Today we are delighted to be joined by Peter Gilheany, the Director of Forster Communications, a social change PR agency. It’s a company that is devoted to working with businesses and non-profit organizations with the goal of accelerating social change and has been in business for about 22 years. They help their clients protect and improve their lives.
Peter works across all Forster’s teams helping to create compelling campaigns that go beyond engagement and encourage people and organisations to take positive action. His background is in campaigning and the voluntary sector and he lives and breathes all forms of PR. Forster crafts game changing strategic communications, through an innate understanding of the landscape, the players and the people they seek to inspire. It’s how they help their clients act on the issues they care about, helping lift the lid on tough, often complex, issues like mental health, fair work and sustainability. They do this through campaign development, corporate PR, senior counsel and communications strategy.
What is your business superpower?
I would say that our super power is that we use behavioral insights in the understanding of people. We do a huge amount of work on understanding what motivates us and obstructs us from doing the right thing .The understanding of where our audiences stand in relation to certain issues helps us to do centered everything in the reality of people lives helping us to know what awe should and shouldn’t do.
How do you engage your staff, suppliers and customers with your mission and purpose?
The way that we engage them is that we ensure that they are cultured into our values and morals since day one. We look for people whom we share the same values and approach such us. We ensure that we communicate these values to everyone by imprinting them on everything that is manuals, stickers .This explains to them who we are, why we are and our take on things.
When it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business what has been your biggest struggle and how have you overcome it?
Our biggest struggle was experienced about 9 years ago when we were working mostly in the public sector. We had become over-reliant on the public sector work and if there were any changes that would have happened we would be exposed. There was a change in government that actually turned off everything overnight so all our work came to a halt .We had to undergo a redundancy process and that was devastating for us. We however learnt that we should not over rely on a certain job and that we make sure that we look for something that would bring growth to us. We try to make sure that we deliver as much as possible the best quality work possible.
If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners that would help them with their mission and purpose what would it be?
You can be sustainable in every sense. We are a testament to that which means that you can also do it.
Can you tell us how you approach environmental management and your carbon footprints?
We have a relatively small carbon footprint since we provide services as compared to producing products. For us we try to do more than the standards that apply to us. We joined Britain’s greenest business and actually won an award. We apply our business values to how we go about with our daily lives. For example when it comes to moving around, instead of using public transport such as taxis, we provide bicycles to help our customers move around.
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