Tag: predictions

Global CommTech Report 2024 by Purposeful Relations

About the paper

The report presents original research on how public relations, communications and corporate affairs professionals think about and use AI and communication technology.

It is based on an online survey conducted via Microsoft Forms between July and September 2024, with 161 professionals surveyed across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America.

The data is global in scope, although the respondent mix is weighted towards Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

Length: 68 pages

More information / download:
https://purposefulrelations.com/global-commtech-report-2024/

Core Insights

1. What is the central argument of the report about AI and communication technology in public relations?

The report’s core argument is that the PR and communications profession recognises AI as a major issue, but is still responding too cautiously, too narrowly and too operationally. The authors argue that the sector understands AI mainly as a tool for efficiency rather than as a strategic force that will reshape professional practice, organisational decision-making and the wider social licence around AI use.

That argument appears early and runs throughout the report. The introduction says the industry sees AI as the “greatest challenge” but is not doing enough to address it. The executive summary repeats that pattern: AI is named as the top challenge, investment priority and training priority, yet actual preparedness remains weak. The report therefore frames the issue not as a lack of awareness, but as a gap between awareness and meaningful action.

A second part of the argument is that communications teams are at risk of repeating earlier mistakes made around digital change. The report explicitly warns that, just as the profession lagged on search and social media, it could also lag on AI unless it moves faster on policy, literacy, leadership and governance. It presents AI not just as another toolset, but as a development with effects comparable to an industrial revolution. That is a deliberately strong claim, and it is used to justify the urgency of the report’s recommendations.

Finally, the report argues that PR should not leave AI to technologists, lawyers or IT. Instead, it should play a central role in governance, ethics, stakeholder trust and organisational legitimacy. In other words, the profession’s real opportunity is not only to use AI more efficiently, but to shape how organisations adopt AI responsibly and credibly.

2. What do the findings reveal about how PR professionals currently understand and use AI?

The report shows that AI is now widely recognised as relevant, but that understanding of its value remains limited and uneven. Nearly half of respondents say AI skills are essential for communications professionals, and a broader majority rate them as important or essential. That suggests the profession no longer sees AI as marginal. However, the report repeatedly argues that respondents still associate AI mainly with simple, tactical uses rather than deeper strategic possibilities.

This becomes clear in the perceived benefits. Respondents most often cite saving time and improving productivity, while far fewer point to improving quality, boosting creativity, or enabling more advanced strategic work. The dominant mental model is therefore efficiency-led: AI helps people do existing tasks faster. The report sees that as too narrow, because it underplays AI’s role in insight, planning, forecasting, governance and relationship management.

The same pattern appears in how respondents think AI will affect practice areas. Many expect the biggest impact in consumer marketing communications, while far fewer expect major effects in crisis communications or public affairs. The authors interpret this as a misunderstanding of AI’s broader implications. In their view, the profession is over-associating AI with content production and underestimating how much it could reshape higher-stakes advisory and strategic work.

Actual use also reflects this early-stage maturity. Respondents report using AI most often for alternative content versions, content creation, brainstorming, monitoring, summaries and related tasks. But some areas reportedly “didn’t work well”, especially media outreach and research, which the report suggests may say as much about weak prompting, poor training or wrong tool choice as about AI’s actual limitations. The report also notes use of both personal and work AI tools, with ChatGPT the most prominent. One especially striking finding is that 66% say they have used personal AI tools for work. The authors treat this as a warning sign because it suggests shadow usage, weak governance and possible privacy or compliance risks.

So the overall picture is not one of rejection. It is one of partial adoption: interest is real, experimentation is happening, but the profession still tends to use AI as an assistant for tasks rather than as a source of strategic advantage.

3. What are the main organisational gaps and barriers preventing better use of AI and communication technology?

The report identifies two headline weaknesses around AI: policy and training. Sixty per cent of respondents say they do not have an AI policy, and only 43% say they have received AI training. The authors present those figures as the most urgent warning signs in the report. In their view, this means many teams are experimenting with AI without clear rules, formal literacy or strong organisational support.

Training itself also seems incomplete. Among those who have received it, most training is focused on practical use rather than ethics, safety or security. The report sees that as misaligned with the risk landscape, because respondents also identify legal, copyright, privacy and security concerns as the biggest AI challenges. In other words, the profession is worried about risk but is not training people proportionately on risk.

