Ceos Want More Emphasis On Internal Stakeholders From Comms Leaders

(MENAFN- PRovoke) Five key takeaways:

• CEOs are looking for "T-shaped communications expertise-broad in depth in a certain area such as employees, sustainability, or finance."
• CEOs want their CCOs to increasingly focus on strategic issues such as culture, mission, values, and change
• Chief communications and human resources officer is now the second most common "CCO-plus" role (after CCO/CMO}
• Employees interact with external stakeholders so much that CCOs need to understand "mixternal" communications
• More CCOs now report into human resources, while the number reporting to CMOs is declining.

CEOs view“reputation building” as the most important role for their chief communications officer, which won't come as any surprise, but in a finding that suggests a shift in views of the role, CCOs are also increasingly expected to focus on the internal audience: on employee engagement, recruitment and retention, and on culture, mission, and values.

The Conference Board's Marketing & Communications Center asked CCOs to identify the three things that their CEOs wanted more focus on, and while 42% cited corporate reputation, the next two priorities were“employee experience, engagement, satisfaction, talent development and recruitment” (39% of respondents), and“company culture, values, mission, change management” (22%).

That put a focus on employees some way ahead of“financial storytelling” or“investor narrative';“brand communication”; or“public affairs/policy.” (The question was open-ended, and the responses were then grouped together by the researchers.) That, in turn, suggests that both CEOs and their senior communications professionals are placing greater emphasis on employee communications.

Needed: T-Shaped Communications Expertise

The Conference Board reports that the CCO role has evolved from a“more reactive service function often focused on executing requests, crisis management, and serving as the company spokesperson to a more strategic, integrative function as advisor to senior leadership,” providing input into decisions about company policy.

As a result, the scope of CCOs' responsibilities“has expanded to a range of constituencies and topics that require T-shaped communications expertise-broad in depth in a certain area such as employees, sustainability, or finance.”

One result, this new report suggests, is that“CCO-plus” titles now proliferate: such as chief communications and marketing officer or chief communications and human resources officer. The latter, says The Conference Boarf's director of marketing & communications research Denise Dahlhoff, has emerged as the second most common“CCO+” addition after marketing.

“The CEO wants to know, 'what do our stakeholders think?'” Dahlhoff says.“And that includes employees. So they want the CCO to be the ears to the ground, talk with employees, talk with employee resource groups to hear their points of views. It's not just issues, but anything that the company might do. To anticipate, 'If we did that, how would our employees respond? Is there support for that?' So that's the culture, right? And the communications person is not a mediator, exactly, but somebody who connects the CEO.”

Comms in a Multi-Stakeholder World

Historically, the scope of the CCO's role has varied widely from company to company-and often within companies from CCO to CCO, as newcomers to the role have found that the parameters of the role are subject to incursion by other disciplines.

So while CCOs are almost always responsible for corporate reputation broadly defined executive communications, and crisis response, their involvement in communications with other stakeholders is sometimes delegated to other functions: human resources taking charge of employee communications; the CFO managing investor relations; the legal department handling government affairs. And of course, the marketing department almost always handling the customer relationship.

The Page Society has long advocated for an expanded view of the CCOs role in managing most or all of these stakeholder concerns-as has this publication-but a consistenc broad definition of the role has been elusive.

Still, recent years have seen some clear trends in how the best companies approach the communications role. Our own Influence 100 research suggests that top tier CCOs are increasingly being recruited from government and political campaign backgrounds precisely because of the increasing need to integrate communications and public affairs.

And Dahlhoff points to Conference Board showing that“communications and marketing” remains the most common“communications-plus” title among their members, while this new report shows that significant numbers of their respondents cite financial storytelling and investor relations; brand communications, including customer satisfaction; and public affairs and policy among their top priorities.

Still, it is the emphasis placed by CEOs on employee communications, culture and values that stands out.

Internal? External? Mixternal

There are some obvious reasons why internal communications has become a higher priority in recent years-and particularly since the COVID pandemic-Dahlhoff says.

“In recent years, companies have paid more attention to employees,” she says.“Originally, that got a really big boost during Covid, and remote work. But there were other things at play. All the issues and uncertainties in the world have created a greater need for companies to speak with their employees. There was the right labor market, and then employees wanted their company to take a stand on things.

