Will Covid-19 Lead to Leaner Internal Comms Teams?

Financial marketers and PR pros have certainly dealt with upheaval as much as any industry during the past 6 months. Communicating effectively during a crisis requires empathy, nuance and skill.

The pandemic also radically changed how comms professionals work. We all got used to seeing ever detail of our co-worker’s bedroom, dens and home offices. Another long-lasting effect could also be a move toward smaller, leaner internal comms teams.

That’s according to a recent poll from PR Week, which surveyed more than 80 senior in-house professionals – typically comms and corporate affairs directors, as well as heads of public affairs. The articles notes that in-house chiefs are not hugely optimistic about growing their teams in the future.

“Asked whether their organization’s workforce fell or grew in size during the period of the pandemic, 28 per ent of in-house leaders said it had declined (compared to 33 percent of agency respondents).

A lower proportion of in-house respondents said their team sizes had grown (16 percent) compared to the agency bosses (21 percent).”

The survey also found that managing work-life balance is also top of mind for communications and PR leaders, with one exec noting that, “We radically adapted and reprioritized who, how and what we worked on to enable us to deliver 24/7, rapidly and sustainably. We realised from the outset that protecting personal downtime, acknowledging caring responsibilities and managing health impacts needed to be built into our plans.”