Chris Brennan (00:04)
Welcome to Modern Coms, the podcast series designed to help comms leaders navigate today's hyper speed demands and move forward with clarity, confidence, and impact.

In each episode, we sit down with experts who are shaping the future of internal and corporate comms and unpack the strategies, tools, and mindsets that are driving real results

This podcast is brought to you by Cofenster, the creators of AI video agents built specifically for comms professionals.

So for today's episode, we're exploring one of the biggest challenges facing comms teams leading into 2026, planning for impact, focusing on channels and content. This is actually a follow-up to our latest webinar. So I definitely recommend that you catch the on-demand version if you didn't get a chance to watch it live. Simply visit cofenster.com slash modern comms to access it.

And now for today's guest, communication strategist, author and founder,

of redefining communications, Jenny Field. Jenny, welcome to the show.

Jenni Field (01:04)
Hello, thank you for having

Chris Brennan (01:07)
first up, for those who didn't catch the webinar, could you just give us a quick overview of your work and what you're focused on right now?

Jenni Field (01:13)
Yeah, sure. So at the moment, I focus on helping organisations with their internal communication and leadership credibility, which is nicely aligned when we talk about planning and things for next year, because so much of the work of internal comms is around aligning to what the organisation is trying to achieve. So I spend most of my time working with leadership teams and internal comms professionals, helping them be less chaotic and helping them improve kind of communication and relationships internally.

Chris Brennan (01:43)
wonderful. what are some of the bigger shifts that you're seeing, specifically in how teams are thinking about content and planning?

Jenni Field (01:51)
So I think the biggest stuff I'm seeing and the big conversations I'm having are a lot around what are we going to do if AI is going to take our jobs and we're not going to have to spend all our time creating content. But with that, think where there's been that technology shift with AI, there's been such a lot more chaos thrown into comms teams because now anyone can create content, people can do it much quicker, comms teams can do it quicker.

So people are feeling slightly more chaotic. So that need to have a bit of governance and some of that planning and what are we really here to do and having that time to talk about that, that is the biggest topic I've been having over the last, I would say three to six months with most of the comms teams I'm talking to.

Chris Brennan (02:36)
And it makes sense because what we're seeing from our side as well is that because of AI, the abundance of content is getting pretty out of control. Like the joke in people's private lives and even from marketing is the content slop where like now you can just create just mountains of material. But that's happening with intranets and like internal comms where it's like, we've generated guidelines of this and this and you can find it here. And it's like, wait, wait.

Jenni Field (02:52)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Brennan (03:07)
Are people reading this or is it just nice to create?

Jenni Field (03:08)
And

this is what happens is that that slop that's everywhere, let's be honest, but on intranets for internal comms teams, if they haven't got any sort of governance or planning or strategy or all those bits that we need, people are just creating content and adding it and sending it off anywhere because, well, I can just do it myself now. I don't need to go and ask anybody. And then you just...

you sort of, you know, die a little bit inside as the internal comms person because this always happened. There was always people that were going to go rogue and do their own thing. Now they've got the tools to help them do it in a way that they think is, you know, brilliant. So why wouldn't they? And that just, it just makes it even worse. So I do feel for teams at the moment because it feels like it's just a lot of, a lot of chaos.

Chris Brennan (03:54)
Yeah, and also the demands are also ⁓ equaling the amount of content that they're being created. So from your side, do you have any kind of guidelines or ⁓ best practices for how teams should approach planning for 2026, especially with the topic of the content itself and then the channels and how they distribute it?

Jenni Field (04:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

So if you're looking at content and channels, I think the way I'd always break it down for teams is you might have a content strategy, a channel matrix, and then your kind of projects that you'd be working on as a comms team. If you're looking at your sort of planning and everything for next year, your content has to be aligned to the organisational plan. So if you've got five strategic pillars, one of those pillars might be to increase

increase your footprint in a certain market. So one of your strategic pillars might be we need to grow in the UK. Then what content are you sharing? What's the work that's going on to achieve that strategic pillar? And what's the content then that you need to share about that? So that's your content piece. Then your channels, always do a review of your channels. We talked about this on the masterclass. They need to audit and review your channels to make sure that you're not just adding more in.

but actually are they fit for purpose? Are they doing what you need them to do? And map them out in terms of the frequency, which audience they're going to, what they are. Is it an email? Is it face-to-face? And you can map that out, which is always quite helpful. And then you'll have your projects, which might be things like your listening strategy or your digital workplace or introducing new video tools to help you. All those things that will take your time as a team that don't sit in your

content and channels. So those are the three buckets that I always start with from a kind of strategy planning perspective. And then there are sort of frameworks within that to help you sort of overall make sure that what you're doing is going to have an impact.

