Bringing BT's Purpose to life with an inside-out approach to internal comms

Some years slide by unnoticed, others will be etched in our memory forever. But it’s rare that one year holds so much significance for so many.

As we mark the end of the working year by symbolically closing our laptops and shoving them in a drawer, we’ll all be reflecting on the year that saw Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough and Black Lives Matter enter the Oxford English Dictionary.

Something that 2020 has proven beyond doubt is one of the founding principles of Blurred – that the lines between internal and external (and consumer and corporate) no longer exist.

The way that companies chose to support their employees as they made the mass transition to WFH – or faced overnight redundancies and furlough - defined their public image in the wake of the pandemic.

The point was made again over the summer, as businesses that offered public support to the Black Live Matter movement whilst failing to get their own houses in order faced backlash from employees and the public alike.

Winners and losers in both scenarios have been well documented. AirBnB’s clear, transparent and empathetic handling of mass redundancies in May was widely lauded as the new blueprint for human-focused internal comms.

Amidst all of this, we’ve been working on a new project for BT, conceived in the heady days BC (Before Coronavirus) and given new meaning as its employees battled to keep the country connected whilst they themselves were separated by the global lockdown.

The premise was simple. BT is a treasure trove of untold stories, many of which even its 100,000 employees are unaware of. We all know about broadband and BT Sport, but few of us realise that it is BT employees who are amongst the first on the scene in the wake of hurricanes and bush fires that destroy people’s lives. Or that BT scientists are spearheading research into quantum computing networks and life-saving medical technologies. 

We wanted to shine a light on these incredible stories and make BT colleagues proud to be part of a company that connects people for good.

Importantly, we wanted to tell stories that BT colleagues would genuinely want to watch. Not bitesize branded content packed with key messages and calls to action. Honest, authentic stories that treated internal comms with the same creativity afforded to external comms. We wanted to be make something that could hold its own against a documentary you might find on Netflix, or Channel 4, in terms of creative craft and storytelling.

The two stories we chose for the first series couldn’t have been more different, but both proved particularly pertinent to the challenges faced by individuals and businesses this year. Episode one focused on BTs Peer-to-Peer Network, which supports colleagues with mental health issues. The second episode looked at the work of the ethical hackers who keep BTs network (relied on by everyone from the NHS to Whitehall) safe from cyber-attacks.

 Launched to BT colleagues in Autumn as the prospect of a second lockdown loomed, the first episode resulted in sign-ups to the Peer-to-Peer Network doubling. The series itself is one of the most-watched piece of internal comms BT has ever produced, with record engagement on Workplace, the Facebook-based platform BT has rolled out company-wide, world-wide.

More gratifying than the numbers, though, are the human responses to the work. Particularly with episode 1, it was moving to read BT colleagues saying they felt seen, saying that they were proud of the company they worked for, saying that they themselves felt moved. That pride will become advocacy, and that was our brief.

What began as an internal communications piece of work has now begun, as is the way of the internet, to seep out into external channels. It’ll be interesting to see how this blurring of the lines takes shape over the coming weeks and beyond.

We are thankful to our client partners at BT for sharing our vision for internal communications. And we must also give credit to our brilliant cohort partners: producer Enfys Dickinson, director Will Williamson and the fabulous team at Archers Mark, whose professionalism and dedication to the cause in a truly trying year was a godsend.

This is Purpose storytelling done right. We wanted something that looked like it belonged on Netflix or Channel 4, and we are so pleased that it does.