The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office outreach with the Taylor Bennett Foundation
Last year the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) communications directorate established a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion working group. As part of our commitment to be a truly inclusive organisation, we are striving to make concrete efforts to ensure that we are building a diverse future talent pipeline, supporting applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply.
To achieve this aim, we reached out to the Taylor Bennett Foundation, an award-winning charity that encourages people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to pursue a career in communications, to host a visit to FCDO for their PR trainees. They were delighted with our proactive approach, and we organised a visit for eight graduates to visit the FCDO offices in November 2023.
To ensure that the trainees gained a good insight into the possible communications careers available in the FCDO, various comms teams spoke with them over the course of the afternoon. The sessions varied from crisis communications outlining the work we do plan and respond to crises and showing the trainees around the crisis centre, to consular comms colleagues providing insight into wide-ranging comms issues that FCDO has dealt with. Our digital and strategic comms teams also gave them an introduction into their work.
We also organised a Q&A panel session that included senior communications colleagues from teams such as internal communications and soft power. The Q&A enabled the trainees to learn about specialism they might not have considered before as well as get valuable insights from panel members about how to build a successful career in communications.
The feedback from the trainees was overwhelmingly positive:
“I was imagining what it would be like to work there.”
“It was perfectly curated, with various people to meet throughout, from various areas of communications. The hosts were friendly, and their work was fascinating. I’m really glad I got to experience this!”
It was evident that the trainees enjoyed the experience and could see a career in comms in the FCDO as a viable, exciting option.
The FCDO will continue to work with the Taylor Bennett Foundation to ensure that we can host further visits in the future and will make them aware of job opportunities in the communications directorate by posting on their virtual jobs board.
One thing we did take away following our session was that it was very dialogue heavy with a whole host of speakers. In the future, we will include more interactive sessions, whether that’s getting the trainees to use flipboards and create a communications plan or the use of videos and slides to break up long periods of monologue.
If you want to run a similar activity, the GCS Outreach Page has templates and guidance which GCS members can use in your own teams.