Chris Brennan (05:57)
Amazing. ⁓ And then in the webinar, you brought up something called the packet framework. So it's P-A-C-E-C packet. Could you walk us through what a packet is and why that matters?

Jenni Field (06:03)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I

love, everyone says it differently, which I enjoy the most. So it's a framework that was created by Dr. Kevin Ruck. And we talk about it in a report that we co-authored together about the value of internal comms. I call it a PASIC framework. He calls it a paycheck framework. And now we've got a new one. So I love it. Whatever you want to call it. But it stands for performance.

Chris Brennan (06:25)
basic

Jenni Field (06:33)
alignment, culture, engagement and change. And essentially what you're looking at is making sure that as you're planning, you're planning for things that are going to have an impact or an outcome on the organization. So if we take performance, for example, we know there's a strong link between internal communication and higher levels of performance, productivity, service, innovation, all of those things. So if you're planning your internal comms strategy, your content,

your team structure, whatever it is, and you're linking that into performance, then you're able to measure the impact. So because we communicated more about this, this, and this, which is linked to organisational performance, we can see the impact overall and the part that we play. Much the same for alignment. So internal communication is an enabler of alignment. So this is things like the organisational purpose, the vision, getting everybody sort of going in the same direction. That's an outcome.

of good internal communication. The alignment of every employee, that is an outcome. So that's what we're also aiming for. What could you be doing to help people feel that connection to the purpose, the vision, the strategy? The next one is culture. I always say that culture is the tangible, sorry, that internal communication is the tangible representation of culture. And again, this is an outcome.

So if you're looking at how you can use communication to demonstrate culture, make sure people feel like they belong, that's an outcome. And then we've got engagement and then we've got change. So as long as you're linking your activity to those different areas, you'll be able to talk about how you're having an impact that's an impact or how you're having an impact that's an outcome. And that's what you need to be able to demonstrate to show your value. So it's just trying to get you into that

train of thought really that you're communicating for a specific reason and that's the thing that I often talk about, be intentional about your communication and think about the outcome that you're looking for. To what end is one of my favourite phrases when it comes to communication?

Chris Brennan (08:48)
And it makes sense too, because I think maybe a few years ago there was lots of conversation about engagement itself and that that was kind of the point. However, I think now it's more about the engagement is leading to something and then leadership or ⁓ heads of departments can better buy in with the activities for internal comms because it isn't just.

Jenni Field (08:56)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (09:14)
engaging them because that's the intention. It's what is behind the engagement, what's the methodology and what is the end result from these strategies and tactics engaging these employees, right?

Jenni Field (09:20)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well,

exactly, because there has to be something that happens. Even if you're just measuring the number of an engagement survey and you want to see that going up, you know, so what if you go from 36 % to 50%, what does that actually mean for what the organisation is doing? And that's the bit that's around the performance and the alignment really, and the culture, because you've got to be able to link that back in. But you're right, that engagement piece has become

fairly linked to internal communication, which I don't like personally, they're very different things, I won't get on that soapbox today, but it is an outcome, it's one of the outcomes in the model and the framework, and it's an important one for us to consider because it's the one that most often gets measured by leadership teams.

Chris Brennan (10:13)
So what do you say then to ⁓ comms leaders who have the engagement question brought to them? Because it sounds like you're untangling this web that you don't really agree with. So there might be some miscommunication internally from what the role of an internal comms team or professional is. So I imagine they're probably following this track, even though you might not believe that they should even be.

Jenni Field (10:38)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, and that's tricky. So when Kevin and I wrote that report on the value of internal communication, it was a blend of academic work and industry reports over the last sort of 10 to 15 years that we looked at. And there's some academic insight in there about the fact that people are engaged in their role, but they're also engaged in the organization. And they're two different types of engagement.

So I can be very engaged in the role that I'm doing, but I might not be that bothered about the organisational purpose and things like that. That's very common for sort of frontline or deskless workers if they work in a sort of manufacturing specialist kind of area. So if we think about that, internal communication can only impact somebody's engagement with the organisation because that's the alignment piece around organisational values, purpose, things like that.

