If corporate affairs disappeared, would anybody notice?

For a function that has more ebbs and flows than the Atlantic Ocean, corporate affairs professionals are remarkably chipper about their status. Hat tip to Mark Hutcheon, director at Deloitte UK: his recent report Corporate Affairs: the road to 2030 has filled my LinkedIn feed since it was published. The only trouble is… I don’t think the corporate affairs professionals sharing ad nauseum that they are now seen as ‘growth drivers’ actually read the full 80-pages.

For a start, the term ‘growth drivers’ is how 43 per cent of those surveyed by Mr H self-identify their function. It may not actually be how they are viewed by others. In fact, the report stresses that there is much work to be done before the function is universally accepted as indispensable.

To me, a casual observer, the function appears in a permanent state of two steps forward, one back. One chief executive might understand the value that corporate affairs brings to an organisation, and devote time and resource to build the function, while their successor might take a contrarian view and downgrade its positioning.

How often have we seen phenomenal corporate affairs teams get broken up? Too often, I am sad to say. Nobody ever takes the wrecking ball to the finance department, but corporate affairs does seems to be fair game.

It’s why I was interested to read a piece (again on LinkedIn) by , chief communications officer at CWS in Minneapolis, who posited the question: if your communications team disappeared tomorrow, would your organisation miss the work or the business impact?

As he points out, comms teams today are being asked to do more than ever while simultaneously facing budget cuts and increased scrutiny. Thompson believes that the value of a comms function lies in driving measurable business outcomes rather than activity.

But for a function that is said to understand reputation management, it can do a remarkably poor job of promoting its own within an organisation. Thompson offers a four-step approach.

1) Know your reputation
Comms professionals are adept at understanding how different stakeholders view their organisations, conducting regular mapping and audits, but do they ever ask how their function is perceived internally? What does the CEO or CFO really view their work? And is that view consistent across different leaders?

 2) Build a narrative
Start with purpose – what does your function exist to do? Can you state in one clear sentence what communications contributes to business outcomes? Would the CEO or CFO be able to repeat that back verbatim when challenged on your raison d’être?

3) Document your proof points
Thompson says that the moments where communications made a difference need to be captured and shared with the people who control your budgets. If they aren’t documented, it is, he claims, almost impossible to shift perception.

4) Work on the right things
If the function is simply known for the volume of work that it produces, it has a brand problem. Thompson questions those who are too busy producing stuff to actually attend meetings where decisions are made. I’d also argue that, for a function that claims to bring the outside in, attending external events, like (er) the Corporate Affairs Summit on 7 October is essential. As Thompson points out: a function that leads with craft over contribution to business outcomes will always be at risk.

Don’t let the rest of the business write the narrative for your team, he concludes.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am referring to my upcoming Corporate Affairs Summit and not a rival summit run by an organisation called Haymarket that takes place on the same day! But if you do choose to spend as much as £729+VAT there, rather than a more reasonable £125+VAT to join 250 peers at the British Library, I wouldn’t go boasting to finance that you understand business. Just saying!)

What makes a winning team?

Thompson’s observations also rang true for me when I reviewed the winning entries for the Best In-house teams at last year’s CorpComms Awards. We award three trophies and the winners were, as follows, Best in-house corporate communications team: Virgin Media O2, Best in-house media relations team: Evri, and Best in-house internal communications team: The Global Employee and Partnering Communications at Rio Tinto.

Each team operates in very different industries. Each was at a different stage in their development - Evri was just one year old, Virgin Media O2 represented the merging of two established functions while Rio Tinto was more mature - but each spoke about the importance of their purpose. And underpinning each articulation was the need to support the strategies of their respective businesses.

Every example of their work or campaign, which they offered in their entries, connected back to that strategy. For Virgin Media O2, it was about powering, protecting and growing the business, while Evri’s role was to transform perceptions and support growth and Rio Tinto’s team focused on culture and reputation, which linked directly to business strategy.

All three also had clear operating models and offered insights into how they worked collaboratively. Rio Tinto, which operates a 24/7 service from three hubs, even co-created its manifesto: A pod of dolphins always beats a shark.

Each was obsessed with measuring the success of their work, although the metrics may differ. Virgin Media O2 started out by asking colleagues whether it did a good job with its communications and whether, as a result, they understood its contribution to the business, and tracking progress. For Evri, which faces the challenge of a predominantly self-employed workforce, a key metric was its kill rate - which I assume relates to negative stories rather than irritating journalists.

But key to each of these winning entries was the way in which they shared the culture, capability and people development within their teams. They consistently showed that great results come from great, collaborative teams.

There is still time to enter your team into this year’s CorpComms Awards, or indeed your campaigns, annual reports, new initiatives or agency. The final closing date is 31 July and the trophies will be presented at a gala celebration on 15 October - a bit earlier than usual.

IN CONVERSATION WITH

Rory Carroll, director of communications, Electrical Safety First

When Electrical Safety First launched its groundbreaking (and CorpComms Awards winning) Battery Breakdown report in July 2023, it was the first time that many people became aware of the potential dangers of lithium-ion batteries, which power e-bikes and e-scooters.

The 60-page report exposed the risks of poor quality batteries, conversion kits and chargers, often bought from online marketplaces, that could cause house fires. But not just any old fire.

‘It’s a ferocious fire. It’s not like your toaster going on fire. It’s a thermal runway,’ explains Electrical Safety First’s director of communications Rory Carroll. ‘It creates its own oxygen and the smoke is highly toxic. It’s like a flame thrower.’

Indeed, one lithium-ion battery has as much explosive power as six hand grenades.

Make a land grab

If nothing else – own About Us

In my most recent newsletter, I highlighted how corporate websites increasingly matter because, as Chris Corrigan, growth officer at IDX explained to delegates at the Corporate Affairs Summit Ireland, the AI bots are reading them.

At a meet up for comms professionals recently, it was pointed out that a corporate website can have many masters and consequently the sections comms actually control may be quite limited, which can be frustrating in this new world of GEO.

If that is the case, then Darryl Sparey, co-founder of Hard Numbers, advised making a case for comms to own the About Us section. His agency has conducted many GEO audits for clients and has discovered that, too often, the About Us section has been neglected or contains outdated information.

He pointed out that, while Google search refers between 30 and 50 per cent of traffic to the home page, AI platforms tend to refer traffic to a broader range of pages. However, for branded searches, the About Us page gets the most references, typically showing up in more than one in five responses to branded searches.

When the About Us page is not referenced, it is usually because the information is not accurate or up-to-date, when compared to press releases or earned media, say, and the GEO platform has moved on. A small land grab may have big implications.