Season 10, Episode 4: Internal Communications: from broadcasting to better connection

What's really interesting is that you've seen internal comms from a lot of different angles, which is really good.

And it's really nice to have that perspective in the podcast.

And from your point of view, how would you describe the state of internal comms today and what feels different compared to, say, three or four years ago?

Yeah, so because internal communications is sort of relatively new as a profession, sort of in the grand scheme of things, we're continuing to see this professionalization of it.

So we're having more and more qualifications come out.

There's a master's now that people can do, which is amazing.

So just this real shift towards actually knowing what works, like I said, instead of this kind of gut feeling, it's a nice to have.

It's sort of becoming an actual profession where people really know what they're doing.

It's a bit more measurable.

We've got great institutions that support us in our own sort of program of education.

understanding and how we work.

We've got communities of practice.

And then there is this kind of shift, at least I hope so, towards it being seen as a more strategic function as well.

So rather than just the sending out of stuff, the pinging of emails across an organisation, it is seen more as this function that actually helps the business do what they need to do, that helps them achieve their outcomes.

So I think we're really, really shifting in that direction.

And that's definitely accelerated in the last few

years.

And picturing the environment now, so there is hybrid work, there is nonstop change, there's new tools all the time, AI is popping up everywhere, there is economic and organizational churn.

That's the context that employees are really living and working in right now, which is quite a lot of things happening at the same time.

And given that reality, when you look across organizations today, what are the biggest challenges? challenges or the biggest challenges that internal communication teams are facing or grappling with right now? Yeah,

pretty much everything you just said, all of those challenges, anything that affects an organisation, affects its employees.

And obviously, that's not just in the context of work.

It's outside of work as well.

People's time is more squeezed.

Their finances are more squeezed.