But even then, that's down to the individual to feel that sense of engagement. And I think putting that onus on anyone is quite a challenge to do. If you're a communicator and you're being tasked with engagement, then I think you've got to ask the questions about what does engagement mean to us here? So always ask those curious questions. Let's define that because you could be also being asked to improve productivity.

I mean, what does that mean in organisations where you're not churning out boxes after boxes on a factory line? So where you've got some of these big words, I always think it's worth clarifying what they mean. The best thing you can do for your function for next year is make sure that you have a purpose for it. If no one's coming to you and saying, we need to improve engagement or we need to do this, even if they are.

It's our job as the internal comms team to define the purpose of our function here and what it's here to do. And everyone's purpose is slightly different, which is the joy of internal comms. But it's worth doing that exercise. Even if you're a team of one, whether you're a team, have that conversation and discussion. So you're really clear what you're there to do.

Chris Brennan (12:38)
Yeah, it's true. I always think that a company's success in general comes down to communication and transparency. It's pretty much always those two aspects of it. Because I can imagine there's scenarios where if you don't define it, then people in different departments, different leadership teams, they all have similar but slightly different ideas of what these things are that we're trying to define. So it's important to just go, hang on, this is what we're saying it is.

Jenni Field (12:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (13:08)
so that we all know what our intentions are, because a lot of times it's like, I thought the engagement was this, I thought the productivity was the end point. whoever's in charge of that is going to fail in somebody's eyes.

Jenni Field (13:13)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah,

and you're right, that similar but different is such a dangerous place to be because you can be saying all the same things but have a very different interpretation of what that actually means as an impact or an outcome. being really clear about it is so important. Similar but different, yeah, bang on.

Chris Brennan (13:38)
Yeah, feel like sometimes we have that in marketing. So like we'll have a marketing team and we all have our responsibilities. And what I like to do is define those responsibilities. Now you should all help each other, but if you know what is expected of you, there's less tasks and objectives fall through the cracks. Cause a lot of times we think somebody else is in charge of that. I thought you were in charge of that. And you're like, so did nobody do that?

Jenni Field (13:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (14:08)
That's why

I just like to define like, look, I'll help you when you need it. But technically this is where the borders of my role start and end. Of course, collaborate as much as possible because it is a shared ⁓ teamwork in the end of the day. So ⁓ when we look at communication, I think what we're also seeing is a modernization of how people ⁓ are communicating.

Jenni Field (14:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

yeah.

Hmm, yeah.

Chris Brennan (14:37)
What we're looking at is people wanting a more modern way of communicating internally. And I think that's because of how ⁓ we communicate or how we consume information in our private lives. So like what I've started seeing, especially with our clients is like there's a growing movement to mirror how people communicate and consume the information outside of work. This is quick updates, short form content, bite-sized video.

Jenni Field (14:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (15:06)
What's your take on this shift and are you seeing that too from the expectations of employees in a company?

Jenni Field (15:14)
Yeah, as you were talking then, it was reminding me about how long I've been in this industry and how many years ago I wrote a white paper on social media and the impact on internal comms, which is going back, God, probably about 15 years, and how there was this expectation of that shift to really come into the workplace. And Yammer was born, which is no longer Yammer, it's Fever Engage, and that was born to mimic Twitter, which is now X.

And I think organisations struggle quite a lot with making that shift. And I think the difference now, if I think about the technology and what's happening, is the different kinds of organisations that exist today that existed maybe 15 years ago. We've got very different technology-based organisations that I think are much more open to doing things differently and not staying confined to the 90-minute town hall that you have to do every month.

And certainly maybe doing that, but doing it in a way that is more interesting and creating clips from it and shareable content that can be shared internally, I think we're starting to see that shift now. And I think we have to because we talk a lot about different generations in the workplace and generational theory is questionable. did a paper on that a few years ago.

And I say it's questionable because you can't blanket everybody to be exactly the same across the whole world based on that generation. But there is that technology impact in generations in terms of people that have just grown up always having their phone in their hand. Whereas I'm lucky enough to remember a fax machine and when the internet arrived. So I think if you've got that, your expectation is so much higher. And whilst my expectation might be that high,

I'm okay with things not being great because I've gone through the fax machine era, whereas that next generation just have very clear expectations of how they want to get content. And I think that has to be addressed.

