Social media and the digital landscape are forever changing and growing. While small brands are in a position to adapt, monolithic corporations and government agencies find it difficult to change. The other challenge is many departments are simply change adverse, or too slow. On InTransition we look at the benefit of giving your communications department more room to move.

Catherine Payne, Executive Director of Digital Communications at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Victoria, works towards building a strong, supportive, creative communications team and has already seen the public’s perception of her department improve in the space of 12 months. Though not an easy task, Catherine credits the success to her team. To her, all that was needed was a) for communications to be taken seriously and b) to rearrange the traditional approach to complex situations. For her this was approaching her role in a proactive, rather than reactive manner, and by hiring people from a variety of professions – especially journalism..

Discussed this week:

The ongoing debate about the value of digital communication in the public service–
Proactive is better than reactive
Building a strong, open team is crucial to digitalising your communications plan Hiring individuals with skills based in journalism is a major plus
The need to engage your audience
The short-term difficulties of implementing new communications models into our department, as well as their long term benefits

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InTransition 130: Catherine Payne and building a strong digital comms team