A related weakness is the lack of formal AI governance. Only about a third report that their team has an AI working group. The report suggests that this may mean either such groups do not exist or that communications is not represented in them. Either way, the implication is that PR is not consistently at the table where AI policy and practice are being shaped.

On the wider technology side, the biggest barriers are integration and capability. Three quarters cite difficulty integrating different systems, and two thirds cite the team’s ability to use technology effectively. Resistance to change also matters, but the report treats training and system complexity as the more structural obstacles. It argues that many organisations already pay for tools they do not fully use, which makes underuse and lack of upskilling a recurring theme.

There is also a leadership gap. Most respondents say there is no technology leader in their team. Where such leadership does exist, it often sits outside communications. The report sees that as a serious weakness because technology choices, adoption and governance are then shaped elsewhere, even though they increasingly affect communications performance directly.

Overall, the report’s diagnosis is that the main barriers are not merely technical. They are organisational: insufficient governance, weak literacy, fragmented systems, underused tools and a lack of ownership inside the communications function.

4. How does the report assess the broader state of communication technology adoption beyond AI?

Beyond AI, the report paints a fairly critical picture of the communications profession’s technology habits. Its broader claim is that many teams still rely on outdated, inefficient tools and workflows, especially spreadsheets and email, even when more suitable specialist tools exist.

This is most visible in relationship and task management. More than half of respondents say they use spreadsheets to manage relationships with contacts, and 43% say spreadsheets are their main way of managing projects and tasks. The report treats this as evidence that communications teams have not modernised core operational systems. It argues that these habits make teams less efficient, less collaborative and less capable of using data well.

The report also highlights inconsistent use of collaboration tools. Microsoft Teams appears to be the most common collaboration platform, but email remains heavily relied upon, which the report regards as a sign of outdated workflow culture. Likewise, even where organisations already subscribe to tools included in broader software suites, such as Microsoft Planner, adoption remains low. The authors interpret this as wasted investment: teams are paying for capabilities they neither configure nor train people to use properly.

At the same time, respondents do understand that communications technology matters. Media monitoring, media databases, content creation tools, collaboration systems and project management tools are all rated as important. So the issue is not that professionals deny the value of technology. The issue is that their actual tool choices and usage patterns often lag behind that stated recognition.

The report is especially pointed about agencies and consultancies. It says they continue to rate themselves as more competent than in-house teams at using and adopting technology, yet the wider evidence in the report suggests in-house teams are often ahead on training, policy and actual maturity. That creates an interesting contrast between self-perception and practice.

In short, the report sees broader comms-tech adoption as underdeveloped. The profession may be surrounded by tools, but it still often lacks the processes, discipline and leadership needed to turn those tools into real operational advantage.

5. What conclusions and practical implications does the report draw for the future of the profession?

The report’s conclusion is that doing nothing is no longer a viable option. It argues that AI and communication technology are not temporary trends but structural shifts that will affect every part of the profession. That leads to a clear practical message: communications teams must move from passive awareness and scattered experimentation to deliberate capability-building.

The immediate priorities are concrete. The report calls for organisations to develop AI policies, expand AI training, establish working groups, improve technology leadership and make better use of existing systems. It also recommends moving away from spreadsheet-led processes, improving collaboration and focusing technology investment on real pain points in workflows and decision-making.

But the implications go further than operational tidying-up. The report argues that senior leaders must engage personally with AI, not delegate it downward. It explicitly rejects the idea that AI is mainly for junior staff or content creators. Instead, the report suggests that AI can enhance senior advisory work in areas such as corporate affairs, crisis communications and stakeholder influence. That widens the significance of the findings: the future of the profession is not only about efficiency gains, but about whether experienced communicators can use AI to improve strategic judgement and organisational value.

There is also a normative conclusion. The profession, the report says, has a responsibility to help organisations secure the social licence to use AI. That means PR should contribute not just to messaging, but to ethical use, governance, transparency and public trust. This is arguably the report’s most ambitious claim: that AI could elevate the profession if communications leaders step into a broader role around legitimacy and responsible adoption.

So the final implication is twofold. On one level, the profession needs better tools, training and processes. On another, it needs a bigger sense of its own role. The report sees AI as both a capability challenge and a professional identity test. Teams that treat it only as automation will fall behind; teams that treat it as a strategic, ethical and organisational issue may strengthen their relevance.