Chris Brennan (17:17)
I completely agree. It's a big topic and what I've also seen is pushback ⁓ with ⁓ some people internally in comms teams about like how frustrating it can be with Gen Zers, know, and they criticize them for like there's the tropes of lazy, poor attention spans, but honestly, you can look at this as an opportunity to modernize your approach because they're coming in.

Jenni Field (17:36)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (17:43)
And they're questioning everything. And I think it's time that we do question everything. You know, when they come in and go, wait, we're all sitting here for an hour. Yeah. How much of this relates to me? Maybe five minutes, you

Jenni Field (17:45)
Mm.

Yeah

Yeah,

Chris Brennan (17:57)
And they're like, ⁓ what do, and does everybody just pretend to listen? Yeah. Yeah. We just, we all just pretend to listen. And then if somebody asks us, we'll kind of scramble and pretend we have the answer, but really nobody asks us anyway. And so like,

Jenni Field (17:57)
yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (18:12)
They're seeing through their eyes is such an amazing opportunity for us, especially going into 2026 to go, maybe we should change and evolve with the technology and with how we communicate and engage and consume information outside of work and just mirror the two.

Jenni Field (18:32)
Yeah, and also the technology gives us the opportunity to allow people to show up in a way that is comfortable for them. You if I think back all those years ago to my fax machine era, you we had printed magazines and that was fine, but you're very heavily relying on people who can write and then people who can create that content that way. I still remember previous group teams, sort of group comms teams telling me in the UK market,

that every single director had to blog. And I was like, Bob is not gonna blog. Like, he's just not that guy. He's out on the streets with his team. But if I'd have been able to give him a phone and he'd been able to do a short video update, you then he probably would have done that. But that technology wasn't there yet. So I think there's the benefit to the internal comms team of how can we do things differently to make it more engaging and make things shorter and more appealing. But there's also the benefit to the person that has to deliver those messages.

that they have so many different options now that you have to pick one, but they've got at least five or six different ways they could do it. And that, I think, is really exciting from a leadership perspective because it allows people to be much more genuine and much more credible in that leadership position.

Chris Brennan (19:47)
Yeah. So from Co-Fenster's perspective, like we have AI video agents that are helping comms teams modernize their approach to communication. And what we're seeing isn't a replacement. It's just an alternative. So if you, you can still have your 45 minute all hands meeting, it's just, do you do with it afterward? Well, you can use Milo to cut it into segments and clips.

Jenni Field (20:02)
Mmm.

Chris Brennan (20:14)
to like share and disperse with the relevant party. So they may have been there for 45 minutes, but to ensure they get the information they need, you can send them the clip that's relevant to them. And you can use AI video agents to do that for you. So you don't need video experience.

Jenni Field (20:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was just going to say, think this is where doing that audit and review of your channels as you're planning is really helpful when you learn about tools like this, because so often we look at our channels as being on their own. So we look at them as like, that's channel one, that's channel two, that's channel three. Whereas when you start to look at your channels as a sort of ecosystem of channels that can amplify each other, you can start to see how things like the short clips of the all hands.

can be shared on the different platforms. If you're on Microsoft House, for example, you might have the full recording on SharePoint, but you could use Viva Engage and Teams to share the clips to, do you know what I mean? It's like, how do I use my suite of channels as a whole ecosystem of channels to amplify and share and promote, rather than seeing them as being very distinct for different purposes and a bit separate. And I think that...

Chris Brennan (21:13)
Yeah.

Jenni Field (21:25)
If you're not doing that already in comms, that's a real opportunity for 2026 to think of it more in that ecosystem way.

Chris Brennan (21:33)
We're starting to see our clients,

take the summary, get a transcript of the meetings and the sessions, and they create a text to video, like short, punchy, 90 second clip using Theo, our AI video agent who does text to video, and then they put that, they embed it on the internet page at the top. So it's like, you can still have your notes, or you can still have your... ⁓

Jenni Field (21:57)
Mmm.

