Melissa Bennett is the Director of Attraction, HR for the Department of Education (Queensland). Given her role, Mel is a somewhat unique champion for social media, but her commitment to business outcomes has created real value for the department. In this interview, Mel explains her belief in the role of social media capability to improve government performance.

Roger Christie (RC): Thanks for sharing your insights today, Mel. I’m looking forward to hearing your perspective on things as you have such a different role and focus to those we’ve interviewed. Would you mind quickly explaining your role in Attraction and the strategic challenge you’re tasked with trying to solve?

Melissa Bennett (MB): We are very fortunate to have a team dedicated to initiating and implementing proactive talent attraction strategies for DoE (Department of Education). We have a very keen focus on promoting teaching as a profession, attracting teachers to state schools across Queensland and positioning DoE as an employer of choice for teaching and non-teaching roles. We are a very large organisation with approximately 80,000 staff in 1,300 sites and we’re constantly trying to attract and engage with an extremely diverse range of prospective candidates.

RC: And we know your circumstances well through the work Propel and the Queensland Government have done together, but could you quickly detail how you came to consider social media as a potential solution to your challenge?

MB: Sure. Within Government I think there are often some assumptions that people know who you are, what you do and – in our case – what types of jobs you have. But the nature of how people are researching and considering their employment options means that we also had to consider how we were positioning ourselves in a busy and competitive job market.  Especially in teaching where we have an emerging supply and demand challenge across Queensland.

Our population is growing, there is more investment in schools and teachers which means we need to recruit more teachers. We needed to find new and creative ways to let people know that we need more teachers, while at the same time encouraging more people to consider teaching as their first or next career opportunity. We thought social media was a great starting point – a good way to connect with our key audiences and their influencers. We started off with a ‘let’s give this a go and see what happens’ approach with basically myself and one other team member and the support of our Executive Director. We have had some great successes – as well as our challenges – but have been able to be agile enough to learn as we go.

RC: Now I don’t mean to downplay the work you’ve done, but it really is such a simple and logical approach, isn’t it? You had a business need, you considered how to address it, and you sought solutions to execute that plan.

And your work since has largely focused on building social media capability across the department. What does ‘social media capability’ mean to you, and what role has it played for you since then?

MB: The team, which has since grown to 16 people, now see their roles as much more than just developing and posting content each day. As our audiences have grown, we’ve embedded social media listening and intelligence gathering as part of our day to day business, and that enables us to reach out to people identifying themselves as teachers, engage partners around events and deliver very targeted recruitment campaigns.

We have also been able to demonstrate that what we are doing is having an impact through data analysis and case studies. This has been essential in building the confidence of our colleagues, executives and stakeholders. One of the things that I think has been one of our greatest successes is that our teachers and Principals are now jumping onto our Teach Queensland social assets and responding to questions or sharing their own experiences without us having to ask them to. To me this demonstrates the value they see in the work we do and that they want to contribute.

“[W]e’ve embedded social media listening and intelligence gathering as part of our day to day business, [enabling] us to reach out to people identifying themselves as teachers, engage partners around events and deliver very targeted recruitment campaigns.”

RC: One of your great strengths is stakeholder management and bringing people on the journey, and that’s a vital skill to have as adopting a new approach like social media really is change management. How have you done that effectively? What advice would you give others to get that buy-in across all levels?

MB: Thanks, Roger. Although I do think stakeholder engagement is essential and helps ensure success, especially when you are trying to be innovative and do business differently. For me, I like to think of both our internal and external stakeholders as contributors – they all have something to contribute to the work we do. This can be as little as being aware that the work is happening, or becoming a true champion for the work we do.

I like to make sure that stakeholders can see where they fit into the concept, idea or initiative – how it will ultimately help them to achieve their desired outcome. At the same time, we must identify ways they can help us to deliver success.

Building these productive relationships takes time and effort – lots of formal and informal conversations, lots of questions and active listening – but it is so worthwhile. Part of our success is linked to stakeholders knowing who we are and what we do which, as a small team in a very large organisation, can be very difficult.

“[S]takeholder engagement is essential and helps ensure success, especially when you are trying to be innovative and do business differently.”

RC: So often it’s about how these changes are communicated and the way opportunities are surfaced and presented. Do you have any practical examples where you’ve have success with senior leaders along these lines?

MB: I’m probably a little cheeky in that I’ll take any opportunity I can to talk to people about the work we do and our impact, even if it’s just snippets dropped into conversations or emails. It’s also really important to use your executives as your champions. I am very fortunate that our former Director-General, Dr Jim Watterston, took a real interest in our work. We did a lot with his team to identify possible content for them to share, and I made sure he understood the work we were doing, like leading our whole-of-government Social Listening Centre of Excellence. It’s also great to highlight to senior officers who might be reluctant to explore social media capability that the head of the organisation is active on social media!

“I’ll take any opportunity I can to talk to people about the work we do and our impact, even if it’s just snippets dropped into conversations or emails. It’s also really important to use your executives as your champions.”

RC: That’s a great example of knowing what matters to senior leaders and focusing on serving their needs with your skills. What other successes have you seen to date, and where do you see social media capability playing a role for you in the future?

MB: I’m quite excited by the possibilities social media capability will provide to us, and also to similar agencies and organisations. We are quite focused on exploring how we can best utilise social media capability to ensure we attract the best candidates for employment, and to then provide them with a great customer experience that ensures they have no hesitation working for us.

We also want to influence and inform our overarching recruitment processes with our learnings, and are already working closely with colleagues who lead these functions within DoE and across the Queensland government.

We still have many challenges, but I’m hoping the opportunities and successes will ensure that we can keep evolving. We know that change is a constant and makes people uncomfortable, but change is not necessarily a bad thing.

“We are quite focused on exploring how we can best utilise social media capability to ensure we attract the best candidates for employment, and to then provide them with a great customer experience that ensures they have no hesitation working for us.”

RC: Finally, stepping back and looking at your role more broadly here. You’re hoping to build a sustainable, talented workforce of teachers across Queensland. Do you think it would be valuable for that group to develop their own social media capability – using social media data and technologies? Would it help them become better teachers, leading to better education outcomes for Queensland as a whole?

MB: Teachers tend to be a little hesitant to embrace social media and digital technologies personally – we have all seen the news stories of those few teachers doing the wrong thing. But I think they are finding their own ways to connect with students and colleagues via social and digital technologies. Walk into any classroom these days and you will see a strong focus on technology – especially in the most rural and remote parts of our state – and data. These are essential skills for our current and future teachers, just as developing resilience and agility are. Our teachers are preparing students for the future, and they need to be able to adapt and continue their own learning.

RC: Thanks for your time, Mel – I hope others are encouraged by your journey and think laterally around the role social media capability can play in helping them improve performance.

Note: The Department of Education (Queensland) is a Propel client.

This was the tenth interview in Propel’s Expert Series featuring Melissa Bennett – Director of Attraction, HR for the Department of Education (Queensland). Mel can be found on LinkedIn if you would like to follow up any topics raised in her interview. The Expert Series will continue soon, and aims to showcase the breadth of business opportunities and value available to organisations by focusing on social media capability, not social media channels.  If you have an interviewee recommendation, please contact our Managing Director, Roger.