by Janus Boye
“Internal communication can build the bridge to the future of work”
Contributing towards making the world a better place to work is a big part of what Anke Maibach does. In her role as Head of Internal Communications and Employer Branding Europe at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), she is based in their Frankfurt office and focuses on filling her role in a very large, complex and global organisation. As of writing these lines, TCS has more than 528,000 employees.
Anke always felt inspired by the book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins" by Gallagher and Schmidt. In today's pluralistic, diverse corporate culture, everybody needs to come up with an unexpected point of view looking beyond traditional silo thinking.
Anke is coming up with 14 years at TCS. Her past roles include being the Director of Communication for Central Europe and before that she was the Marketing Manager for Central Europe. Prior to joining TCS, she also worked in various marketing roles. She is our final expert of the month for 2021 and below you can learn more about her way of thinking and how she sees the big challenges towards 2022.
3 major challenges towards 2022
Working in such a large and international organisation, it is clear that Anke has to zoom out and see the big picture. Corporate sustainability is much more than traditional CSR and in her view, the three major challenges at the moment are:
1) Climate change. The world is on fire and you also need to take action when working with IT consulting services. How might we decouple business growth from carbon footprint and deliver IT eco-efficiently? How do we tell these stories internally and help share our drive for change?
2) Diversity. Differences make us stronger and diversity and inclusion have been a fundamental focus at TCS for a while. This also greatly impacts the words we use, how we hire, talent development and taking action to support career progression for all.
3) Pandemic. This has led to an increased focus on mental health and a social freeze with limited social gatherings. This changes the game for internal communications as we now have to apply all the skills we have externally to internal as well, including scaling up internally and professionalising the internal communications.
Taking internal communication and employer branding to the next level
According to Anke, internal communications needs to be involved in organisational development. Or as she says:
Good internal communications require a pro-active strategic role throughout the entire year, not just in the annual planning process.
At the Boye Aarhus 19 conference, Anke gave a highly-rated presentation titled: From teams to clans to tribes - transform communication through digital by turning employees into communication partners. Photo: Ib Sørensen
One of her main tasks is working to get TCS recognised as a top employer. TCS works with Top Employers Institute, which has a certification programme that enables organisations to assess and improve the workplace environment and Anke is closely involved in this.
Given her background, she also continues to see a blend between internal and external communications. One example is how internal communications need to train leaders to become their own enterprise community managers. To quote Anke:
As a modern leader, you need to ask yourself: What’s your main topic? You need a clear answer to build your community in a world where positioning internally is just as important as positioning externally
Anke also considers internal communications an enabler of digital change as it educates the workforce on how to better use new technologies. With colleagues bombarded with emails and video calls, internal communications can help both build the bridge to the future of work and genuinely make work better.
Working with young professionals
A key challenge for anyone interested in also being a part of the answer in the long run, is working closely with young professionals and Anke takes that part of her role very seriously.
As Anke said in our conversation:
Keep in mind, that today young professionals are completely onboarded digitally and many of them have hardly experienced any normal working life
To Anke, the solution is to think of new formats and to keep an open mind towards everybody being a communicator. Anke also prioritises working with brand ambassadors, which has to be found and developed internally.
In what some have called ‘The great attrition’ it is clear to Anke that people are leaving their jobs and rethinking how to design their life. Anke doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but as always tries to listen and understand.
A part of her response has been to talk more frequently to her team and she also encourages leaders to invest more time in talking to their staff. A part of Anke’s analysis is that people now look more for freedom, easier decision making, less hierarchy and also more interesting tasks. For this, you also need internal communications and employer branding, so we’ll look forward to hearing more from Anke as we arrive in 2022 and learn new important lessons.
Learn more about Anke
Anke is also an active member of our community and a regular contributor with helpful reflections. In a member conference call titled Creative CVs welcome, she shared how they are moving from old-school hiring to being more human-centric.
You can also find Anke on LinkedIn or meet her in our Future Workplace peer groups.