Chris Brennan (22:01)
your guidelines for a specific page, but you've just supplemented it with like the necessary need to knows in a sharper, dynamic, more modern way. And that's the thing I'm really loving because when we started out, I was like, oh, is it replacing it? And I say, no, no, it's not because you're still going to have some people who will take the time to read it. So it's a cross-generational approach to communication where

Jenni Field (22:12)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (22:29)
Everybody can benefit from a shorter, more succinct statement, but they can still get the larger context. And if you're planning for 2026, it's taking that mindset of it's not one or the other, it's and, that's the approach.

Jenni Field (22:35)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

it's also the technology that's evolved where it's not gonna take me as a comms professional, know, hours of learning how to do, I mean, I've had to go and learn to code to do intranets in the past. And that's where, again, that evolution means that people can just quickly create stuff using tools like Cofenster because it means I don't have to learn how to do all the technical stuff. It's all kind of part and parcel of what you're buying from that service. And I think that...

for cons teams, that's always the bit that gets in the way. Like we don't have very much budget, we don't have very much time, we don't have very many people in the team, you know, there's reason after reason after reason. And I think technology, all technology is helping take away some of those barriers for us. And I think it's exciting to see where our time can then be spent to then help the organisations achieve what they want to achieve.

Chris Brennan (23:33)
And also with the big fear of AI, at least when you look at some of these tools, you can then take ownership over them. So you're not being replaced by AI, you're just involving AI into your workflow, into your day to day, and you become a manager of that particular agent or AI assistant. You know, like that's one thing I really like about AI itself, even for marketing. It's like, no, I don't fear it replacing me. I just look at it going like, I'm going to master this.

Jenni Field (23:40)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (24:03)
new form so I can be more efficient and impactful rather than go, ⁓ what if it does my job? It's like, well, then somebody has to do that. So you should do it, but also evolve with the technology. So if you're planning on maintaining exactly who you are, then potentially you won't be replaced by AI. You'll be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI.

Jenni Field (24:09)
Yeah.

Toasty.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. And that's the risk, isn't

it? If I don't start to play with it and learn how to use it, then someone else is going to come along and be able to do it. So it has to be on that list of skills and development for next year, for sure.

Chris Brennan (24:39)
But then when we audit the channels themselves, are you noticing any formats or any channels that are overused or underused when it comes to internal messaging?

Jenni Field (24:49)
I think we overuse digital channels, I don't say lightly, but I think we have forgotten that we can get together in person. And I know there's more of a cost for that. And I know that sometimes that isn't possible with global workforces. But I think certainly in some places where it is possible to get everybody together, we are relying too much on digital written content and not enough on getting together in person.

or not enough on kind of richer content. I think we're still in that written content mindset. So we'll do an internet article for this and we'll create a page on SharePoint if you're a Microsoft house, know, all of, that's the default solution, I think to a lot of stuff. I don't think we consider all the different ways we could be doing stuff. And I think face-to-face probably needs to come back a little bit just to help with the trust

Chris Brennan (25:44)
That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I completely agree. And it's even nice, you know. ⁓ I remember when weekly all hands, you were in the office with the team and a lot of you would get together if you were in the building. But a lot of that has turned into remote work. so even just feeling connected, feeling like a culture and a company will actually come back with a bit more of the face to face ⁓ engagement too.

Jenni Field (26:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's

that richness that you need to think about. And I was having this conversation with a client the other day where she was saying to me, I'm of internal comms and there's lots of change going on as there is everywhere. She said, I'm struggling to sort of figure out that sort of guiding star. And I said to her, it's all about trust. That's what we're building, rebuilding. So everything has to come down to that. And just I could see that sort of real light bulb moment of, right, okay, so.

I need to make sure that that's what we're trying to achieve. we need to, you know, so we did things like we reduced the slides in the all hands. So it was, there were no slides in fact, in one of the sessions, just so that it was just a real conversation and people talking to each other. And it's, things like that of how can you really think about what is that, what is that big outcome we're looking for and how can our channels help us achieve that? And I think if you can think like that and you can make space for that, then it,

it becomes so much more powerful in terms of that performance impact that you want to measure.

Chris Brennan (27:16)
I love it. my goodness. A lot of times I end up from a marketing side. come in and to leadership and go, we've got to do something with these slides. No one's listening. They're just completely fatigued. And I want you to get your message across. Like marketing isn't pre-sales. This is the thing I have to tell sales a lot. Like marketing is communicating the value we bring to potential customers. And so what we're having a problem with internally is you think your message is landing because you said it.

