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Returning to the UK after a four-year stint in the USA, CiB fellow Pete Maginnis was ready for a new challenge – and that’s exactly what he got when he took up the role as head of communications for Wolseley UK, the nation’s largest distributor of construction materials and products. With around 15,000 employees spread across 1,800 branches and distribution centres, the company had no communications strategy or objectives and, when Pete arrived, the resource consisted of just one interim consultant. “That was the appeal for me,” says Pete. “I had a blank canvas. This was a huge, fast-growing, FTSE 100 company without a proper communications function. I had never come across that before. “I could have gone into a job with a great set-up established, but I liked the idea of building something from scratch, even though it was quite a daunting prospect.” The challenge was huge. There were few basic communications processes or programmes in place and no communications evaluation tools to measure effectiveness. Not surprisingly, Wolseley UK had little dialogue with its people and the MD decided to do something about it when a company survey pinpointed this lack of communication as a problem area. “This was a company that had grown and was continuing to grow very quickly and the MD realised that, if it was to successfully maintain that momentum, it had to act to engage its people,” says Pete. Despite such a lack of any proper communications, Pete resisted the temptation to go in all guns blazing. Instead, he took time to carry out a thorough assessment and put in place some simple but effective measures in order to build relationships and gain credibility with senior managers. Only then did he set about putting together his team. So how did he go about it and what were the qualities and experience he was looking for? “Resilience is a word that was used a lot in discussions about my job and it became clear that my team would need to be resilient as well,” says Pete. “They had to be resilient in getting people on board and buying into the new communications strategy that we were creating. I wanted a good mix of really proven experience and boundless energy, people with solid communication skills who were also passionate about what they were doing and able to influence and persuade others.” His small team of five provided all that and more, and quickly set about transforming the way Wolseley UK engaged with its employees to meet its business objectives and growth expectations. The first stage included: CiB members can read more about how Wolseley built an award-winning communications team in the May 2008 issue of communicators magazine, which is only available to CiB members. A PDF version is available in the members-only section. |
