🏦 Internal Communications Introductions: Phillip Hales
Senior Director, Internal Communications at Stash
In this Edition
📚 Applying Ethnography to Communications
🏓 Investing in Executive Communications to shift WeWork’s culture
📓 Embracing a “never stop learning” mindset
About Phillip
Phillip Hales is Senior Director of Internal Communication at Stash, the investment and banking app. Throughout his career, he’s focused on using communications as a lever to foster culture, drive employee engagement, and when needed, support organizational transformation and change.
Prior to Stash, he held internal and HR communications leadership roles at WeWork, Macy’s, Inc. and Morgan Stanley. Outside of work, he can typically be found at a contemporary art event, planning travel, baking, or trying to keep up with his 4-year-old cockapoo Kofi. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
What sparked your professional path into Internal Communications?
My communications career was a bit of a happy accident! When I graduated from college with a degree in Ethnomusicology, my plan was to become a queer studies scholar. I started to pursue that goal as a Ph.D. student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, where I hoped to do ethnographic research on the consumption of hip-hop culture within Chicago’s Black Queer community. After a year in graduate school, however, I started to have doubts about whether an academic career path was actually the right one for me.
After taking some time, I ultimately decided to leave graduate school. That decision was liberating, but also terrifying because at the time I didn’t fully appreciate the range of career paths for someone with a degree like mine. Luckily, a friend, Dan Santow, who was an executive at Edelman, helped me discover communications. With his encouragement, I applied for an internship in the firm’s Health practice and ultimately, that internship turned into a full-time offer. Up until that point, I’d only done academic writing and it was so exciting to learn a completely new way to think about writing and communications.
Pitching was intimidating, but I celebrated many successful placements as an intern and a full-time employee. As I expanded my Edelman network and gained exposure to other areas of practice at the firm, I discovered employee engagement and change. I think that’s really what sparked my professional path into internal communications specifically. It certainly laid the foundation as it immediately struck me as the perfect area of focus for someone with a background in studying culture. This was at a time when employee engagement practices at PR firms were relatively small (compared to consumer or crisis, for example), and while there wasn’t an entry-level for me, I had deeper clarity on how I wanted to develop professionally and grow my career in the long-term. That realization ultimately led me into HR communications and eventually into internal communications leadership roles spanning consulting, financial services, and retail.
Looking back, I never would have imagined myself on this career path. I didn't know it existed, and I certainly didn't know that it was an option for me as a music major. My coursework taught me how to think, write and solve problems critically. I think my experience studying ethnography was also invaluable. I traded Black Queer social spaces for a very different set of sites and subjects, but I still consider myself a student of culture.
How do you describe internal communications to others?
When describing my current role at Stash, I often say that I’m responsible for how Stash communicates with its workforce — determining and optimizing the channels we use to reach Stashers and ensuring that we get the message right. I always emphasize the breadth of communication areas we influence, from product releases to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to crisis communications, and beyond. We help drive adoption of the business strategy and vision, while also championing company values and culture, and ultimately, creating an amazing employee experience.
What is one project you are particularly proud to have accomplished?
I started my previous two leadership roles in the midst of significant organizational change and transformation. This was especially true at WeWork. When I joined in June 2020, the company was still healing from the now well-publicized events that led to the ouster of the CEO in 2019. The organization was adjusting to new executives and trying to shift the culture, while also navigating a major transformation to the business in a hybrid work world given Covid-19.
I invested my time in an executive communications strategy, which focused on establishing a more consistent cadence to communications from the CEO (email and/or Slack updates at least once a month, a more consistent quarterly All-Hands meeting series), increasing the visibility of all executives (a monthly Open Doors series for colleagues to connect with the C-Suite on a professional and personal level), and creating a distinct platform for deeper engagement with the Executive Chairman (an AMA-style video series featuring employee-submitted questions).
When WeWork ran its biannual engagement survey about six months later, the feedback was compelling. The score for communications, which addressed transparency and efficacy, went up by 18 points! I’ve been a part of many surveys like this in other roles, and typically, it might go up by 5 points, but a double-digit increase is truly exceptional. This result was incredible validation of the power of internal communications and of my decision to prioritize executive communications in light of WeWork’s change and transformation efforts.
What are the skills that are most important for someone to succeed in Internal Communications?
A skill that’s fueled my success — and I attribute it to my consulting training — is my love for strategy and planning. There isn’t necessarily always going to be a “right” or “wrong” solution in our work, so I like to start by getting very specific with stakeholders about the “problem” we’re trying to solve, desired goals, and how success will be measured. Understanding these points helps me identify and apply the best solution based on the approaches that have been most effective in my experience. Another reality of our work is that we don’t always have the luxury of time when it comes to strategy and planning. However, I believe that even in those “fire drill” moments communicators regularly confront, addressing the points I mentioned earlier will produce the best outcomes.
I also think it’s important that we as internal communicators embrace a “never stop learning” mindset, whether we’re just starting out or well into our careers. One of the things I love most about working at a start-up is the wealth of opportunities to try new things and acquire new skills, including digging into work outside the internal communications space. This wouldn’t have been on many of the teams I’ve been part of, where the roles and our work were much more siloed. It’s fun to experiment, learn, and take a fresh approach that matches employee preferences.
How do you continue learning about the field of Internal Communications?
Over the years, I’ve been lucky to cultivate a network of colleagues who have become friends to trade notes and test ideas with. These relationships have helped me improve and grow professionally. I’ve also benefited from the wisdom of professionals through groups like Employee Communications, Engagement, and Experience on LinkedIn and fantastic publications such as The Switchboard (author note: thank you)!
Finally, Harvard Business Review is always a trusted resource and thought starter. The depth of research is especially useful when I’m working on a project with a heavy employee experience or change management component (which is true of most of our work as internal communicators these days).
Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every edition is personally curated by me — Julia Levy. This post is based on a live interview conversation and edited for publication. Learn more about why I write. Feel free to comment below or share this article with your network.