Alumni Spotlight

You are LIME's Manager of Regional Colleague Communications. What does this job entail?

It is a very hands-on role working out of the Group CEO’s office. It involves managing internal communication and engagement strategies across all of LIME’s 13 jurisdictions and with over 3000 employees. The role involves developing and executing with regional and individual business unit campaigns to reinforce LIME’s core values of Respect, Deliver, Innovate and Win to colleagues.

Has your training at CARIMAC helped to prepare you for this position, and how?

Yes – it certainly has! CARIMAC has done an excellent job of grooming me and my fellow counterpart as a communicator. Looking back into perspective, I am delighted at the well-experienced industry lecturers I have.

One of the greatest skills CARIMAC taught us was to add value wherever we go – value in its truest sense means being creative and making a positive difference with your own experiences. This coupled with its high level of creative, journalistic and analytical writing has allowed me to with effortlessly in most business situation.

Research….research – I thought that I would have finished that as soon as I exited university but certainly not. At CARIMAC we were trained that PR is a research-driven profession and as such, we had to tailor our academic pursuits accordingly. At work it is the same thing – you constantly have to be researching……adopting and assimilating highly complex information so that it flows seamlessly into one continuous document.

Furthermore, there is the issue of cross-cultural communication and especially in a highly complex and global environment. A part of that process is knowing what is the exact situational context you are operating in, what you want to achieve and how and importantly – who your key target audiences are. Again, this was a part of our PR programme at CARIMAC and more often than not, it pops up at work.

What additional skills/experiences have you acquired that are now relevant to the type of work you do?

Being able to manage expectations while producing high quality work under intense pressure is certainly a new skill I have enquired. You learn to say no or yes with a reasoned judgment based on either an outcome for key internal or external stakeholders.

Also, I have managed to become more proactive and strategic in my overall approach to communication planning. Every part of the communication process has a desired outcome and if carefully planned – it can lead to greater success for your organization. That has come with my three years of experience in corporate Jamaica.

In some organizations, high-level management and key decision-makers are still battling with social media. How would you address this management challenge if you were faced with it?

Actually, I have before. While at my previous employer (Digicel) I had to develop their social media portfolio. The key thing is being honest with senior management and key enablers in your organization. You focus on the fact that social media can be a monster but it can also be a beauty. It boils down to how it is managed.

The best way to approach this is to do a case study with a company similar to yours. Explore what were the disasters, how were they managed or mismanaged and importantly explore new opportunities that came from them. Show them how they can use social media to their advantage to leverage sales, customer perception, audience feedback and research.

Doing a social media policy and crisis communication plan are also necessary as they help to build top executives confidence in the social media portfolio and it gives them a sense of security if they understand the possible things that can go work and ways they can be reasonably managed.

Your remit is regional. What 3 things do you keep in mind when you communicate with such a diverse audience?

Context – I always have to think about semantics and the different connotations that words have across different Caribbean regions. I tend to stick to universally acceptable language.

The intended outcome or call to action – this usually tops my list because it helps to frame how I structure my communication. I may simply want them to be aware of something or take a particular course of action. This also helps me to explore whether this is appropriate to ask based on cultural differences, languages, etc.

The communication tool/channel I have at my disposal – this is particularly important because communication across diverse audience tends to be very impersonal and can give way to a variety of interpretations. Using a video recorded email as opposed to a traditional email works wonders.

What for you is the key advantage for brands with a social media presence?

The key advantage is that a brand gets the real opportunity to connect with their main target audience. This is a chance for the brand to know what its customers are thinking about it; find out from them how they can make things better, they can use their customers as ambassadors through social media sites just from connecting with them and even drive an increase in their sales!

Some say the dark side of social media is the infringement of privacy. How is LIME tackling the "privacy issue" in its own social media operations?

LIME is very savvy on the use of social media – it has put social media to sit between marketing and corporate communications. The marketing team drives the creative charge while the corp comms team manage ‘privacy issues’ and ensure that clear, honest and consistent information is released on its social media sites. There is a standard approval process about what can and cannot go on the various sites – so administrators have a handle on what information to transmit.

Social media landscape is developing rapidly. It has its own language and modus operandi. Do you there is need for people to become social media literate and who should lead the charge?

Well certainly – there is no doubt about that. Take a perfect look at Jamaica – this country has over 600k users on Facebook and the numbers keep on climbing daily….that is more than 25% of our population! Then there is the rise of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other smartphones, which are heavily driven by new media.

Our youths are consuming information in a different way – in a more interactive, instantaneous and dynamic way and as communicators and other key decision makers we have to adjust our communication plans and strategies accordingly to target them.

To fully embrace social media and make it a formal regimen in our daily diets – then this will need a more legislative move. You will have seen changes being made in some part of the US and Canada’s legislative system with regards to social media use. Suffice is it to say that, but as adults we all have to understand social media and the implications that it can bring.

Parents have to understand what their children are exposed to online, what value it might bring to their child’s education and how it can be curbed or enhanced. That way they can make informed decisions on social media and how it affects their key audience (children). This is a similar process for communicators and journalists – you have to know what you are up against and how it can be manipulated. Ultimately it becomes an individual action to become savvy.