9 October 2024
FGS Global Radar 2024: A Year of Volatility by FGS

About the paper

The report is a mixed-methods outlook study on the political, economic, technological and social forces expected to shape 2024, with a particular focus on implications for business.

It combines 60 stakeholder depth interviews conducted in October and November 2023 with public polling of 2,024 UK adults, weighted to be nationally representative; the geographic scope of the primary data is clearly the UK, even though many of the issues discussed are global.

Length: 23 pages

More information / download:
https://a.storyblok.com/f/137553/x/db3cf37498/fgs-global-radar-report-2024.pdf

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about 2024, and why does it frame the year as unusually consequential?

The report’s central argument is that 2024 will be defined by volatility, uncertainty, disruption and change, but not in a purely apocalyptic sense: it also presents openings for adaptation, resilience and selective optimism. The authors frame the year as unusually consequential because it combines an exceptional concentration of elections, continuing geopolitical conflicts, economic fragility, climate pressure, AI disruption and changing expectations of business leadership.

The report begins by describing 2024 as a year of “known-unknowns”, with particular emphasis on the fact that more people would be involved in elections than at any other point in human history, and with the US election treated as the most consequential uncertainty. Rather than trying to predict exact outcomes, the study aims to identify the trends and debates that will affect business during the year. That is an important framing choice: this is not a forecasting model, but a strategic interpretation exercise grounded in elite interviews and public opinion data.

Its key findings reinforce that framing. Opinion formers expect uncertainty and turbulence across geopolitics, the economy, culture and the workplace. They see volatility as more likely to intensify than fade. At the same time, they hold a mildly more positive view of the UK’s prospects than the public does, largely because they expect some political stabilisation after the UK general election and some easing in inflation and interest rates. So the report’s core argument is not simply that 2024 will be chaotic, but that business leaders will have to navigate overlapping shocks while distinguishing between background noise and genuinely strategic shifts.

2. Which major risks and uncertainties does the report identify as most important for business leaders?

The report identifies political instability and geopolitics as the most important risk cluster for business leaders. Stakeholders describe political instability as the biggest risk facing business in 2024, driven by major elections, continuing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the growing influence of non-democratic states. The phrase “uncertainty is the new certainty” captures the report’s broader diagnosis: unpredictable external shocks are no longer exceptional but normalised.

Within that broader risk picture, the potential return of Donald Trump is treated as the single most significant political threat. Stakeholders widely believe a Trump victory is a real possibility and fear that a second term would be more unconstrained than the first, with consequences for NATO, Ukraine, global trade and geopolitical stability. Importantly, the report notes that this concern is less about the resilience of the US domestic economy and more about the international effects of American foreign policy and political posture. The public polling echoes this anxiety, with large shares of UK respondents expecting another Trump presidency to destabilise the world and negatively affect their own lives.

The report also highlights immigration as a major source of political polarisation, especially in the UK, Europe and the US. Stakeholders expect it to become an even more contentious election issue, sharpened by climate-related migration pressures and labour-market tensions. This matters for business because immigration is not presented merely as a social issue; it is bound up with economic policy, labour supply, social cohesion and electoral strategy.

Beyond politics, the report emphasises supply-chain vulnerability, energy-price shocks and the strategic consequences of long-running conflict. Several interviewees argue that resilience now matters as much as profit, and that businesses will have to think more seriously about de-risking supply chains. The report stops short of advocating a single economic doctrine, but it clearly suggests that geopolitical risk is now a boardroom issue rather than a distant policy concern.

3. How does the report portray the economic outlook, and where do stakeholder and public perspectives diverge most sharply?

The report portrays the economic outlook as cautiously stable rather than buoyant. Stakeholders broadly expect a middling global year and a mildly positive UK year, shaped by falling inflation, eventual interest-rate cuts and the likelihood of a more stable UK political environment. They do not foresee dramatic economic improvement, but neither do they expect collapse. In that sense, the report’s economic lens is one of guarded pragmatism.

For the UK specifically, stakeholders are relatively bullish. They associate an expected Labour victory with greater predictability, continuity in fiscal policy and a calmer investment environment after years of political turmoil. They also expect inflation and interest rates to decline over the course of 2024, though some note that the timing of monetary easing may be late and its effects delayed. This is not presented as a growth boom, but as a return to something closer to normality.

