Kathryn:           Hi everyone. We are joined today by Sue Clarkson. She’s the MD of Coach House Communications. Hi Sue. Hi Roy.

Sue:                  Hi, both. Good to be here.

Roy:                 Hi,

Kathryn:           Lovely to have you. Today we are gonna be focusing and, uh, discussing the case for helping small, medium size enterprises on really sort of like trying to get to grips with the foundations of employee wellbeing. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. [00:00:30] So we, we are filming a little bit outta sync at the moment, and usually everybody, we usually record on a Monday, but we’re recording on a Friday today. So I get to ask the lovely question, Do you both have plans for the weekend? I know this is a really short episode. Every once an in between he starts, it’s gonna be between 20, 30 minutes. Um, but very quickly, do you have any nice plans?

Sue:                  Um, I I, I [00:01:00] don’t really have any plans as yet. I will no doubt, will no doubt be dictated by my children who are at that age where they require running around from one place to another. I generally am a taxi from my kids on a weekend these days. That’s a sad state of affairs.

Kathryn:           Absolutely.

Roy:                 Uh, yes. Uh, no, just do nothing. That’s my favorite things that weekends, so, Uh,

Kathryn:           Oh, that sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. I have, um, I have a and the kids, they’ve all signed up for like an internal ninja [00:01:30] warrior course at a place neighbor. It does. I didn’t sign myself up for it. I have to say, I’m, I’m the person with, I’m, I’m looking after the bags. That’s my excuse. I need to look after the bags

Roy:                 And

Kathryn:           The, and no, the dog’s gonna be with grandma. Don’t tell him I’m going, He’ll, he’ll be, you’ll know. He’ll sense that he’s right next to me. I’ll get told off. So, uh, let’s get into things then. So Sue, tell us a little bit about yourself and why employee wellbeing is such a topic of interest for you.

Sue:                  Okay. So, [00:02:00] um, I kind of fell into this world, like, like most people in the financial services industry. I, um, I did degree in English many, many moons ago now, and just decided at the end of that, Oh, okay, I can, I can write, so maybe I should be a journalist. So then I moved from the north. I was lured by the Bright Lights of London to come down south, and, um, I think I was hoping for Vogue and I ended up on Financial Advisor <laugh>. It’s not quite the same, but I’m not complaining [00:02:30] because it was a, an amazing training ground. Um, I worked with some great people, a lot of whom went on to work on the Nationals, and it was, yeah, it was a great experience. And I went from there to money management working for Janet Walford, who’s the editor of Money Management for many, many years.

Sue:                  She’s like the queen of financial services journalism. And again, it was a great training ground because, um, she insisted that all her writers, um, in order to ensure credibility with the audience, had to do the financial [00:03:00] planning certificate. So I, I studied for that while I was a journalist there, and we did some massive analytical pieces that were picked up by the Nationals. Um, I was an editor of health Insurance and Protection, and then I went into senior corporate comms roles for, uh, Guessings and employee benefits consultancy, Simply Health and then Buer. So I’ve always kind of worked in the, um, touched on the employee benefits world, but maybe worked it more so over recent years, but always [00:03:30] in the area of health and wellbeing. And it’s just an area that fascinates me. I think, you know, it’s something that we all have, we can all associate with, and I just find the human body amazing. It’s very robust and very fragile at the same time, and it’s, it’s just, yeah, I, I find it fascinating area. And obviously wellbeing now these days is such a, a big topic, but an also very complex topic. We’ll come onto that in a moment, <laugh>,

Roy:                 That, that’s a fantastic array of different places that [00:04:00] you’ve worked and, uh, uh, um, you know, and obviously, you know, combin an a PR side of things. So, uh, you must have had, uh, some broad experience. How how’s that helped, you know, make your decision as to as to your new venture you’re just about to about?

Sue:                  Yeah, so when I worked in house in corporate coms departments, I covered all areas of coms. So PR but also public affairs, corporate social responsibility and internal coms. But [00:04:30] in those days, internal coms was like the, the post box for the organization. A load of money was always spent on the external comms side of things by big companies, but internal coms were maybe just one, one or two people maximum. Um, and, you know, they’d generally be fire firefighting issues for senior management or, um, managing the internet. It wasn’t the kind of, um, profession it is today. And, um, I suppose I’ve been working for myself for the past 12 [00:05:00] years, and mainly my business has grown organically. It’s grown through all the ex colleagues and contacts that I’ve met throughout the years, coming to me and just asking me to, to do various jobs, which is amazing.

