Changing the culture at the BBC

The BBC engaged Helen to help them respond to criticism from the public, media and the Dame Janet Smith inquiry after the Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall scandals, and to develop an 18-month roadmap for culture change.

Director General, Tony Hall, had committed publicly to implementing the recommendations on culture in the Dame Janet Smith report, which were to ‘take a long hard look at culture inside the BBC’ and to ‘address the over-deferential attitude towards BBC talent’. Helen’s task was to lead the work that would ensure this happened.

Immediately, Helen set up and managed the delivery of stakeholder interviews and staff focus groups across the BBC, at all key sites and with all internal audiences. The purpose of these was to understand what the BBC’s internal culture was like then, what people thought it should be, and what support there was for culture change. For the first time, the BBC included its online and offline ‘talent’ in this conversation about culture, a bold step for a risk-averse organisation, especially given the potential for it to ‘leak’. This research was challenging because some of the audiences were hard to reach, we needed a representative sample so that people would take the findings seriously, and because timescales were incredibly tight. By using well-regarded Business Heads and the BBC’s HR and Communication networks, Helen was able to get to the right people.

From initial concept to the presentation of findings, the groups and interviews were completed within just four weeks, the fastest anyone at the BBC can remember this kind of exercise happening!

Helen ensured the research findings and agreed actions were used to feed into the initial public response document from the BBC to the Dame Janet Smith report and into a pan-BBC roadmap for cultural change, which Helen developed and which was endorsed by the BBC’s leadership team. The pillars of this cultural roadmap are ‘open, inclusive, collaborative, focused on audiences, lean and simple’.

Many people inside the BBC felt that this piece of work on culture was long overdue, and welcomed it enthusiastically. Others, initially against any conversation of this kind, became more enthusiastic as they saw how much support it had. Both the process and the output helped the Director General to communicate with key audiences in the wake of the Savile and Hall scandals and set out his vision for BBC culture. It was, and still is, seen as the foundation for a long-term roadmap for culture change at the BBC. And it played an important part in helping the BBC to proactively manage its external brand/reputation and respond to harsh public criticism. The internal ‘Speak Up’ campaign has been a resounding success – figures show that more staff than previously have contacted the different support hotlines available since the campaign’s launch.

Staff have given anecdotal feedback that they like the look, tone and messages of the campaign, especially the use of real BBC staff and its diverse and inclusive feel.

Partly as a result of the work on culture, a number of structural changes are being made at the BBC, including reducing layers of management, creating a smaller executive team, devolving decision-making power, and improving lateral communication and information sharing, team manager accountability/authority and the management of BBC talent. The results of these changes will be measured through their staff survey and other feedback mechanisms.