The sharpest divergence appears between elite and public sentiment. The UK public is markedly more pessimistic than stakeholders, especially on the cost of living, living standards and the broader strength of the economy. The report shows net negative expectations on the cost of living, personal standard of living and the UK economy, even if job security is slightly more resilient. Public pessimism is also intensified by concern that prolonged wars will push up energy prices again. So while stakeholders see scope for stabilisation, the public sees little immediate relief.

That divergence matters because it reveals one of the report’s underlying themes: macro-level improvement does not automatically translate into felt improvement. A steadier political environment and lower inflation may look positive from a policy or business perspective, but ordinary people may still experience stagnation, pressure and distrust. The report therefore suggests that leaders will need to communicate with much greater sensitivity to this gap between institutional optimism and lived economic insecurity.

4. What does the report say about AI, and why does it treat it as both an opportunity and a source of backlash?

The report treats AI as one of the defining contradictions of 2024: it is seen as a potentially transformative engine of productivity and growth, but also as a source of labour disruption, democratic risk and public unease. Stakeholders are generally more optimistic than the public. They expect AI to boost economic growth, unlock gains in medicine and science, and accelerate efficiency. At the same time, they anticipate redundancies in white-collar fields such as customer service, software development and communications, with some even arguing that entry-level roles across many industries are vulnerable.

This combination of optimism and anxiety explains why the report expects backlash. Interviewees warn that AI could be used to distort elections through deepfakes and misinformation, undermining democratic legitimacy during an election-heavy year. They also foresee organised labour resistance, treating the 2023 actors’ strike as an early sign of broader anti-AI mobilisation. The public data supports this: a majority expects increased backlash, including further strikes, and many support faster government regulation to protect against security breaches and misinformation.

Another important point is that the public is less confident and less informed about AI than elite stakeholders. Only a small minority say they are very confident they could explain what AI is, and attitudes differ sharply by age, gender and self-reported tech literacy. Younger people and those more confident in explaining AI are more positive; older respondents and less confident groups are notably more negative. This suggests that public opinion on AI is shaped not just by material risk, but by familiarity and perceived agency.

The report therefore presents AI as a major battleground for 2024, not because it doubts the technology’s momentum, but because it expects a struggle over who benefits, who bears the costs and how regulation should work. That is why it frames the coming debate as not merely technological, but economic, political and social.

5. What broader conclusions does the report draw about climate, corporate purpose and the role of business in society?

The report suggests that businesses are entering 2024 under pressure to become more disciplined, more internally focused and more credible in how they talk about their role in society. On climate, stakeholders agree that the issue is strategically central and that no serious business leader or politician can now deny its importance. Yet they are pessimistic about actual progress towards net zero in 2024, citing weak political will, high investment requirements, election-year caution and unresolved disputes over who pays. The result is a gap between rhetorical commitment and practical momentum.

The public broadly shares the sense that climate change matters, but the report shows limits to public willingness to absorb the cost. That creates a politically difficult environment: there is acknowledgement of urgency, but less agreement on sacrifice. The report’s interpretation is that democratic politics, especially short electoral cycles, favours short-term decisions, whereas climate action demands long-term commitment. This is one of its clearest structural arguments.

On corporate purpose, the report argues that purpose remains important but that its public expression is changing. Many stakeholders believe external purpose messaging has become entangled with accusations of virtue signalling and greenwashing. As a result, they expect companies and CEOs to retreat from broad social commentary and focus more on purpose that is directly relevant to the business and more meaningfully communicated to employees and communities. This is not a rejection of purpose, but a repositioning of it.

The same logic appears in workplace culture. Hybrid working is described as here to stay, though not as a case for full-time remote work becoming universal. Stakeholders and the public both expect flexibility to remain important, and the public wants even more of it. Taken together, the report’s broader conclusion is that businesses in 2024 will need to act with restraint, relevance and credibility: less grandstanding, more internal alignment; less abstract signalling, more evidence and substance.

Overall, the report’s perspective is that business leadership in 2024 will be judged not by confidence alone, but by the ability to operate in a world of overlapping instability while making selective, defensible choices about what to engage in, what to say and how to build trust.

9 January 2024
2023 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

About the paper

The paper is a mixed-methods corporate communications study from Edelman, combining a quantitative survey with qualitative interviews to assess how the communications function is evolving after the pandemic.