Sue:                  It’s, I’m very lucky to have had that. Um, but it means that I’ve probably, it, it means that I’ve never steered it myself, and I’ve got to a stage now where I would like to steer things. And I’ve noticed over recent years that, um, that HR [00:05:30] workload and pressure on business owners has been ever increasing to do things that arguably don’t sit in their skillset. Things like culture, engagement, communication, all of these things are interlinked and coms has a big role in creating the conditions for culture and engagement. Um, but on the subject of, of communicating wellbeing, benefits and services, I noticed a few years ago now, there was loads in the media, probably some of it goes written by me to be fair, around how HR needed to communicate well being better. But what does, I [00:06:00] don’t, what does that mean? It seems to end up being translated into communicating more and more, especially via digital channels, things like dedicated benefits platforms and the massive array of employee engagement or experience platforms that are out there now.

Sue:                  And arguably this has led to massive overwhelm, a lack of understanding because all that information doesn’t necessarily translate into understanding. And meanwhile, issues like work, work related stress and burnout were ever increasing. You know, I saw some research earlier this [00:06:30] year that around two fifths of UK workers, um, agreed with a statement that in the past six months they’ve felt under constant strain at work. And when you look at that by 16 to 24 year olds, it increases to almost half. And you know, a lot of this is probably exacerbated by new ways of working. Now it’s great for some but not others. And, uh, work life balance is suffering for, for some people answering emails out of work hours. I’m sure we all experience that. So with all of this in mind, I wanted to look at how communication [00:07:00] within companies can a better connect with employees to get around this problem of overwhelm, and b, to help create the foundations of wellbeing, the trust, respect and motivation through control and having autonomy around your own work.

Sue:                  And with my external comms hat on, all of this impacts on corporate reputation because, you know, you can say what you like in PR and marketing, and up until a number of years ago, they were the main channels an organization had. [00:07:30] But unless, you know, you can say all of that, but unless the employees are actually living it, then trust in that brand is going to suffer massively. And people trust the views of their peers. You see it with Amazon reviews and Glassdoor and Indeed and all those kind of things. People trust what the, um, actual employees of a company have to say about it.

Roy:                 Do you also recognize, uh, you know, so I see on a daily basis that obviously the UK’s dominated by companies that have 10 people and less. And and obviously sometimes the resource or the HR person is often, you [00:08:00] know, Hannah age 20 from accounts who’s been given this as a task to do with little no experience. Um, um, and, and, and we’ve got, you know, a proliferation of, of new companies that are opening up, which, which is good news post covid, but the challenges that the, there simply isn’t that experience to deal with, uh, you know, some of, some of these subject matters.

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. And in those very small companies, you generally, they’ve been built by an entrepreneur who’s wearing countless hats and perhaps [00:08:30] isn’t, you know, generally wellbeing is, is led by that person at the top because, um, you know, they set the tone, they role model healthy behaviors in, in theory, but entrepreneurs are wearing lots of hats and they’re, um, working long hours and it probably doesn’t translate into a very healthy workplace for their people. And yes, you, you do, you just don’t, small companies just don’t have the help to help with all of that.

Kathryn:           You have been doing quite a bit of research as well, haven’t [00:09:00] you sue? Um, especially in stuff like small to medium enterprises of say, I think it was about 10 to 250 employees, generally that’s what you were looking at. That’s right. Um, on, sorry, on behalf of one of your clients, uh, the legal and general group protection side, what were you, what were your findings from this?

Sue:                  Yeah, so, um, the legal and general carry out what’s called a Wellbeing at Work Barometer each year. We’ve just done the, um, second round of that this year. Um, one of the top findings is that two in five, um, [00:09:30] SME employers already speak with a financial advisor about employee benefits. So good news and even better news is that a similar number don’t currently, but will consider it valuable. So that kind of goes against the idea that, um, all SMEs want to want to go direct. It’s great news that, you know, SMEs see the value in speaking with an advisor. And you know, from everything I’ve just been saying about wellbeing, you can understand why because it’s a really complex area. Um, we also found that the top stressor right now for [00:10:00] SME employers is employee health and wellbeing. Um, this came ahead of things that you might expect to be more stressors, things like workload recruitment, managing dispersed teams, hybrid work in that kind of thing.

Sue:                  And maybe you, we’d have to delve deeper to find out why that is the case, but maybe it’s pandemic induced. I think there was a realization by a lot of companies during the pandemic that, uh, health can bring everything to a standstill. Um, we also asked SMEs [00:10:30] how they’d like help from the insurance industry and by that women advisors and insurers and TOP was helped to design a program that integrates benefits with wellbeing initiatives. And when we prob further to us what would better help them with this integration piece, customized communication came out top. And there are, this public explains why a lot of the big employee benefit consultants, these have been ramping up their employee coms expertise in recent years, even buying internal comms [00:11:00] consultancies in some cases.

