COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

Executive Summary

1.   Internal communication professionals come from a broad range of backgrounds, including marketing, journalism and project management.

2.   Just under half plan to stay in the field, although internal communication professionals today are less likely to see the internal communications department as a stepping stone to other careers than used to be the case.

3.   At an individual level, internal communication practitioners –­ and in particular the heads of internal communication – are expected to have a high level of strategic understanding as well as commercial awareness and change management skills.

4.   Several organizations have attempted to define communication competence at an individual level. Among them is GTE, where the public affairs department has developed a clearly defined set of core competencies for communications practitioners.

5.   Although individuals within internal communication departments appear to be less formally qualified than their 1996 counterparts, the function as a whole is demonstrating higher levels of communications competency.

6.   Most communications professionals believe that raising the organization's communications competence should be part of their remit. However, just over half have a planned process for doing so.

7.   A recent item/IABC study⁴⁰ identified four organizational-level factors that seemed to result in the most successful communications programmes. These aspects, collectively known as the organization's communications competence, are:

        -      a clear purpose which is shared by the leaders and communicated to everyone involved in the business or programme

        -      effective, trusting interfaces between leaders and employees, between departments or divisions, and between the business and its customers

        -      systems and networks which allow employees to access information and share ideas and opinions

        -      leadership behaviour which is consistent with the formal and informal messages given out by leaders.

8.   Improving cross-functional and cross-divisional interfaces helped global industrial company GKN create an effective change communication strategy.

9.   Internal communication professionals feel that they have little influence over their managers' communicators skills, ranking it as one of their most difficult roles and the one at which they feel they have been least successful.

10.   According to Sue Solomons, internal communication consultant for British soft drink firm Diageo, the competencies needed in order to be a successful internal communications practitioner include resilience, commercial awareness and the ability to deal with a broad cross-section of people, as well as such practical skills as writing, news-gathering and presenting information clearly. Solomons notes that many people are reluctant to commit to a long-term career in the internal communication field and that skilled internal communication professionals are increasingly difficult to find.

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