The report states that it surveyed 218 C-level communications leaders in June 2023 and conducted 20+ in-depth interviews in July and August 2023, with respondents drawn from U.S.-based Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 1000 organisations; the sample is therefore primarily U.S.-focused, even though many of the companies have national, multinational, or global reach.

Length: 30 pages

More information / download:
https://www.edelman.com/2023-future-of-corporate-comms

Core Insights

1. How does the report argue that the role of corporate communications has changed in recent years?

The report’s central argument is that corporate communications has moved from being a mainly executional support function to becoming a strategic leadership function. Edelman presents this as a post-pandemic shift: communications leaders are no longer merely helping to deliver decisions once taken, but are increasingly involved in shaping enterprise decisions before they are finalised.

The report says this shift is visible both in perception and in practice. Half of CCOs now see themselves as strategic advisers to business leaders, up from just over a third in 2021, while only 10% still feel stuck in a cost-centre position, down from 30% two years earlier. It also says that 64% are brought into major business decisions when the decision path is still tentative, compared with only 9% who are consulted after decisions have already been made.

In other words, the function is portrayed as operating at the intersection of value creation and risk mitigation. Communications is not just reacting to reputational threats; it is being expected to anticipate them, interpret stakeholder expectations, and influence strategy across the enterprise. That is the report’s strongest framing of the profession’s future.

2. What evidence does the report provide that communications leaders are under growing pressure, even as their strategic status rises?

A key tension in the report is that greater influence has come with greater pressure, but not necessarily with matching support. The report says nearly 80% of communications leaders feel their role is more demanding than it was 12 months earlier, and 77% say their CEO demands more of them than a year ago. It also notes that CCOs spend nearly one-fifth of their time counselling the CEO on non-communications matters, which underlines how far the remit has stretched.

At the same time, resources are not keeping pace. The report says 44% of communications leaders do not believe their CEO understands the resources needed to shape enterprise decision-making or execute communications programmes successfully. Budget expectations have also softened: 40% expect their budgets to increase, compared with more than half in 2021, while 28% expect flat budgets and 30% expect moderate cuts.

This matters because the report treats communications as a function being asked to do more with uncertain backing. It is expected to cover an expanding range of stakeholders, manage a broader mandate, and prove business value more clearly, yet it still struggles to secure stable investment. One of the report’s recurring assumptions is that communications still has not fully solved the challenge of linking its work to measurable business outcomes.

3. Why does the report place so much emphasis on data, technology, and organisational structure?

The report argues that modern communications can no longer rely mainly on instinct, media experience, or message craft. Instead, it says an advanced communications function must be built around actionable data: stakeholder signals, behavioural insights, monitoring, analytics, and social listening. This is presented as essential because senior leadership now expects communications to bring evidence-based insight into decision-making, not just narrative support.

That logic also drives the report’s discussion of structure. Edelman says the proportion of leaders reporting a centralised communications structure has grown sharply since 2021, because centralisation helps organisations gather intelligence more holistically, reduce silos, and respond to risk more consistently. On that basis, the report implies that organisational design is not a side issue; it is part of how communications earns strategic credibility.

Technology sits within the same argument. The report says 56% believe AI is already affecting their business, and 44% say they are investing more heavily in communications technology than the year before. But it does not present technology as a simple productivity win. It also highlights integration problems, rapid change, and ongoing concerns around privacy, policy, and ethics. The report’s perspective is quite clear here: tools matter, but their value depends on interpretation, application, and the ability of the function to use data intelligently.

4. How does the report explain the growing importance of employees and corporate purpose in communications?

One of the report’s most important arguments is that reputation now begins inside the organisation. Employees are presented as the most consequential stakeholder group because they are closest to value creation, can advocate for or against the company, and shape how external stakeholders perceive the business. On the chart on page 17, employees are shown as the stakeholder group putting the most pressure on organisations to act on social issues, ahead of investors, NGOs, regulators, media, and consumers.

The report also stresses that “employees” are not a single, uniform audience. It points to a five-generation workforce, differing expectations about work, and rising tension between leadership and younger workers, especially Gen Z. As a result, communications is increasingly held accountable for outcomes such as employee engagement, employer brand, retention, and DEI. In fact, the report says 60% expect employee engagement to be the single most important outcome their function must deliver over the next two years.

Corporate purpose is then positioned as the framework that helps organisations navigate this more complex internal environment. The report says communications teams are heavily involved in clearly communicating purpose, fostering meaning among employees, and, in some cases, ensuring purpose shapes strategy itself. So purpose is not treated here as branding language alone; it is framed as a practical decision-making compass and a guardrail for when companies should act on social or socioeconomic issues.