Roy:                 But that’s great for the bigger guys. Uh, is there a challenge for the smaller iffa to learn that skillset? Because obviously one of the problems you have is that the bigger EBS we all do respect to them, don’t tend to look at companies of 10 and 20 people. Is there, is there, is there a sort of gap in the market for, for companies the size of, you know, Catherine’s and Eyes and similar peers to, to to, you know, to train themselves up and, and help in this space?

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. And I know absolutely [00:11:30] recognition that the fact that you’ve got enough to do keeping on top of the day job and, uh, new rules and regulations and consumer duty, for example, um, without becoming comms experts. But things like consumer duty, I’d say loops into all of this as well, because that’s, a lot of that is about communicating in a way that connects with your audience, isn’t it? So there, you know, there are implications there as well. But yeah, there are things that you can do, I think, um, and it doesn’t have to be just putting in place a [00:12:00] digital platform. I think that has been seen as the answer to comms in the past. But like I’ve just said, you know, that there are notifications flying around all over the place, <laugh>, people are just overwhelmed and, and information doesn’t necessarily translate into understanding.

Sue:                  I’ve, I’ve been doing a, um, because I wanted to get to know more about the whole world of internal comms and where it’s gone strategically. I’m, I’m doing a master’s at the moment in internal comms management and [00:12:30] it’s been fascinating and you learn through this that comms is about much more than just passing on information from the top down. It’s about creating cultures, it’s about helping leaders, role model, um, and yeah, and, and, and influencing behaviors and, uh, within organization. So there’s a, there’s a lot more to it, but like I say, you can’t, you’ve got enough to do without doing all of that. So, [00:13:00] um, what legal in general asked me to do on the back of this research was to help them design and deliver to clients and intermediary partners. Two things to support the aspects I described earlier. So a better connecting with employees and b, helping create the foundations of wellbeing, the trust and respect and all those good things.

Sue:                  So to better connect with employees, I’ve come up with a step by step guide designing a customized or otherwise known as personalized whatever, wherever you [00:13:30] want to term it, uh, communication program to support well strategy. And that looks at better targeting messages and channels, not just your digital channel. There’s a whole host of channels to communicate with people in a workplace and face to face being keyword wherever possible. But, um, yeah, that looks at better targeting messages and channels to audiences, but also in crucially hardwiring everything to overall business strategy. Cause of course for wellbeing to be really effective, [00:14:00] it has to sit in the boardroom, doesn’t it? Yeah. Second, Sorry, Sorry, go on. Why?

Roy:                 No, no, no. I was just say, you know, I’ve had a couple of live examples that this week with, with employers, uh, challenged with exactly what you just said. It’s all very well having a digital platform, but unless someone can deliver it and also translate it, I think, uh, sometimes these platforms are almost a waste of time, um, because you need the buy in, but you also need the interpretation of those platforms. And one of the things that we’re asked regularly [00:14:30] is, you know, what’s the sort of things on this platform that we should be getting in front of our staff? What should we be pushing? And, and you, you, you’re right, the culture needs a bit the top to encourage people go in and look at, you know, various articles on, you know, cost living. Is, is argu the most just saying it’s, it’s on platform somewhere, It’s just, it’s just not good enough, is it?

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, what’s, what’s driving all of this is that we’ve shifted from a, from looking at this from an insurance [00:15:00] perspective, we, we’ve shifted from this world of just fixing things when they go wrong and not giving it a second thought and moving on to needing to look at those underlying factors. Now, okay, what’s causing the problem? And I think as, as insurers, advisors, as communicators in this sector, we all need to be looking at that now, you know, what, what are the foundations of wellbeing? Cuz you get those rights and then all the benefits and services and everything else on top of those foundations is gonna bring best [00:15:30] value to people and to business,

Roy:                 Which is why I would argue that early intervention services are so, uh, important to explain to people and, and you know, uh, shout out to legal in general because obviously they’re one of the first companies to, you know, to actively uh, bring these in, encourage them. When you explain early intervention services to, to smaller companies, uh, it’s, it’s music to ears because, you know, the great fear with, uh, with mental health, it clearly is, is having the expertise to recognize someone within your firm that’s maybe struggling and how do you [00:16:00] deal with it? You know, that the insurer can step in and and take those reigns pretty much on day one, I think is is is very welcome to, uh, to, to companies and, and sometimes they don’t get the link between the insurance company and that occurring. And I think as an industry, uh, you know, uh, we need to, we need to, to tell these stories more. And, and, and you know, you you, you’d expect me to say seven families again and I, I don’t, I don’t apologize for it. You know, the genius of that was telling these stories. I think we should be telling early intervention stories to [00:16:30] employers, you know, real life ones, but is is what I’m loading to.

