Our company values and code of conduct are vitally important for the continued success of our company. Breaching regulations in our industry could have very serious consequences. But constant change has taken its toll on our people’s morale. Values as transparency, responsibility and trust mean very little in a business reality that is defined by insecurity and ambiguity.

In our company internal communication is basically a one-man-show, me. I serve the needs of the marketing guys within the different BUs and am also the point of call for supporting functions like Procurement, HR, IT, etc. It means that I have to think and work within different fields of expertise, often outside my comfort zone…

The perception in our company of the internal communication function is that of a corporate propaganda machine that has little understanding of what the business is all about. I’ve been hired to professionalise the team, our services and capabilities. I definitely feel the pressure that my team needs to proof its value fast and start delivering.

Our country affiliates work mainly independently. They don’t share research or best practices and generally feel a lack of understanding from corporate leadership for their specific needs. In addition, there are often barriers making it difficult to engage with affiliates. For all countries, it involves getting people to do a job on top of their normal responsibilities.

I’m in charge of Global Procurement. Our job is to negotiate the highest level of service and getting the best value for money from our suppliers. This is a specialist and often time consuming process. But when it’s well done, it can save my internal customers significant amounts of money. And yet, I find that the business functions we’re supporting often perceive us as a threat to their autonomy.

HR has centralised its function because our company needed a much more consistent approach in the way they attract and retain talents. We have professionalised our services and strengthened the team with dedicated professionals on services like recruitment, workforce planning, performance review and talent development. But the reality is that we find it difficult to become a trusted business partner of our internal customers

Instead of an enabler and business partner, IT is seen as a show stopper by many of our internal customers. They don’t understand that we have to operate in quite a rigid back-office grid and comply with many processes. It is very important that our internal customers are clear about these processes. Changing the brief when a project has already kicked off almost always means revisiting earlier checkpoints which can result in delays, not to mention increased costs