Why don’t more internal communicators and PR practitioners get qualified? Is it because we don’t understand the personal and professional benefits of doing so, or are we just too distracted by other forms of recognition? So far, October has been a rather busy month for me with a predominantly ‘academic’ theme. For the last few years, I’ve been a tutor and assessor for some of the CIPR’s accredited internal communication qualifications. After more than 20 years working in communications and IC, it’s one aspect of my work which I can truly and honestly say I still have a real passion for. The ..read more

Much of the regular trend tracking and internal communications industry analysis is based on practitioner views, which often feels like IC professionals marking their own homework. So, it’s refreshing to see a new report which is based on the views of employees on internal communication performance and practice in organisations. Based on research with 3000 UK workers across a balanced range of organisations by size and sector, I think that this report just became my ‘go to’ source of current industry practice performance and insights. It comes from a research collaboration between Karian an ..read more

As an internal communicator how can you ignite change in your organisation without burning the house down and creating lots of resistance to it? This starts by adopting a particular mindset in how you think about change, before you try to communicate anything about it.   It’s sometimes said that change communication is now a part of every internal communicator’s role and that it is no longer a distinct area of practice. However, I’m seeing more and more internal communication roles which are badged as being purely about the planning and implementation of change communication. This sugg ..read more

Urban dictionary: ‘A culture vulture is a person who adopts something from a different community and makes it their own.’ Is internal communication becoming a culture vulture? One of the key findings in this years’ Gallagher State of the Sector Report surprised me. That for the first time (on average) more internal communicators (74%) said that the purpose of internal communication is to support culture and belonging, overtaking our assumed long-standing purpose of creating strategic alignment (67%). Really? This revelation made me wonder exactly what elements of culture internal communicat ..read more

There is a midlife crisis in workplaces everywhere. There are millions of over 50s who are economically inactive and are unwilling to return to work because they are not understood or supported in the workplace. Are internal communicators unwittingly colluding with other organisational functions to create and promote workplace cultures which are toxic for the over 50s, because we don’t make the effort to properly understand them? Earlier this week, UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was urging the over 50s to ‘get off the golf course’ and go back to the workplace to help save the UK economy from obl ..read more

How can leaders whose lived experience is so different from those they are appointed to lead ever be ‘in touch’ with what those people think and feel? The answer lies in the competence of the advisors they surround themselves with and the quality of the advice those advisors dispense. The equation is simple to understand. No good advice = poor leadership. According to a recent YouGov opinion poll two thirds of Britons believe the new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is out of touch with ordinary people because of his wealth. Apparently, Sunak and his wife are worth an estimated £730 million, wh ..read more

As an internal communicator what sort of organisational leader would you prefer to work with, the master or the servant? In my time I have worked with many organisational leaders, some who were at the extremes of the master and servant continuum, and others who were somewhere in between. Regardless of their position in the master servant spectrum, leaders always set the context and tone for the communication activity that happens in organisations, as was recently highlighted in this excellent piece of research into line manager communication from CIPR Inside. As well as heavily influencing th ..read more

We have barely begun our period of mourning and our grief is raw. There is some comfort to be had. So many words have been spoken and shared over the last few days, since the sad loss of Her Majesty the Queen last Thursday.   A huge question now looms in my consciousness, and likely that of many others. How can life continue, now that she is gone? How can I, and others, come to terms with the absence of the only Monarch and Head of State many of us have ever known? Her abrupt passing was hardly unexpected but I, like many others, have been shocked by the intensity of my feelings of los ..read more

It’s surprising what some people working in the internal communications profession, and organisational stakeholders, think we should have responsibility for. We should be careful what we claim ownership of, willingly or through coercion. Where do the boundaries of our remit lie, as internal communication practitioners and as a function, in organisations these days? What really shouldn’t be on our to-do lists? I am sometimes surprised by what some people working in our profession, and our organisational stakeholders, think we should have responsibility for. We should be careful what we claim ..read more

When you are presented with a task or challenge of elephantine proportions, that at first seems insurmountable, how can you tackle it and what lessons can be learnt from the experience? Today is a big day for me. The new version of the post-graduate internal communication certificate course I am the course leader for, is now available for new students to enrol on. For the last few months I’ve had my head in the text books updating the course content and repackaging it into an ‘on demand’ format for a new digital learning platform. It has been a big task, and I have to say, a bit of a learni ..read more