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. And that is perfectly timed. Um, comment there Roy, cause I’m about to come on storytelling <laugh>. So I’ve gone through the, the two things I’ve been designing for lng. So one of them was a, a comms toolkit to better connect with people. The other is about creating the foundation. So I’ve designed and produced a podcast series, um, called Better Wellbeing. This has been really stressful to be entirely honest. Not <laugh>, just, just because [00:17:00] podcasting is something that I’ve never done before. Um, and I’m naturally an introvert. So this, this today is quite stressful. But anyway, enough about me. Uh, so,

Roy:                 But you’re, I think you’re a natural. So to be honest,

Sue:                  <laugh>, I don’t really, so anyway, part of podcast series, there are just six 15 minute episodes, so it’s really, really quick, not too onerous. And I look at, in the first three, I look at the foundations of Wellbeing and [00:17:30] the first one is about how storytelling is a social wellbeing superpower. And I love storytelling. I love doing that particular podcast cuz as you just said, Roy, a big part of better connecting with employees is using stories. And I look at how to obtain and use stories in the toolkit I just mentioned. Um, and yeah, you mentioned seven Families. Um, it harks back to the success of the Seven Families Campaign. You know, we all connected with, with Tracy Clark for example, and her, her Battle with Blindness [00:18:00] and the massive difference that income protection made stories that connect with us an unconscious level. And, um, during my masters I’ve been, I’ve been even learning about storytelling. There’s an unconscious, um, thing behind, there’s this high behind this that I won’t boy with now, but suffice to say there’s instinctive reasons why we all love a good story.

Roy:                 So would you, would you give a shout out to insurers here? Um, you know, all insurers that many of them listen listening to this, uh, that on the corporate level they [00:18:30] should be coming forward and, and telling us stories and, and enabling the Iffa community to, to take those stories out, you know, to, to tell to our customers. So, you know, sort of plea here to, you know, please come forward as many as you can.

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. Um, stories are, are incredibly powerful, more powerful than any kind of brochure flyer. Um, and there are lots of applications or stories across all different types of comms, [00:19:00] pr marketing to employee comms. So yeah, absolutely, I would, I would say that. Yeah. So the next step episode I look at is on leadership communication. And as I said, early leaders have a massive role in setting the tone for wellbeing in an organization. I look at how leadership comes are the, is the key to new ways of working success. Um, again, this is about getting the foundations right, building trust and all the good things that come with trust in terms of motivation, collaboration, productivity. [00:19:30] Um, I also look at why culture is essential to holistic and measurable wellbeing. And th this brings the storytelling and the leadership comes together and it looks at, uh, I’ve that and other aspects of, of getting the foundations right so that benefit services initiatives have a much better chance of being valued by employees and valuable to the business.

Sue:                  Um, I also, as part of this series interview a couple of SME owners and like you were just saying, Roy, you know, these, these are about, you [00:20:00] work with a lot of, uh, companies with around about 10 employees or, or more. These were both companies with 30 to 40 employees, um, built by entrepreneurs who are, uh, working their socks off and have always worked their socks off. But when you get to that kind of number of employees, they need to take a step back and think about what kind of tone are they setting for the organization and how are they ensuring inclusivity, uh, motivation, et cetera, et cetera. All those foundational [00:20:30] stuff they’ve just been talking about. I also interview, uh, the co-founder of a charity called Minds at Work. Um, this provides mental health and wellbeing support to SME leaders. It kind of helps leaders like those entrepreneurs within small businesses just take a step back and look at their own wellbeing, their own needs, so that they’re better able to, um, motivate and, and set the tone when they go back into organizations.

Sue:                  I’m also helping legal and general, General [00:21:00] run a competition to give two SMEs the chance to win a day’s internal coms consultancy with, with more <laugh>. So hopefully people will enter. Um, this includes a review and follow up report with lots of practical actions and recommendations. And it can be about anything. Um, it’s internal comms consultancy, so it could cover an aspect of wellbeing that’s proven tricky. It could be about leadership comms, it could be to do with culture. Um, but yeah, absolutely [00:21:30] anything. And it’s open to companies with a minimum of 50 employees purely because, um, with smaller than that there’s a lot to be said for the, the leader and the line managers, um, creating those conditions. I’m not sure internal comms consultants who could have as much of an effect if it’s not, um, 50 plus. Um, so to find out more about that, can I mention the url?