Jenni Field (27:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (27:45)
but I don't think anybody heard it. And so what's the point in saying it, which is so important. So I completely agree with that. And in fact, I've started seeing that people are experimenting with evolving the, let's say leadership update into a podcast format where somebody talks to them, it's question and answer is conversational. like that point, again, it's what we watch outside of work. And then you step taking that approach into a conversation.

Jenni Field (27:59)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (28:14)
People will engage more, they'll actually listen for longer because they're not being talked at. If somebody asking contextual questions with natural follow-ups and the amount of information that's being absorbed is amazing. So it's a really cool idea.

Jenni Field (28:17)
Yeah?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. But, and

it's such a different skill. Like if the internal communicator is hosting that and having that conversation.

that's a skill to develop. I don't think we think about that enough sometimes in terms of, you know, we all know a good podcast host, a good interviewer, you know, or the good journalists. We know those people in whatever medium we're listening or watching. That has to be a skill that internal comms teams need to develop because if that's going to come in, in terms of podcasts or little clips or interviews, it's not something that everybody can maybe naturally do. And I think we have to invest in some of these sort of different sideways skills for comms.

to help us bring this content to life in video and podcasts of different formats that again isn't that default to I'm just going to write something on the internet where we're very comfortable. It's a very different skill.

Chris Brennan (29:20)
Yes, and even like for myself personally, ⁓ if people can't tell I'm quite talkative, I'm quite outgoing. So the idea of me being the interviewer was a challenge. I was like, I have to train myself to not leap in to every single point and go, let me give you my two cents, you know? But it's a skillset that I'm open to learning. So I do meet people who say, I can't do it. And I just don't like that attitude fundamentally, especially for adults. Like I'm trying to...

Jenni Field (29:30)
Yeah. ⁓

Mmm. Yeah!

Yeah.

Mmm.

Chris Brennan (29:48)
help my kids with this, but it's like, no, you can upskill. in fact, this is the moment when there's so much friction and chaos and evolution, like that you should be looking at these opportunities. What an amazing thing to do to actually become the host of your internal podcast. And now you're getting face value. You're showing everybody legitimate impact because you're the one navigating the questions and kind of curating how it goes. And then if you pair that with

Jenni Field (29:50)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (30:18)
AI video agents, you can control the edit and the release as well. So now you're taking the role, evolved with it, and made yourself irreplaceable, which I think is a major issue people are having right now.

Jenni Field (30:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah,

love that. Love how you've just pulled all of that together for people. That's really helpful.

Chris Brennan (30:37)
Yeah,

so looking ahead, there's something we're talking about in CoFenster. And it's kind of, from my marketing brain too, where if I join a company, one of the first things I want to do is understand the audience. So I've been asking a lot of people, especially in these podcasts, but even just in my one-to-one conversations with comms leaders about like, when's the last time they've actually created like an employee persona or do they have employee personas?

Jenni Field (30:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (31:06)
So I'd love to get your take on the concept of the importance of having ⁓ really fleshed out employee personas. And if it's important now to update them from what I've heard is people, we did it in 2016. I'm like, okay.

Jenni Field (31:21)
wow. Yes.

Interesting. So I see I've probably only seen personas a couple of times in my whole career. I've seen them at client. I saw them at a client event where they had the audience personas around the room. was a sort of global cons meeting. And we created some with a client where we ended up looking at their employee value proposition and and we looked at personas for them. I'd I definitely think you need to do it.

Chris Brennan (31:30)
Okay.

Jenni Field (31:49)
after Covid if you haven't done it. So I think if it's more than five years old, you need to do it again. And I'd probably refresh it every three to five years just because of that change of people that are coming into the workplace and expectations. I think there are different ways to do it. And I think what puts people off is that people think it's a huge task to do personas, whereas I think you can do it in lots of different ways. I think you can use AI to help you. I think you can create them and then validate them with staff. I think there's lots of different ways. So.

I think we need them, but I wouldn't get hung up on them being the really big project that's going take you months and months and months to do. I think you could do it in a couple of months.

Chris Brennan (32:32)
That makes sense. And yeah, it's something that we really enjoy exploring because my take on it is the people who are doing them are learning really impactful lessons about like, oh, we're

like it's 2010 and everybody else is like, we're in 2025. And the impact we're going to have once we realize this is the layout of

Jenni Field (32:50)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (33:01)
how employees prefer to be engaged or to prefer to learn will reverberate through your channels. So going into 2026, it's such a refreshing topic to go. Well, what the first thing I would do if I was tasked with this would be, well, how best does my audience want to be engaged? How best do I communicate with them? Well, there's one clean way to figure that out. You ask them and you build employee personas based on that.