5. What does the report suggest will define the future agenda for corporate communications?

The future agenda, according to the report, will be defined by three overlapping pressures: technology and AI, ESG and sustainability politics, and geopolitical volatility. On AI, the report suggests communicators must help build the business case for adoption while understanding the operational and ethical risks. On ESG, it argues that despite political backlash, especially in the U.S., integration of ESG into communications strategy remains strong, with 76% saying ESG is mostly or fully integrated.

On geopolitics, the report is especially forward-looking. It argues that elections, polarisation, disinformation, labour activism, and broader geopolitical instability will all have growing reputational and business consequences. That is why it repeatedly calls for stronger cross-functional working, especially with sustainability, investor relations, HR, legal, and government affairs.

The broader conclusion is that tomorrow’s CCO will have to be a cross-enterprise integrator: someone who can read stakeholder dynamics, translate them into business implications, and help the organisation act with clarity and credibility. The report assumes that winning trust, internally and externally, will be the defining competitive task for communications. But it also implies that success will depend on whether the function can prove value, secure resources, and combine judgement with data more effectively than in the past.

30 September 2023
Future of Jobs Report 2023 by World Economic Forum

About the paper

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 analyses how macro-trends, technology adoption, skills disruption and workforce strategies are expected to reshape labour markets from 2023 to 2027.

It is a mixed-methods report built primarily on the fourth Future of Jobs Survey of 803 companies employing more than 11.3 million workers, across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions, supplemented with data collaborations from Coursera, Indeed and LinkedIn.

Length: 296 pages

More information / download:
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/

Core Insights

1. What is the central labour-market outlook presented in the report?

The report’s central argument is that the global labour market is entering a period of significant structural churn rather than simple expansion or contraction. Employers expect major reconfiguration of roles, driven by technology, the green transition, economic pressure, supply-chain shifts and changing worker expectations.

The headline estimate is that 23% of jobs will change structurally between 2023 and 2027. In the dataset covering 673 million jobs, employers expect 69 million jobs to be created and 83 million to be displaced, resulting in a net decrease of 14 million jobs, or about 2% of current employment.

This is not presented as a uniform jobs crisis. The report’s more nuanced claim is that losses and gains will be unevenly distributed. Some roles, especially clerical, administrative and record-keeping jobs, are expected to decline sharply, while roles linked to technology, sustainability, education, agriculture and digital commerce are expected to grow.

2. Which forces are expected to transform businesses and jobs most strongly?

The report identifies technology adoption as the most widely expected driver of business transformation. More than 85% of surveyed organisations expect increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broader digital access to transform their organisations.

However, the report broadens the analysis beyond technology. It also highlights the green transition, ESG standards, climate adaptation, localisation of supply chains, slow economic growth, inflation, rising costs and geopolitical fragmentation.

The strongest expected net job-creation effects come from green-transition investment, broader ESG adoption and more localised supply chains. By contrast, the strongest expected net job-destruction effects come from slower economic growth, supply shortages, rising input costs and the rising cost of living.

So the report’s view is not “technology destroys jobs” or “technology creates jobs”. It argues that technology, climate, economics and geopolitics are interacting, producing both new demand and significant displacement.

3. Which jobs are expected to grow, and which are expected to decline?

The fastest-growing roles relative to their current size are mainly technology- and sustainability-related. AI and Machine Learning Specialists are at the top, followed by Sustainability Specialists, Business Intelligence Analysts, Information Security Analysts, Renewable Energy Engineers and related roles.

Large-scale job growth is also expected in education, agriculture and digitally enabled commerce. The report projects growth in roles such as Vocational Education Teachers, University and Higher Education Teachers, Agricultural Equipment Operators, E-commerce Specialists, Digital Transformation Specialists and Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists.

The steepest declines are expected in clerical and administrative work. Bank Tellers, Postal Service Clerks, Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, Data Entry Clerks, Accounting and Payroll Clerks, and Administrative and Executive Secretaries are among the roles expected to decline most.

The report estimates that 26 million fewer jobs may exist by 2027 in record-keeping and administrative roles alone. This makes administrative work one of the clearest areas of projected displacement.

