✅ Unlocking the strategic value of internal communications
Your week ahead in management, media and public relations
Internal communications has the potential to be a valuable strategic management function within organisations. It temporarily achieved this status as part of the broader public relations or corporate communications function during the COVID-19 pandemic but is now reverting to a less strategic role in many cases.
Throughout the pandemic senior practitioners joined emergency response, resilience and management teams to help manage the public health emergency, changes to supply chains, stakeholder relationships and changing working patterns.
My keynote at the CIPR Inside Summit last week explored what internal communicators can do to assert their role.
The Gallagher State of the Sector 2023/24 report sets out the business case for internal communications based on its contribution to culture, strategic alignment and value creation. It’s typically measured using employee engagement. I’d go further and add productivity and profitability.
Thanks to the European Communication Monitor study, we know what good looks like. We also know that four out of five functions are suboptimal.
The ECM has been conducted annually since 2007 and is the largest worldwide. It sets out the optimal operating environment for internal communication as part of the broader corporate communications function at organisational, functional and practitioner levels.
My own research has identified two fundamental areas that need to be addressed if internal communications is to achieve its optimal value and recognition as a management function.
Aligning internal communications work with the organisation's objectives in ways that management understands, using data, insights and measurement.
Improving the domain and management expertise of internal communications practitioners through learning, development and qualifications.
Practitioners need to invest in their own growth and development to build the credibility and skills necessary to influence management decisions and drive meaningful change within their organisations.
There’s a full copy of the speech on our blog.
Have an excellent week.
Research
🛍 PR DRIVES CONSUMPTION: A recent study published in Science Direct by an international group of scientists highlights an inconvenient truth for the public relations industry. Human consumption exceeds the earth’s natural resources by almost two. The study argues that public relations practice is a contributing factor to ecological overshoot and calls on it to play a role in challenging and changing shifts in consumption and waste. Source: Stephen Waddington.
⚠️ SAFETY DISCONNECT: A new report found that Boeing employees did not understand or trust the company's stated commitment to safety, revealing a disconnect between Boeing's public values and internal culture. Corporate communicators can help identify potential crises by surveying employees to uncover misalignments between a company's stated principles and its real-world culture. Source: PRovoke.
Social media
🏭 LINKEDIN'S COLLABORATIVE CONUNDRUM: Questions remain about the value and impact of LinkedIn collaborative articles as a knowledge repository. There is no barrier to entry and the platform's focus on the reach and engagement of articles prioritises quantity over quality. It floods feeds with contributions that serve as a vehicle for self-promotion rather than learning and development. Source: Social Media Today.
Artificial intelligence
💻 AI PRODUCTIVITY THRESHOLD: According to vendor-led research from Microsoft, its AI assistant Copilot users start seeing value and building an AI habit when they save just 11 minutes per day over 11 weeks. It found that after 11 weeks, most Copilot users reported improved productivity and the ability to attend fewer meetings. Source: Microsoft.
✨ UN AI RESOLUTION: The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution on artificial intelligence (AI), encouraging countries to safeguard human rights, protect personal data and monitor risks. It is the latest initiative by governments worldwide to shape AI's development amid fears it could be used to disrupt democratic processes, fraud and lead to job losses. Source: Reuters.
©️ COPYRIGHT-FREE AI: The release of Common Corpus, the largest AI training dataset composed entirely of public domain text and the certification of KL3M, the first large language model built without copyright infringement, suggest that large AI language models can be trained without using copyrighted data: It challenges claims by OpenAI that is not possible to train AI models without using copyrighted content. Source: Wired.
Media
🧑💻️ FREELANCE INEQUITY: Freelance journalists in the UK who work full-time earn an average of £27,000 per year. An ACLS report also found that freelance journalism in the UK also faces a class problem, with the profession being overwhelmingly composed of individuals from privileged socio-economic backgrounds. Source: ACLS.
Industry
🗞 COPY, RIGHT: A CIPR webinar aimed to improve relationships between the public relations industry and intellectual property licencing agencies. It raised the question of why the public relations industry should pay copyright fees when it is often the original content source. Copyright passes to the publisher as part of the editorial process. A change to the law would require the industry to make a collective case to the government. Source: Wadds Inc.
👤 BAGNALL HONOURED: Richard Bagnall, who has worked in the public relations and communications industry for more than 30 years and served as chairman of AMEC for more than six years, will receive the 2024 PRovoke Media Individual Achievement SABRE Award. Bagnall is recognised for his significant contributions to the industry, particularly in measurement and evaluation. Source: PRovoke.
▶️ PESO REFRESH: An updated version of the PESO model developed by Gini Dietrich focuses on the outcomes of public relations activities across paid, earned, shared and owned media. It codifies the use of integrated media for building credibility, distribution, storytelling, reach, community building, SEO, lead generation and navigating the pay-to-play landscape. Source: Spin Sucks.
Thank you to the following members of our community for sharing and debating stories covered in the newsletter over the past week: Rod Cartwright. Alan Morrison, Maja Pawinska Sims, Andrew Bruce Smith and Sarah Waddington CBE.
We’re taking a break next week and will return on 8 April.