Astute.Work owner and management and PR consultant Sarah Waddington was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to public relations and voluntary sectors. Here she talks about social purpose and how everyone can do their bit to make life better.
There are three things North East entrepreneur and activist Sarah Waddington wants people to think about as they go about their business. 1) Everyone can make a difference in their own way. 2) Business leaders can create change if they place social purpose at the core of their work. 3) Nobody operates in isolation; success comes when everyone in a business or community comes together to do their bit. It’s a drum she’s been banging particularly loudly since founding her business, Astute.Work over twelve years ago, which perhaps makes it no surprise that she was awarded a CBE in the June 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours. “I had absolutely no idea,” said Sarah. “When the confidential email landed at 5.58pm on the Thursday just two weeks before the list was published, I was taken aback. I’m absolutely thrilled but there has been an element of shell shock. “The loveliest bit has been the wave of well wishes and how pleased people are to see a female leader from the region and the public relations industry recognised. Everyone needs role models and the question is how to harness this now to achieve even more positive change on a local and national scale.” Sarah’s 20+ year career has always been in PR and marketing and broadened out into management consultancy following the launch of her agency Astute.Work. Set up in 2019, this pioneered a virtual working model and only works with organisations that put purpose and society first. Its clients include the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, Children’s Cancer North, FW Capital, The Common Room of the Great North, GBB, Health Education England and Cloudfm. A lifelong contribution to the public relations industry includes more than 20-years volunteering for the professional body, the CIPR, where Sarah held roles at regional, national and board level. She was President of the Institute in its 70th anniversary year in 2018, driving an agenda of management practice. “Public relations is a critical function for a business and often much misunderstood and under-rated. People get fixated with media relations but it’s so much more. PR is the discipline that looks after reputation, which affects shareholder value, and it helps build relationships with the audiences that matter. If you need to engage with and motivate stakeholders, it’s PR you need,” said Sarah. “Where a business has a clearly articulated purpose, which puts people and society first, it positively impacts organisational performance, profile and profits. There’s a body of evidence to prove it.” After a four-year spell volunteering as a Trustee for The Sunshine Fund, which provides life changing equipment to children with disabilities, Sarah joined the advisory group overseeing Max and Keira’s Law – the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act which came into effect in May 2020. She continues to hold a role as a local IoD ambassador. In 2015 she launched and self-funded the #FuturePRoof community to share management expertise with practitioners in a bid to improve social mobility in the comms sector. Since then the community has published six books and a number of white papers on a range of topics including NHS communications, disinformation, influencer relations and management communication. Her latest passion project is her most ambitious yet. With husband Stephen, Sarah has launched a new community interest company called Socially Mobile, a not-for-profit PR school aimed at equipping the workforce of today for the management challenges of tomorrow. It is focused on practitioners from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and under-served groups. “There are so many issues that demand our attention right now as COVID has made an unequal society even more so. The gaps between those who have and who don’t just continue to widen,” said Sarah. “But everyone can do their bit. The key is to find an issue that interests you most as there is a lot of value and reward in working in a space that you care about. You’ll do much more and keep it going for much longer.” It’s a message Sarah is keen that businesses heed too. “There’s only so much you can do as an individual. Businesses, especially as they grow, have real influence and every day make decisions that impact the environment and the communities around them. “This is why Impact Reports are so important and should be embraced by organisations, rather than just traditional financial reporting. Stakeholders require so much more than that from brands. Come to mention it, this is another area in which PR can help!”
