Jill Watkinson Email & Phone Number

New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand

New Zealand

Providing expert guidance to ensure strategic communications and stakeholder management support for business transformations across public and private sector organisations.

Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Led strategic communications and stakeholder management on a transformational change and capability programme for New Zealand Police

Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Following the conclusion of Inland Revenue's successful transformation, members of the former business transformation programme leadership team were retained to share learnings and consider what opportunities could be leveraged across government agencies in the area of service transformation.

Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand

IR’s business transformation was the largest programme of its time in the southern hemisphere. In the six years I was with the programme, I built and led a team of communications specialists to support the biggest change to tax and social policy in a generation. My team and I were responsible for delivering information to staff, customers, Ministers, government agencies, the tax industry and other critical stakeholders and with IR’s Marketing team, the NZ public. Communications and stakeholder plans, business education interventions, and both national and regional events were delivered to support:o the technical deployment of the new tax administration system across six releases, requiring creative yet effective solutions to effect cut-through and mitigate change fatigueo the design and implementation of a new organisation structure for 4000 service delivery roles requiring consultation with employees and unions o the development of a new customer relationship framework where partnerships and co-design now work alongside a more traditional stakeholder management approacho the introduction of a new enterprise support system impacting all back-office roleso the deployment of new workplace technology including the rollout of Windows 10 and Office 365 o the development of an external website to share the learnings and collateral from Inland Revenue’s transformation programme with organisations beginning their own transformations.IR's Business Transformation programme was subject to independent review from start to finish and Communications, which was assessed independently to Change Management, rated Green (good) throughout my time.

Auckland, New Zealand

Initial three-month contract to assess and manage impacts on customers of a multi-million dollar NavOne system implementation. Contract extended to include programme change and communications for two additional retail improvement programmes.

Auckland, New Zealand

During nine years at Fonterra, I developed and delivered successful communications, change and stakeholder management strategies across a range of programmes including the Cooperative’s two largest transformations of their time. In 2013, the final independent audit of the Value Stream Optimisation programme said: “The communications programme is of a very high standard and should be recognised and commended.” Highlights include: o Provided best practice communications and stakeholder management support for a three-year supply chain programme including:- Communications covering all phases from the development of the Vision, through delivery, readiness, cutover, go live and post go live support - Creating a stakeholder management tool and tracking stakeholder engagement throughout the programme- Leading process design workshops, with the additional aim of strengthening business engagement, showcasing sponsor support while underlining programme success- Creating impactful videos to explain complex concepts to employees of all levels including supply chain optimisation, master data and business rules- Providing collateral to support stakeholder engagement with impacted third parties including customers, vendors, banks and regulatory bodies.o Developed and implemented the internal and external communications strategy to support the outsourcing of Fonterra’s Applications Development and Maintenance to an offshore suppliero Brought in by FBNZ’s Anchor Franchise Network to stabilise stakeholder relations following a system implementation. Developed a short and long term communications and stakeholder strategy to rebuild commitment and trusto Responsible for Change Management on two global Business Intelligence and Security implementations o Developed and implemented the change and communications approach to introduce Fonterra’s new shareholder service support strategy to shareholders and staff

Auckland, New Zealand

Employed to re-engage employees mid-way through a CRM system implementation. As part of the senior management team, helped realign programme governance to maximise business engagement.

London, United Kingdom

Directed a team of eight Accenture and British Gas employees to deliver a successful business engagement and communications programme to support a Siebel implementation. This was part of a £450 million CRM and billing transformation programme for Centrica company, British Gas. The programme encompassed 27,000 employees and specifically 14,000 customer service agents based at 14 sites UK-wide, handling calls from 23 million customers. A key achievements in this role included re-engaging senior managers and stakeholders who were losing sight of the overall programme objectives.

London, United Kingdom

Managed communications on three SAP implementations including, R/3, EBP, ESS, BW and APO. Audiences ranged from stakeholders and Board Directors to end users and included external customers and suppliers. The communications programme was key to the fulfilment of the change management programme and was recognised to have played a major part in its success.

London, United Kingdom

Built a five-strong internal communications team to communicate with T-Mobile’s 8,000 employees, including 4,000 customer service agents. The role included editing the company’s newspaper, creating an on-line publication to communicate T-Mobile’s strategy and managing events across the company via satellite links

London, United Kingdom

Working closely with the Marketing team, ran the external communications programme for toy company Hasbro, to support promotional activities and manage issues including product recalls. Managed three London-based public relations agencies handling the accounts for Action Man, Waddington’s Games and other leading toy brands.

London, United Kingdom

Set up Larkspur Communications, a public relations agency in London, running a team of 20 full time staff with clients including Sony, The Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile, Virgin, Whitbread, the Prince of Wales, ProChile, Reckitt & Coleman. o Won national industry awards (PR Week) Best New Consultancy 1994, Best Small Consultancy 1996 and Best Business Campaign 1996 for work promoting Chile's economic stability.o Developed the PR launch strategy for the new mobile phone network One 2 One (now T-Mobile UK). The launch was considered by many in the retail industry to be the most successful of all the network launches.o Developed and implemented the corporate and consumer marketing communications campaign for Carphone Warehouse, the UK’s leading independent communications retailer, through its rapid expansion from five to 100 stores.

London, United Kingdom

As a freelance consultant, worked for many of the world’s leading agencies including Weber Shandwick, GCI Group (WPP) and The Rowland Company (Saatchi & Saatchi)Workstream lead on two pan-European communications campaigns for the European Union - 1990 Nutrition Dissemination Programme on Milk and Health for GCI Group - 1991 PHARE programme (economic investment in Poland and Hungary) with Coopers and Lybrand for GCI Group