For the past four years Tara Geoghegan has held the role of communications and impact manager at Haymarket Media Group – the publishing powerhouse responsible for more than 70 leading brands including In.comms and owned by the formidable Lord Heseltine. She began her comms journey with an in-house comms role at the NHS, before switching gears to PR for a large fintech company called Wise. She also gained experience working for Marlin PR and Archetype PR, before joining Haymarket in September 2021.
You’ve worked in both in-house and agency comms – how do those two worlds compare?
There are more similarities than you might think, but the biggest difference is focus. When you’re at an agency, you're juggling multiple clients, managing your time between different accounts. In-house, you have an affinity to one brand. You’re dealing with the same company every day, and all your energy is focused on its central messaging and culture.
Another key difference is that agency work is predominantly focused on a brand’s external presence. In-house comms, especially at a company like Haymarket, includes both external and internal. Many people in agencies don’t get that internal experience, which is crucial for building and maintaining a genuine company culture. Even though Haymarket has a variety of brands, the goal is to make sure every employee, from What Car? to Management Today, knows what Haymarket believes in.
Haymarket is a global organisation. How does its internal comms strategy differ for a global audience?
It’s an interesting role because you get to know all the different divisions and offices, whether in the UK, Hong Kong, New York or Germany. The strategy for internal comms differs in that we understand that we can’t just enforce a culture or policy without engaging the local teams. Our CEO, Kevin Costello, always says, “think global, act local”, and we try to maintain that mantra.
We work closely with key contacts around the world to ensure our messaging lands well. For instance, our sustainability strategy, Haymarket Impact, is a global initiative based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, local teams have their own ways of embedding it. This relies on local messaging and initiatives. We never send out a global communication without first working with the local teams. This is especially important for key awareness days like International Women’s Day or Pride Month, where we want to do something on a global scale but have to be culturally sensitive and tailor the messaging to each unique culture.
Has there been a specific campaign or strategy that you've worked on that had a measurable impact on employee engagement or culture?
We’ve seen great results so far with our global sustainability strategy, Haymarket Impact, which we launched two years ago. Haymarket has always been very conscious of its sustainability responsibility, but there was a lack of synergy when it came our environmental and DEI work, so Impact was launched to bridge the gap between the two and unify our approach globally. The strategy is aligned with four key UN Sustainable Development Goals: gender equality, climate action, quality education and partnerships for the goals. This provided a global framework that everyone could understand and work towards. It’s been well embedded into every function of the organisation – there’s not a segment of Haymarket that has been left untouched by it. We’ve seen that employees now understand that Haymarket Impact is an all-encompassing term for sustainability. I think that’s a huge testament to our local teams and the communications function’s ability to ensure a unified message.
How do you generally assess the impact of your campaigns and initiatives?
We measure our campaigns in various ways, from employee engagement to brand awareness. For an internal campaign, like the global video we created for International Women’s Day, we look at the number of views, clicks, and verbal feedback. This helps us gauge how the message is resonating.
Another great example is our annual employee engagement survey. This is a crucial tool for tracking results year-on-year. The comms team works closely with the people team to ensure there's a frequent and consistent follow-up, like a ‘you said, we did’ approach. This is communicated in town halls, divisional meetings, and CEO communications, to show employees that their feedback is being acted upon.
How has the function of internal comms changed to support people who are working remotely more often?
It’s a difficult balance to strike. When people are in the office they really value in-person collaboration and even things like in-house events such as town hall meetings or something that isn’t dictated by a virtual element. But we also want to ensure that those who work remotely don’t feel left out. This could mean, for example, with an internal event, you have to decide if it’s best to allow people to dial in, or if you should provide a different benefit to those who aren’t physically there.
We also have to think beyond traditional forms of internal communication. A few years ago on International Women’s Day we did a desk drop of I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, but we also made sure those who work remotely received a copy as well. For our overseas colleagues, we’ve utilised podcasts as a form of internal communication. We’re fortunate to have a podcast studio and we’re utilising it more to create audio content for our overseas colleagues. This is a great way to bring people together without leaving anyone behind.
It’s important to remember that the role of the internal comms team is also to empower others to be spokespeople. In a large company like Haymarket, which boasts more than 1,000 employees and spans Europe, North America and Asia, with so many different divisions and roles, spokespeople play such a key role in making sure you’re communicating the same message. It’s important to empower line managers to bring every member of their team together, whether they’re in the same office – or country.
Looking ahead, how do you see the role of internal comms changing in the next 5-10 years, and what skills will new professionals need?
I don’t think we can ignore AI, but I also don’t think that the role of internal communications will be taken over by it. We need that human connection for genuine storytelling. However, I do believe AI will eliminate some of the more administrative tasks, such as reporting, research, survey findings and trends. This will allow comms professionals to focus more on strategy and creativity.
I do also think internal comms needs to embrace sustainability more. I think potential employees, especially younger candidates, are looking at a company’s environmental and social credentials as a standard. Those companies going above and beyond will stand out, but without effective communication this will be a missed opportunity.
My advice to a new internal comms professional is to be curious. Ask lots of questions and meet as many people as you can. Understand what everyone does in the business. It’s one of the few departments that has access to every single part of an organisation. Don’t be scared of how rapidly the world of work is changing, but go along with it and see how it can benefit you.