Roy:                 Of course you [00:22:00] can

Sue:                  Here to find out more, go to ww.legal and general.com/better Wellbeing competition. And that’s got the competition, the podcast series and the toolkit on there. So please encourage your clients to enter or even enter your own business if you’re a small, um, iffa enter your own business.

Roy:                 So the other thing, um, the other thing that I would say here that I just keep hearing for this whole interview is an encouragement from you for [00:22:30] smaller RFAs that maybe have dabbled in the, in the corporate market to get to get into it, you know, with, with with two feet. Um, you know, I think the opportunities here are are enormous. We’ve suddenly got open doors in a way we’ve never had before. Employers, it sounds from, from We Research are seeking out iffa, you know, you are two in five staff. Yeah. So, you know, this is an under service market and to, to many people listening into this podcast, uh, maybe they should, uh, reexamine their, you know, cause there’s, there’s not enough of us, uh, do it doing corporate. But yeah, we’ve just, we’ve just exposed [00:23:00] the fact that the market is is is humongous.

Sue:                  Yeah, absolutely. You know, that going back to that stat that the biggest stressor for small to medium size companies is employee health and wellbeing. They want to talk to Iffa, they’re either talking or want to talk to Iffa. So yeah, the, the time is is really ripe. And also, you know, I think back to some research that Grid the industry body did maybe three or four years ago now, um, amongst SMEs. And that looked at the fact that [00:23:30] SMEs more than their larger company counterparts really, really value the added value aspects of grouping and protection. Because for them it’s not really about the claim, it’s about, um, creating reputation. It’s about recruitment and retention and, and motivation and all those foundational things that I’ve just been talking about more. I think for SMEs, I think they recognize this than the larger clients. So there absolutely is the opportunity, but it’s about connecting [00:24:00] with those SME needs and putting wellbeing in a much wider context than it probably has been in the past. I like to think of it as been a bit Jerry McGuire rest. Do you ever watch Jerry McGuire now showed me the money? Do you

Roy:                 That’s too young for Jerry McGuire?

Sue:                  Well, for anyone, for

Roy:                 Anyone probably knows Harry McGuire rather than Jerry

Sue:                  Don’s a sport. It’s a great film with Tom Cruise.

Kathryn:           I know about it.

Sue:                  And

Roy:                 [00:24:30] It wasn’t in black and white before you insult me. So,

Kathryn:           No, my kids asked me once I think if I in black and white. I was like, How dare you?

Sue:                  It’s such a good movie. And he’s a, he’s a sports booker, would you say? He’s a, he’s a, he is a sports star mo and uh, he has an epiphany, you know, he works in this big company. It’s just about making money and making money and more clients, more clients. He has this epiphany and he decides to write [00:25:00] a mission statement, which is all about fewer clients, less money, more attention. And I think for workplace wellbeing, I like to think it’s about fewer coms, less overwhelmed, more value

Kathryn:           <laugh>. That sounds brilliant. What a perfect way to to end that on that sounds great. And obviously the podcast series, I mean 15 minutes, you know, six 15 minute session sounds great and the competition sounds really, really good as well. And um, and why wouldn’t you go for it? I always say to people as well that, I dunno if you buy Northern Blood in me. Um, but essentially if there’s something [00:25:30] and I can try and win it, I’m going for it. That’s it. It’s just like, give it to me for free. I love it. Thank you.

Sue:                  Hello northern in here. Absolutely.

Kathryn:           Well thank you, um, for listening to everybody and thank you Sue for coming on and sharing those insights as well. I have to say as well, I was really loved the idea of the storytelling side of things. Cause when I was at university, that was a good part of, um, stuff that I did for quite a while, which I think is incredible. Uh, next time we are gonna be back with a desia from Contact State and he’s gonna be talking about, uh, lead generation consumer consent online and the consumer duty principle that’s [00:26:00] gonna be really, really coming up over the next year while, so that we need to prepare for, if you’d like a reminder the next episode, please drop me a message on social media. Visit the website, Practical Height and protection dot code uk. And don’t forget that if you’ve listened to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on the website too. Thanks to our sponsors, Okta members. Thank you Roy. Thank you Sue.

Sue:                  Thank you. Thanks for having me. See,

Roy:                 See you soon everyone.