Last month, the UK chairman of KPMG stepped down, following an outcry over comments he made at a virtual meeting where he dismissed staff concerns about stress during the Covid-19 pandemic. He suggested that consultants ‘stop moaning’ and ‘playing the victim card’. Announcing his resignation, Bill Michael said he was ‘truly sorry’ that his ‘words…

A year into the COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK, our world has narrowed. The shop, walks and runs in the immediate vicinity and the view from the window is, for many, as far as our eyes can see. But outside of the precarious, anthropic perspective, not much has changed, and morning and day move at…

It’s become an annual tradition for me to write a blog for International Women’s Day, a tradition I am keen to uphold. In previous years, I’ve spoken with inspirational women in PR and even placed our industry under the microscope, examining just where we fall short in the shift towards equality. This year, everything is…

How the world has changed since World Book Day 2020. While the children in our families may not be marking the occasion in the usual, fancy dress way, the mission behind World Book Day remains the same: to promote reading for pleasure and to offer every child and young person the opportunity to have a…

Looking for a job during lockdown was, needless to say, extremely difficult. It is very rare that you hear of someone walking straight into a graduate job that they actually want. It is even rarer during a pandemic. I did not expect to get to the final interview for this position, let alone be offered…

How do you feel about Pokemon?  If you’re British, that probably depends on your age. But how would you feel if your credit card was covered in images of Pikachu?  Or if the high speed train you were about to board was plastered with pictures of Hello Kitty – inside and out? Or the aeroplane…

Video killed the conference star? The Covid-19 pandemic changed the face of the event industry; it brought virtual connectivity tools into the spotlight with the majority of events in 2020 conducted online by organisers who tried to replicate the in-person experience digitally. The effectiveness and convenience of simply logging on to be transported into a…

January is named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, the month of a new year and a fresh start. Usually, this is a time which fills people with optimism, a chance to break old habits and create resolutions, with the promise of new possibilities. This year, with majority of us in lockdown,…

Covid-19 is going to make this Christmas a strange one. Families won’t be able to meet and celebrate together, or, at least, not like they always have. In Poland, we traditionally break wafer bread with each other before our Christmas Eve dinner: each family member breaks a small piece of wafer, accompanied by impromptu personal…

Recently I spoke at a careers fair for job seekers returning from working in Japan on the government backed JET Programme*.  They are returning at an incredibly difficult time for job hunting in general and have worked in a role that is relatively little understood by potential employers. They have to do some legwork simply…

You have invested time and money on how you appear to the outside world; on your identity and on your office environment. But we’re not much in that environment right now. We need to think a little harder about how we strengthen your branding, about how we adapt this visual interpretation of what your business…

How have your pandemic lockdown resolutions been going? Did you decide to learn a new language? Take up knitting? Lose a stone? If you’re anything like me, you will have achieved none of these – in fact I’ve probably lost some linguistic ability and gained a stone but I’m not brave enough to get on…

It seems millennials love plants. That’s what research and trends are showing and I am happy to be one of those who support this data. My love affair with plants began when I started university and moved to Whitechapel in East London. Close by is the famous Columbia Road Flower Market, which is several centuries…

Haggie Partners recently commissioned FindOutNow to survey financial services professionals with the question, “Do you think your firm will need to change its internal staff communications strategy as a result of the covid19 pandemic?” Out of the 200 participants: 70% of respondents believe the strategy will need to change; 21.5% of respondents think it will…

On Friday 13 March this year, the four partners at Haggie Partners had a chat over the telephone and decided it would be prudent to invite our colleagues to work from home for the foreseeable future, should they prefer to do so. It was intended to be a choice, and it felt like quite a…

Haggie Partners directors Becky Young and Caroline Klein recently presented to the Insurance Marketers Group on the subject of “How can communicators support business in their planning for returning – or not – to offices?” This is the recording of that presentation.   

Social media is a powerful communication tool and we have seen even more clearly just how powerful it is since the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown began. In the UK, those who can work from home have been doing so now for just over nine weeks and there has been a significant uptick in social media…

Mental Health Awareness Week, hosted by the Mental Health Foundation, is an annual, national week established to raise awareness of mental health and inspire action to promote good mental health for all. Each year focuses on a theme, from stress to relationships. This year, the theme is ‘kindness’, and the Mental Health Foundation thinks that…

I was ludicrously ill-equipped for life under lockdown. I have long laboured under the weight of two principal anxieties (I’m sure there are several more minor ones). The first is a close cousin to claustrophobia. It’s not small spaces I dread. What I don’t like are places I can’t easily leave should I choose to…

It is difficult to plan while we wait for clarity around possible post-lockdown workplace rules and how the country can return to normality. Nevertheless it is important that companies start to consider the long-term impact that this crisis will have on the way that a) they operate as a business and b) how their employees…

Communications departments have probably never been busier than during the past six weeks. Companies have had to adapt rapidly to the new “normal” with, in financial services in particular, the majority of the workforce working remotely. No-one had predicted this and neither had anyone been prepared for the physical, operational, economic and emotional impact that…