Leadership Lesson with Jo Swift, MD, Greenhouse Communications 

What do you see is the key role of a Chief Comms Officer, or a Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, and how has this changed from previous years? 

A key role of a Chief Communications Officer is proving the value of effective communications in delivering business goals. That means intimately knowing the goals of the business and using communications to creatively bring them to life. You are the champion for the role that comms plays, ensuring that communications are working to both promote and protect a strong reputation.  

The role of comms has changed fundamentally since 2020.  The pandemic brought so much change so quickly, and for many businesses communications proved to be the glue, allowing leaders to connect with external and internal audiences at a time of huge uncertainty.  

With the rise in hybrid working, and with many workers choosing different patterns of work, internal communications is now a vital channel for leaders to build credibility and maintain culture. If you don’t ensure your people are happy and your culture is healthy, then you’ll struggle to deliver your business goals.  It’s not enough nowadays to just say, “This is how we do things.” You need to bring people with you. 

What are the key qualities needed from leaders today if they want to thrive in the market? 

As an agency leader, it’s a combination of two things: you need an ambitious and purposeful vision, and you need to tell the story of how you plan to get there.  

The big picture should be exciting and aligned to your purpose and values, but it will fail if you do not communicate the small things that need to happen to get you there.  

Simon Sinek talks a lot about the ‘why’, and I believe as a leader you need to be prepared to explain your why. This is essential to bring people with you.  Alongside this, you need to explain the role that everyone in your organisation needs to play to achieve your collective goals.     

The past few years have been full of all sorts of volatile developments, the pandemic, wars, inflation, etc. How has your leadership adapted to all of these economic uncertainties? 

I joined Greenhouse Communications as Managing Director on 16 March 2020, which was naturally a big day for me, but it also turned into a big day for our country as Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced at 4 pm that all workers who could, should go home for the foreseeable future.  From that moment I was thrown into leading a new business remotely, reassuring a new team and clients and pivoting many of our services for the virtual world.   

The first skill I developed over this time was to learn how to ‘really’ listen. Taking the time to listen to different voices, some of whom have been through big changes like these before, was very eye-opening. For me, the pandemic was the first time an external event had such a huge impact. But listening to people who had been through similar events before allowed me to contextualise the present.   

The other key skill is being comfortable with uncertainty – leaning into it and not trying to control it, which can be hard.  We set ourselves goals, but recognised there would be different ways to get there, and that we’d have to adapt along the way.  Knowing it was OK to listen to your instincts and change tack when needed was reassuring while being clear on our overall direction.    

I have always taken pride in working alongside my team, drawing on everyone while being decisive when it matters.  This is especially important when you are leading through change.  It is vital to be close to your team, ensuring they are set up for success.   

On the back of everything within the past four years, employees’ demands and expectations have shifted. How can leaders meet these evolving employee demands and foster a more motivated workforce? 

Of course, there is so much more than salary and benefits, but you need to make sure you get both of these aspects right. As part of our commitment to transparency, we have visible salary bands that allow everyone to see where they’re at and where they’re heading.  

We ask our team for feedback regularly on our benefits package, and every year we conduct a staff engagement exercise to ensure our benefits are supporting them effectively. 

We have focused on aligning our benefits with our mission to enable everyone to choose carbon-free alternatives.  We offer extra holiday days for slow travel and a Salary Sacrifice benefit so our team can lease an EV.   

Leading by example is so important for our team, a group of people who are activists at heart. I believe it is important to hold yourself to a very high standard.  I also take time to listen as often as possible to a range of voices from across our team.  

Our work with our team on a tailored benefit package, aligned to our values, was recognised by the business community B Corp.  We improved our B Corp score by over 25 per cent from 2020 to 2023, with a score that placed us in the top five per cent of all B Corps in the UK.  B Corp credited our sustainable benefits package as an effective way to bring our values to life, and one that also rewarded our exceptional team.  

What skill sets do you think businesses will be looking for in the coming years, and how has this been influenced by tech advancements like AI? 

The first thing that comes to mind is adaptability and flexibility. They say the key characteristic of Generation Alpha is a propensity for adaptability, and an ability to learn new things – rather than being ‘expert’ in one subject. And while that generation is in its infancy, it’s that ability that leaders today need to emulate. 

Leaders need to know that change isn’t just okay, change is expected. You need to be able to quickly pivot, adapt, and recognise that the world of work is going to continue to change. 

We recently conducted an AI experiment to test the tools available today.  We ran two campaigns, one with the help of AI and one without. Those findings have given us a good grounding in the power of AI and its effectiveness in delivering communications goals. We plan to publish our findings in full, to the wider industry.  New tools are constantly emerging, so we’re continuously learning and picking up new skills. It’s important to share learnings and best practices.  

Diversity and inclusion is a rightfully still a hot topic. How do you foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, and what have you learned? 

We’ve partnered with several different organisations to create our DEI strategy because it’s essential in our work to truly represent everyone. We have a DEI task force made up of members across the team, whose job it is to identify places for improvement and ensure that we work in a way that supports everyone. 

One of the first things we did in terms of setting our vision was agree to new and ambitious goals, which have helped focus us in terms of bringing new people with diverse backgrounds into our team. 

We run training sessions on the different dimensions of diversity. We bring in people from outside the organisation to explain how it feels to be a member of a particular community. We have also developed an inclusive language guide, which we’re starting to roll out externally. It’s designed to give all of us a guide and framework to use language which reflects everyone’s experience. 

And while this isn’t the most revolutionary concept, we’ve improved our internal data collection so that we can be a bit more objective about our internal demographics. 

There is an increasing expectation on companies and CEOs to champion sustainability. What ESG strategies can leaders adopt to advance this agenda? 

Ensure that ESG isn’t just a set of goals, it’s a plan that will be delivered. Like DEI, ESG can’t just sit in one part of the business, it needs to be embedded in everything you do. We’ve worked with SBTi to set ambitious science-based climate targets. By doing this, we’re showing our clients we understand how challenging it is to set a high standard, but we are committed to making changes.  

It’s easy to just focus on what you are losing, so it’s important to show what you are gaining with every change you make, and making time to communicate how the changes are leading to a better business.  

ESG strategies will ultimately improve the lives of your employees and customers, so focusing on what you will gain, and the better business you will become is a crucial part of embedding an ESG strategy.  It is also a brilliant comms opportunity, and one your audiences will no doubt love to engage with.