Agenda item

Executive Director of Corporate Communications and External Affairs to be heard.

The Sub Committee heard a verbal report of the Executive Director of Corporate Communications and External Affairs, concerning the City Belonging project. The presentation was received by the Sub Committee as it was a programme of activity which incorporated EEDI.

The Sub Committee heard of the engagement challenge within the City of London, with its unusual community, it was hard to reach using traditional communication methods, especially workplaces. The solution was to launch the City Belonging project, which sought to bring together workplaces and their staff utilising their staff networks and internal communication to reach the wider workplace and foster a community within the City of London. The next steps were to increase the contact with staff network leads and set up a new-starter programme. The project could address diversity and inclusion issues both internally and externally, including considerations on cultural change on how to put City Belonging and EEDI front and centre when thinking about community and events.

The work to create a central Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system thus far were noted, and it was queried what the plans to create a single database. The Sub Committee heard that there were plans to create a City Corporation owned dataset, such as the Digital Lighthouse Project, which could be stored centrally and be used to identify gaps in data. There was some data collect by the Corporation, such as for electoral registration, which could not be shared. However, other data collected could be fed back to Electoral Services.

It was raised that chains, such as coffee shops, would have a separate central HR function, which could raise issues. The response was that the project could not be perfect for every situation, and it was important to maintain contact details of the manager of the local shops to combat these issues.

RESOLVED – That the verbal report be noted.