My top 2 takeaways from the State of the Sector 2020 report
This morning I attended a sneak preview of the Gatehouse, a Gallagher company, State of the Sector 2020 annual report. In its 11th year and with over 1000 global respondents this is considered the largest market report and so it’s with a keen eye that internal communicators review the latest stats. There was unison as we nodded in agreement at some points and sighed in despair at others. IC professionals often work solo as a team of one so there is something comforting in being in a room full of other likeminded individuals facing similar issues to you – you are not alone! There is much data to crunch over but for me, two things stood out:
IC aligned with senior management – really?
Initially, I was encouraged that 70% felt they were aligned with senior management (up from 54% in 2018) on their understanding of what the internal comms function was there to deliver but then I saw that only 33% had a plan for 12+ months ahead and less than half (47%) said they produced reports for the senior leadership team. I’m wondering on what basis do that 70% believe they’re aligned without long-term strategies in place to deliver against and reports to present the outcomes. In what format is that alignment taking shape? An informal chat doesn’t suffice. A common complaint is that IC isn’t taken as seriously as external comms and marketing but I bet those teams are following longer-term strategies aligned to the business and are held accountable for reporting. As internal communicators it’s our responsibility to insist on delivering strategies and reports and take our seat at the table. In doing so we are putting ourselves on the hook, but we need to in order to be respected as strategic/trusted advisors and not just the go-to people for "sprinkling some comms magic".
Why don’t the top three challenges match the top three priorities? Again!
If the top three challenges for IC professionals are:
1. Volume of communications is too high
2. Hard to reach employees
3. Poor line manager communication skills
Then why are the top 3 priorities:
1. Communication purpose, strategy, values
2. Communicating a change programme
3. Developing/refreshing an IC strategy
Poor line manager communications skills have been a top challenge in recent years but how do we think that will shift without making it one of our priorities? Elsewhere in the report we saw that 39% provide communication training and coaching – this is a great result and evidence that organisations are seeing the benefit of having a professional IC resource. Let’s take that knowledge and share more of it, working towards solving the problem. Who’s internal L&D team wouldn’t want to benefit from a free resource? It’s something I think we need to believe we can be the solution for (even if partially) and turn our attention to in 2020. That investment of your time and effort will have much wider positive repercussions on the overall employee experience – which is already on our radar with 66% viewing IC as a key driver of employee experience and 70% saying they are involved in driving the people agenda. I hope to see those stats much higher in 2021 given communication touches every aspect of the employee lifecycle/experience.
The report will be made public mid-February, I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.
#internalcomms #internalcommunications #stateofthesector2020 #employeeexperience