Internal Comms in a gaming startup

Jonathan Davies
22 mins read

Table of Contents

The Internal Comms podcast has respawned yet again.

We’re joined by Emily Scammel, Director of Internal Communications at Improbable, a UK-based gaming development company. Emily’s our first guest to come on the podcast to discuss the famously fast-paced gaming industry – the perfect environment to roll out creative solutions and initiatives as an Internal Communicator. You can watch, listen to the podcast or read the full transcript right below – whatever makes you tick today.

The Internal Communication Podcast - Episode 14 from Happeo on Vimeo

Corporate vs. startup Internal Communications

Jonathan: Your career journey has been a really interesting one actually, because I think in a way, to a degree, we went through a similar thing, but you may be more on the extreme side of stuff because you've worked for an organization with 30,000 people. Now, you work essentially for a startup.

What was that journey like, and what made you want to go into an organization with less people?

Emily: The places I've been working at have been very interesting places to work in. I started my career, and I'm very thankful to Virgin media because I kind of grew up there. I had 11 years working my way through my career as an Internal Comms professional and working in employee engagement also. They were pretty big, so like 25,000 people, including contractors. So that was a great place to start as an Internal Comms person.

I then wanted to have a bit more of a global experience, then moved on to work for a big market research agency called KANTAR, part of WPP. They were huge, we're talking 30,000 people across the world in 100 PLUS different countries. I kind of felt like I needed to experience something small. To experience what startup life would be like , moving to businesses that move really fast, where you've got direct access to the people who started the organization.

I've loved being in the last two businesses I've been in. Onfido, which is a FinTech, which was smaller than Improbable - another startup - which when I left was just over the 300 mark. Now Improbable, which is verging on the 700. It's difficult to call it a startup when it gets to that size, but I guess we're still not, you know, we're not listed.

Tackling cultural incompatibility

Jonathan: I think that's amazing. So I already have like 15 questions that I want to ask you. I think the first one I wanted to ask you. does come from the field that you have moved away from, but when you worked at KANTAR, you said that the organization really grew through mergers and acquisitions.

Now, that must be a massive Internal Comms challenge because you're essentially merging in companies with entirely different cultures. If that happened frequently, I imagine that at a certain point you developed a certain knack for overcoming those barriers. What did you do to combat the cultural incompatibility, and create cultural synergy?

Emily: Actually, that was a really interesting challenge. There was a massive piece of work to try and encourage collaboration across brands. It was very difficult to ensure that you did reach everybody across the entire organization. That's where advocacy really, really comes to bear.

Invigorating change through behavioral nudges

At KANTAR, first, the initiative that I worked on with members of the team across the world, pulled together expertise in terms of behavioral science and really helped us understand why people weren't collaborating effectively right now, and how could we encourage them to do so.

Again, highlighting what was actually working ,and telling those stories more and more.

Jonathan: Those behavioral nudges that you just spoke of...

Emily: Absolutely. It's really easy for the leadership of an organization to say...

Making employees Internal Comms ambassadors

Jonathan: So, what did you do to get those people to help you out to act as your ambassadors?

Emily: There were limited resources within Canada in terms of design and things like that. We created an animated video ourselves using one of the free versions online. We ended up with 1500 champions across the 30,000 person business.

They introduced a desk bingo game, which meant that you had to sit in a different colored area of the office...

What can we learn from the gaming industry?

Emily: The people who are developing games, they are massively invested in what they do. Often they are gamers in their personal lives.

Where does the Internal Communicator sit?

Jonathan: When it comes to your title as the Director of Internal Communications at Improbable - within the hierarchy, where do you sit?

Emily: It's been really useful now. I'm not going to lie, a lot about strategy and finance perspective goes right over my head... However, what it has meant is that I'm privy to that type of conversations about the business and the direction of the organization, the challenges the business is experiencing.

Positioning yourself as an Internal Communicator

Jonathan: Is there not at your privy to high-level strategic conversation? Do you feel that there are things that you've been able to achieve because of where you sit at Improbable that you maybe wouldn't have been able to do at a different organization?

Emily: The experiences I've maybe had in the past have been that I've been thrown in very fast... to ensure that I could wholeheartedly recommend things to be done.

Balancing strategy and quick wins

Jonathan: I have one final question for you on the subject. Strategy, but then also quick wins - how do you balance the two?

Emily: I think there's always going to be things so it needs to be done on a day to day basis... I've agreed is that I need to get the foundations right. I need to fix the channels that currently exist.