Like many people working in internal communications, Cat Slatcher had come into the profession via another route. In 2018, she began her role as Senior Corporate and Internal Communications Manager at the Met Office with a new team and wanted to raise the profile of internal comms. She signed up for one of Rachel Miller’s Masterclasses in order to cement some of her knowledge. Later, All Things IC was asked to do an audit.
Cat said: “It was brilliant and really insightful. We carried out the focus groups, but Rachel helped us plan the audit, and then she wrote a report for us. We have spent probably a year just assessing the way the land had been and we’re still implementing some of the things that came out of that audit report.
“That led on to mentoring sessions for my team. We meet Rachel once a month and talk about different topics. We run things past her and that is brilliant because the team always leaves really enthused and inspired about different topics, and they are maintaining professional development in the area.
“I really feel like Rachel understands not only the challenges but the things we’re trying to do. She gets the vision of what we’re trying to do. She helps us think that we’re on the right track and puts our mind at rest, or gives us really good, constructive feedback on maybe doing things in a different way.”
Thinking back to what she was looking for when she first came across All Things IC, Cat said she wanted to learn, rather than be given a finished solution.
She said: “I didn’t want to say, ‘Here you go, this is a piece of work we need doing, do the audit, write the report and come back’. We did the audit with her. That’s something that Rachel advocates and why the mentor sessions are so good because we’re doing it with her. I remember her saying that’s how she prefers to work and actually that’s where you get most benefits. Sometimes you can work with people, they hold all the knowledge and you then have the report but actually that doesn’t help grow you in any way.
