Digital training and capability at FCO: pilots have landed

The new half-day Agile workshops for leadership at our embassies and high commissions (Posts) bring together the head of mission and deputy head of mission, and the main people from the press and public affairs teams, policy teams and consular communications team. The purpose is to decide how well a Post’s digital channels are supporting their objectives and re-assess how more relevant, timely and engaging digital content could be produced.

Joining up policy and comms

I blogged about the new leadership offer in May, highlighting the need to link up the good understanding that policy officers at Post have influential news and cultural organisations and thought leaders, with how the communications team push out digital content or look to extend channel audiences.

All the pilot Posts invited at least one lead policy officer to the workshop and in all three cases the participants recognised they should extend digital training to the policy team, particularly for monitoring digital content and finding online influencers. We discussed how policy officers could contribute to the success of their Post’s communications endeavours, through taking the specific digital training we offer to policy colleagues, by supporting the Post’s digital landscape reporting, and pooling knowledge across teams.

Making evaluation count – Jakarta

Jakarta’s digital officer is already trained in running evaluation of the Post’s digital campaigns and channels. Discussion moved on to how to make evaluation actionable – who needed to see and act on the evaluations. This led to a broader discussion about channel strategy and building channel audiences more proactively into useful target audiences, working alongside policy officers.

Joining up with prosperity – Singapore

Officers working on trade and prosperity events at the Post were uncertain about finding social media audiences for their niche business sectors. They expressed concerns that social media content they might generate would be irrelevant to the rest of the main corporate channel’s followers. We discussed third party partnerships with businesses, organisations and influencers to reach specific niche audiences, and looked at deeper use of platforms like LinkedIn, especially around digital angles to trade events.

Joining up with DFID and MOD – Islamabad  

The One HMG agenda dominated the workshop I ran in Islamabad. Participants agreed that content focusing on productive cooperation between the UK and Pakistan militaries would have broad appeal. We looked at better training for that team, to enable them to produce social media stories for the main channel. The High Commission and head of comms were also keen to see how they could run more Department For International Development content to show the extent of the UK’s investment in Pakistan’s stability and prosperity.

Audience – unlocking a channel strategy  

Participants at all the workshops recognised the need to continue developing social media audiences in trade, diaspora, UK-business, cultural or political opinion. All appreciated the need to maintain and continually build on their understanding of the target audiences for their different channels in response to evolving political and policy environments, making tactical use of their most influential followers to push amplification (ie sharing and mentions). This aspect of the workshop was of particular interest to the heads of mission.

Pilots – lessons learned

The main lesson is that the involvement of the head of mission in the holding of the workshop is key. While others at Post can plan and prepare, the head of mission cannot simply be an invitee. In Jakarta, the Ambassador took a 10 minute slot to online why he had called the workshop and the elements of digital work he wanted to develop – this was ideal to feed into the workshop elements and link to Post objectives. The workshop is flexible. Some heads of mission want to focus on how other teams at Post should be involved in digital, while some are looking at building online audiences or new ways to make a mark using digital. The workshop can help the whole team decide how digital transformation at Post should progress – with action points assigned to senior staff.

From January we’ll identify priority Posts across all regions, based on their training needs and our organisational campaign priorities, and deliver the workshops in further phases. Our team will additionally use the workshops to help meet our own objectives for increasing overseas uptake of digital training, and inspiring more locally produced digital content.