategy that complemented the language of the place brand so we used the Essex Partner Group’s strong messages of change being unstoppable to nuance our own organisational messaging about the need to respond to changes in technology by investing in more digital opportunities, or changing our town centres to attract more businesses into the area. We also reflected the place brand’s desire for everyone in Essex to enjoy life long into old age to help craft our organisational priority of ‘help people to get the best start and age well’.
We have also made sure that when we have communicated our organisational strategy to our different audiences we have included a contextual reference to the wider Vision for Essex place brand work. Although they are separate pieces of work they provide a clear link between the council’s daily activity with what we are trying to achieve as an organisation and the needs and aspirations of our communities. For our internal audiences we have explained this by illustrating a golden thread between the Vision for Essex place brand and the organisational strategy when we have presented the organisational strategy at our Big Conversation events or through our Yammer activity. This has helped our employees actually see how they link together. For our external audiences, we have launched a series of proactive media opportunities, briefings and blog posts which explicitly reference how the council’s decisions and activities reflect the wider ambitions we have for Essex as a place.
The impact
As a result of working in this more collaborative way we now have an organisational strategy with four very clear strategic aims that all complement the priorities for Essex as a place. They are: enable inclusive economic growth, help people get the best start and age well, help create great places to grow, live and work and transform the council to achieve more with less. Crucially, each of these priorities are also objectives that will shape how we operate as a council, from how we spend public money to the policies we propose and the decisions we take. Woking with the transformation team to review our language and style has helped us to make sure that we’re on message with what our partners are saying and with what we’re hoping to achieve for Essex as a place, whilst also showing what we as Essex County Council will be doing at an organisational level to achieve that. Communicating how these two pieces of work interrelated has also helped to reduce confusion about what these two pieces of work are and has made it clearer for our internal and external audiences that they are separate but complementary activities.
Why it worked / how we’re sustaining it
Key to the success of this way of working has been the face-to-face meetings between the communications team and the transformation team. Instigating this regular contact allowed us to ask questions, nuance messages and plan the launch of our organisational strategy and the vision for Essex in timely, coordinated ways. Although the organisational strategy launched first, we were still able to talk about the context of the wider vision for Essex work and we will continue to keep promoting both in our internal and external messaging.
Lessons learned
The biggest lesson has undoubtedly been how beneficial having both a place brand and a corporate narrative actually is. Crafting ambitious, wide-reaching stories through an effective place brand articulates what you want for your communities and your area, while developing a complementary organisational strategy and corporate narrative helps you to explain how the council will be working to support that ambition. Giving these messages through stories is much more engaging than through policies and helps different audiences to see what the end goal actually is, and helps us to develop ongoing communications that reinforce the reasons why we are taking the decisions that we are or working in new ways.
Want to know more?
For more information please contact Andy Allsop, Head of Communications at Essex County Council.