Every year, the CEB Communications Executive Council surveys the head of communications in our membership on their upcoming 2013 strategies and priorities. This year we asked our membership about the highest priorities for their company; what they see as being key to improving the effectiveness of their function, the key obstacles to execution, and the focus of their Communications strategy for 2013. Despite broad geographic distribution of respondents and diverging scope of operations (ranging from local to global companies), several universal themes emerged from the survey’s results.
Trend #1
The current economic environment is all about driving efficiencies within organization and attracting talent. Eighty percent of respondents ranked driving efficiencies as one of the top company top strategic objectives, and 66 percent are looking at ways their companies can attract more of the “right” talent.
Trend #2
Communications function is all about transforming into better consultative partner and partnering with other functions to drive business results. 77 percent of communicators see better partnership with other functions as the key to improving the effectiveness of communications function; 73 percent want to take more consultative approach.
Trend #3
Communicators report that they are finding it even harder to reach their target audiences with content and messages because of change fatigue, organizational disruptions and increasingly noisy environment. 69 percent of communicators cited change fatigue as high obstacle to comms successful strategy execution, organizational disruptions and noise come in close second with 48 percent citing them as a key obstacle.
Trend #4
Improving leadership communications, driving employee engagement and connecting peers-to-peers are top areas heads of comms see themselves focusing on to succeed in 2013. 77 percent of heads of communications reported that they will be focusing on leaders and employee engagement significantly more relative to previous years; connecting employees to their peers to drive agility is another item high on agendas for 66 percent of communicators.
We are curious to hear how these play out in your organization. Feel free to take our quick 5 min survey or leave us a comment!
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on September 27, 2012
Respond
I couldnt agree more with the above trends.
“Re-engaging” with employees , ensuring the employees are in agreement of the fact that the organisation is headed in the right direction and reiterating their worth in the organisation is of utmost importance in the current scenario.
The above will also to an extent impact employee retention
on September 27, 2012
Respond
“Consultant”, “consultative”, and variations thereof are the latest trend phrases as well. Communicators, in particular, need to use them with caution. For many, these trend terms may have a positive connotation and deliver the intended message that communicators are listening and observing more. But in those organizations suffering from change fatigue in particular, they may not be received in the way intended. And in times of economic instability, they can create “false signals” of downsizing efforts. As communicators we should be even more aware of how trend phrasing is going to impact our organization (good or bad) and get ahead of their common usage to be certain the correct message is being sent and received. Enjoyed the article VERY much!