Where have all the internal communications consultancies gone?

In a recent conversation with a FTSE100 corporate affairs director he posed the rhetorical question “where have all the internal communications consultancies gone.” The question was asked in the context of his observation that his CEO now spends at least 60% of his time focused on employees vs external stakeholders (and as a highly politicised and regulated company it has more than its fair share of external stakeholders to manage).?

The answer, of course, is that there are plenty of consultancies out there, but they don’t always badge themselves as internal communications. Most of them are also quite small, quite specialist (design, copywriting, digital, channel and media analytics, employee experience, employee research) and there are no well-known ‘brands’ as such, though I may be taken to task for that observation. ?

It is field that is also full of independent contractors, often ex in-house people, who go into organisations to add arms and legs, or experience, mainly to change programmes.

It’s also fair to say that many corporate affairs and communications directors delegate employee communications and engagement related agency selection and management with their heads of internal communication, so they don’t really know who’s out there. Whereas with big external reputation/stakeholder mandates they are almost always closely involved. ?

Those of a certain age will remember that it was different back in the late 90’s and noughties when there were a small number of big, full service internal and change communications consultancies that would have been known to many corporate comms/affairs directors as well as HRDs.

But for various reasons they had all disappeared (one of these being that in-house capability grew) and over the past ten years the marketplace has fragmented into small specialist niches; few of these specialist agencies employ over twenty staff.

It is a totally different picture with their external comms/affairs counterparts, many of which are big established full service agencies employing over 300 people (many more for those with, or part of, global networks).?Several of these do have an internal comms/employee engagement capability, hence full service, but it’s not what they are known for and it is certainly not the core of their business.?

It is interesting to see what the alumni of the big IC consultancies referred to above are doing now and how they position themselves. They have all developed or evolved their own niche skills/area of expertise encompassing one or a combination of the following: CEO advisory; people and culture change; aligning leadership, strategy and culture; leadership communications capability building; organisational development.

Most of their mandates involve working with different leadership groups to help them work more effectively and cohesively (“better conversations” etc) which in turn requires them to design and facilitate workshops and group discussions. Hence their clients tend to be CEOs, HR teams, CTOs, rarely corporate affairs/comms directors.

Most prefer not to work with the communications function since it is rarely the source of the work they do and want to do. And, as one of them remarked to me

“You don’t go to a communications director to get budget for these things.”

Sometimes this has been a natural evolution of their expertise into areas that interest them and in the case of one of these alumni I spoke to, it was just simple reinvention, ?

“I transitioned out of internal communications ten years ago and had to pick new words to describe what I was doing and settled on change management.”

Compare and contrast this with the in-house IC function which has not followed the same trajectory over the same period and could do with a bit of reinvention itself. However, unlike consultants who have the luxury of (re)positioning themselves, the IC function is constrained by historic colleague and leader perceptions of its purpose, role and value which have not evolved that much; and which can limit the ambitions of the function and the role it would like to play.

To break free of these shackles the internal communications function not only requires leadership of real authority and influence, it needs someone who has a clear and ambitious vision for the function and the outcomes it drives, as well as a leader who is determined, resilient, firm and uncompromising.

Also, unlike their external comms/relations colleagues who get this from their agency partners, internal communications leaders lack a wise and experienced sounding board. Having spoken to a few of them, and I am talking about experienced FTSE20 group directors of internal comms, I know for a fact that they really miss having someone to go to for sage counsel. Most of their bosses are more experienced and knowledgeable in the external stakeholder world, so they don’t have much insight to impart.

It is a pity that these experienced alumni (and others of their type) don’t work with communications teams because these are the types of advisors and consultants that IC leaders need access to, the sounding board they would welcome. There may, however, be a solution to this and it is something I am investigating.

A thought to finish with - given the ascendancy of employees in the stakeholder hierarchy, is now an opportune moment to launch a full service internal communications consultancy? One, that like some of its corporate communications equivalents, has different practice areas and is plugged in all the way up to c-suite. ?Is there a clear gap and need?

The alumni we spoke to were evenly split on this (lumpy revenue stream, fewer retainers compared to PR), but further research among the potential buyers of such an offer, which we are planning to conduct, should produce some more interesting findings. Watch this space.?