Spotlight On… Kate
This month we’ll be focusing on our brilliant team, looking at what they do for Cosy Meerkat and what they love about their job. And of course we’re going to start with Kate…
Meet Kate Shanks, alpha female of the meerkat mob. Not that she likes to think of herself like that; imagine a mother hen and you’ll understand how Kate sees her role within the team. But because we’re sticking with our meerkat analogy (very nice animals who work collaboratively, much like our team), Kate is, in her own words, a ‘weird’ combination of an alpha, sentry and educator meerkat. Or the ultimate mother hen.
As the founder and Managing Director of Cosy Meerkat Kate inevitably does a lot of the core business work: financials, HR and development. But she always gets involved with new clients and projects, making sure to really get under the skin of what they actually need and not just what they think they need.
There is no typical day for Kate. Some days you’ll find her running focus groups or workshops with clients. Other days she’s deep in forecasts and budgets or preparing for a pitch. What she always makes time for, though, is a walk or run at about 8am, firing herself up for a day of creativity and meetings. Then there’s the mid-morning coffee with the team – a lovely opportunity to catch up on how they are, as well as pause for breath. A lover of the great outdoors, Kate can be found herding people outside for their coffees on the days we’re lucky enough to have sunshine. Then, at the end of the day, sometimes she’ll finish early so she can see her family, working later in the evening if she needs to. Other times, the hours are more regular. Kate loves the flexibility of being her own boss and of being able to offer that flexibility to her team as well.
She finds the most common problem clients want fixing is understanding whether their internal comms is doing its job. Once they’ve got that, clever companies are also taking a look at their culture and values. This year, in particular, comms audits have been a huge part of Cosy Meerkat’s work. With the pandemic forcing companies to introduce new communications channels at speed, many now want to review them, while also making sure they’re in touch with their workforce on a cultural level. Luckily, Kate loves analysing the results of our surveys and focus groups. And from there she’ll come up with workshops for the in-house comms team, where she gets everyone to take stock and thrash out exactly what needs to be done to improve.
Kate loves a lot about her work so it’s hard for her to pin down her favourite thing about her job, which is perhaps why she says she loves the variety. While she loves getting her to-do list under control, she also loves that she might start the day thinking she’s doing one thing and then have to switch completely to help a client with a crisis or because a new business opportunity crops up. She also loves working with the team to come up with creative ways to energise and excite the workforces we support. And she love, love, loves being able to offer people a job. So quite a few favourites there then.
Before starting Cosy Meerkat Kate’s most interesting job was as a singer in a band that styled themselves on The Commitments and she spent a great few years with them singing at weddings, pubs and events. She then funded her way through university by working full-time at Browns Restaurant in Bristol, getting paid a whopping £1.50 an hour. Yes, she says, she really is that old!