“I think companies realize, first of all, that they need to keep the employees they have. They don't have to hire all the time. And then they realize that employees can be more productive, they can be more innovative, and they can serve as promoters on the street or on LinkedIn.”

The report cites one respondent CCO describing an increased focus on the need to explain the business strategy to employees, which helps to leverage employees as a key constituency and brand advocate. Often, employees are the first and sometimes only constituency to receive company news and updates.

But in the social media age, they will inevitably share that news outside the company, with external stakeholders.“There's a realization that anything you say internally is bound to end up externally somehow,” she says.“The wall between external and internal is already coming down.”

In that environment, a company's relationship with employees will inevitably influence and impact its relationships with external stakeholders-who can evaluate the authenticity of company communications with how closely those messages align with what they are hearing from ordinary employees.

Reflecting that reality, Dahlhoff says that her research points toward the rise of what she calls a“mixternal” communications role, which recognizes the crucial interplay of internal and external communications.

Culture is Key

If the relationship between internal and external perceptions is now obvious to all, The Conference Board research points to a growing realization that corporate culture and corporate reputation are equally inseparable-most companies have the reputation that their culture deserves.

Not only that, but cultural issues are particularly salient in crisis management. A look at some of the biggest, most persistent, and most damaging crises of the recent past (BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the collapse fof Silicon Valley Bank, the ongoing problems at Boeing) were exacerbated or extended by serious cultural problems, while companies with strong, healthy cultures tend to bounce back faster-and often stronger than before.

Not only do toxic cultures make it difficult to escape crises-they may also make companies more crisis-prone. In the wake of the Enron crisis, I spoke with experts at a risk management conference in New York, and one of the most interesting conversations involved the ways in which experts might evaluate the risk of crisis. We came up with three questions:

Not only do toxic cultures make it difficult to escape crises-they may also make companies more crisis-prone. In the wake of the Enron crisis, I spoke with experts at a risk management conference in New York, and one of the most interesting conversations involved the ways in which experts might evaluate the risk of crisis. We came up with three questions:

• Does your company have strong values?
• Does management act in accordance with those values?
• Are employees empowered to make decisions based on those values?
  I still believe that companies who are able to answer yes to all

I still believe that companies who are able to answer yes to all three of those questions are significantly less vulnerable to crisis.

And so it is exciting to see from The Conference Board survey that more and more companies see“culture, mission, and values” as one of the top three priorities for their senior communications executives.

First, because as Dahlhoff says,“they want the CCO to be the ears to the ground, talk with employees, talk with employee resource groups to hear their points of views.” An important part of the CCO's role, in this regard, is ensuring that employees understand the mission and the values of the company and that their understanding of the culture aligns with what management is striving to achieve.

And then, because only by communicating clearly and consistently inside the company about the kind of behaviors management expects and rewards can a CEO's vision for the corporate culture be reflected in organizational behavior.

Changing PR/HR Relationship

With communications executives playing an expanded role in employee engagement, values, culture and change management, it is inevitable that the relationship between the public relations and human resources functions is changing.

In addition to The Conference Board's observations of CCO-plus roles, a 2023 report from Korn/Ferry found that fewer CCOs report to the chief marketing officer (9%, down from 12% in the previous study) while more now report to the chief human resources officer (13% in 2023, up from 9% in 2015)-another indication of a closer relationship between the two disciplines.

This aligns with Dahlhoff's own observation or the new hybrid roles, in which she sees human resources executives taking charge of the two functions more frequently than she sees communications executives absorbing the HR function. The reason, she speculates, is that human resources is seen by management as a function requiring greater technical knowledge.

But that doesn't imply a“turf war” between the two disciplines.“t's all about integration,” says Dahloff.“If your comms team focuses so much on internal it makes sense that they would be part of the HR team. It's not a power struggle, it's more complementary and integrated.

At this point, communications executives are familiar with the need to collaborate with other, adjacent disciplines, whether marketing, finance, or legal. They understand the value of building stronger relationships between their function and those with which they interact within the organization.

Collaboration will be critical. But the opportunity to contribute more on critical issues such as culture and values, change management, employee engagement, and“mixternal” communications is one communicators must seize.

MENAFN01122024000219011063ID1108944142