Jenni Field (33:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it's, it's even if you don't do personas, there's something about just knowing who your employees are. And every time I've asked that of internal comms people, whenever we've done any research projects around despise workers or things like that, and we ask the comms team, like how many of your employees work from home? How many are high? And the lack of knowledge from that comms team is always a surprise to me because I think there should be that

there should be some knowledge around where your employees are and a bit of that demographic information as well. And I know sometimes that's hard to get, but I think if you can't do a persona for whatever reason, then get that information. Like, where are they? Get that demographic information and start with that as at least some data to kind of help inform you about where people are.

Chris Brennan (34:16)
Yeah, and clearly again, back to marketing, it makes sense because I see one of the biggest issues marketers have is they spend the time talking about themselves rather than speaking to their audience. So you'll see this a lot on a website of we're the number one this. And it's like that message for the audience watching that means that makes them go, well, good for you. You like you're the number one, good for you. So that's why it's like you need to communicate about the

Jenni Field (34:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, well done!

Chris Brennan (34:45)
who's reading it, they need to be the protagonist of the message. And so for comms teams in 2026, it's important to understand your audience because they should be the protagonist of your message. So it isn't, this is information we want to send, is this is information you need to know. And it does seem similar, but like we said before, it's similar but different. And we need to get a very clear concept of who they are and how we communicate so that our message

Jenni Field (34:48)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes, different.

Chris Brennan (35:14)
lands because that's the intention of communication after all.

Jenni Field (35:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, yeah. ⁓ absolutely,

yeah. Similar but different is definitely the phrase of this podcast conversation.

Chris Brennan (35:23)
I think so. All

right. So let's say someone's planning for 2026 and there's just one thing that they really need to ensure they prioritize. ⁓ What do you think that should be? Of course, we know that there's a lot of other things, but to distill it into like one thing that maybe doesn't get enough attention, what should be like first and foremost on their agenda?

Jenni Field (35:45)
So just for planning, I think the first thing that should be on their agenda for planning for next year would be a bit of an audit. I think that's where you've got to, I think you've to know where you are. And I think that it's easy to just go straight into what are the plans for next year, but I think you've got to have some understanding of where things are now. And again, it doesn't, I say audit and people all think, that's going to take ages. You can do it in a couple of weeks. doesn't, you you doesn't have to be. ⁓

a six month programme, you can do things quite quickly and I think spending some time to see where you are, to plan next year, to then measure your achievement is the big thing. I think we don't spend enough time thinking about what does success look like and how are we going to measure that and I think if you don't know where you are it makes that task very difficult.

Chris Brennan (36:34)
That makes perfect sense. And in fact, if you want to learn more about auditing, we actually have that covered in our master class, which there's an on-demand version on the Co-fenster website. So I recommend everybody listening and watching to go directly to that and check it out. You can download it or you can watch it. And when you sign up, in the actual webinar in the master class, we refer to a variety of different resources that we give to attendees.

And I have it set that if you sign up, you're gonna get the email with those free resources as well to help you plan 2026. So Jenny, I think that's a wrap on today's episode.

Jenni Field (37:15)
We

could just keep going for ages, couldn't we? This is the problem when we get together.

Chris Brennan (37:20)
Well, I mean, in that master class, it ended up being a 45 minute Q &A. I was like, wow, these questions keep coming. It turned into a second webinar.

Jenni Field (37:25)
Yeah, I know.

It was good fun though, was really good fun.

Chris Brennan (37:33)
That was amazing, yeah. So that's a wrap on today's episode. Jenny, thank you so much for joining me today. ⁓ It's been a really fun conversation and lots of really nice insights, especially as we launch straight into Q1. We're barreling towards it right now. And for everybody else listening, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. If you wanna hear more, I definitely recommend you check us out on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.

where YouTube will actually have the video version of this. So if you've listened on a different platform, leap over to YouTube and you'll actually catch the episode there itself. All right, everyone else, thank you so much. My name is Chris Brennan and I'll catch you for another episode of Modern Coms. Take care.

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