4. What does the report say about skills disruption and future skill needs?

The report estimates that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted over the next five years. This is lower than the 57% disruption forecast in the 2020 edition, but still signals substantial pressure on workers and employers.

Analytical thinking is identified as the most important core skill in 2023, followed by creative thinking. The report also places strong emphasis on resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, lifelong learning and technological literacy.

The fastest-rising skills include creative thinking, analytical thinking, technological literacy, curiosity and lifelong learning, resilience, systems thinking, AI and big data, talent management and customer-service orientation.

A key point is that companies’ training priorities do not simply mirror current skill importance. AI and big data rank only 15th as a current core skill, but third as a corporate training priority. This suggests that employers see AI capability as strategically urgent, even where it is not yet embedded across the workforce.

5. What workforce strategies do companies expect to use, and what are the implications?

The report finds that employers see skills gaps and difficulty attracting talent as the two biggest barriers to business transformation. Skills gaps in local labour markets are identified by 60% of surveyed companies, while 53% cite inability to attract talent.

The most common workforce strategies are investing in learning and training on the job, and accelerating automation. Around four in five companies expect to use each of these strategies.

The report estimates that six in 10 workers will need training before 2027, but only about half currently have access to adequate training opportunities. Companies expect much of this training to happen internally, through on-the-job training, coaching and internal training departments, rather than mainly through external providers.

The implication is that the future of work will depend heavily on whether organisations can move from abstract concern about skills to practical, scaled workforce development. The report’s underlying assumption is that labour-market disruption is not fully predetermined: policy choices, business investment and talent strategies will shape whether the transition becomes exclusionary or opportunity-generating.

30 April 2023
2021 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

About the paper

The report examines how the corporate communications function is evolving from a transactional support role into a more strategic business partner, focusing on priorities, structures, capabilities, investment, and reporting lines.

It is a mixed-methods original research report based on a quantitative survey of 200 participants fielded in December 2020 and January 2021, plus 35+ in-depth interviews with senior communications leaders from participating U.S.-based organisations.

The dataset is globally distributed but heavily North America-led, with survey geographies reported as North America (85%), EMEA (7%), APAC (4%), and Latin America (4%); interview participants were drawn from U.S.-based organisations.

Length: 76 pages

More information / download:
https://www.edelman.com/expertise/commstech/2021-Future-of-Corporate-Comms-Research

Core Insights

1. What is the central argument of the report about the future role of corporate communications?

The report’s core argument is that corporate communications is moving up the strategic continuum, from being treated as a cost centre or executional service provider to becoming a value-generating business partner. Edelman argues that external disruption, especially the pandemic, social issues, business transformation, and a more complex stakeholder environment, has increased the strategic importance of communications inside organisations. The report presents this not as a marginal shift, but as a structural change in what senior communicators are expected to do.

A major theme is that communications is no longer just about media relations, messaging, and storytelling. Instead, the function is increasingly expected to help shape decisions on risk, workforce issues, reputation, transformation, social purpose, and stakeholder trust. The report says this has brought communicators closer to CEOs, boards, and the C-suite, with 46% now reporting to the CEO versus 34% in 2014, and 77% saying perceptions of communications as a strategic business driver changed within their organisation during 2020.

At the same time, the report is careful not to suggest that this evolution is complete. It repeatedly notes that progress is uneven. Some organisations still see communications in largely reactive or transactional terms, and maturity varies by industry, geography, and leadership culture. So the report’s argument is both optimistic and cautionary: the opportunity is real, but it has to be claimed and proved.

2. What forces are driving this shift in corporate communications?

The report identifies several forces pushing communications into a more strategic role. COVID-19 is presented as the immediate accelerator. It increased the visibility and relevance of communications, especially around employee engagement, business continuity, internal alignment, and executive decision-making. More than half of respondents said COVID-19 shifted the communications focus and demand on their function, with employee communications emerging as the most strongly affected area.

Beyond the pandemic, the report highlights business transformation as the most important long-term driver, cited by 77% of respondents, followed by social issues at 73%, customer or consumer demand shifts at 56%, and talent at 38%. This matters because it frames communications not as a function reacting to one crisis, but as one increasingly embedded in permanent organisational change. Communicators are being pulled into transformation programmes, social issue response, workforce strategy, and stakeholder trust management.

The report also stresses the importance of the changing media and information ecosystem. Social media, digital channels, and faster news cycles have altered how organisations reach stakeholders and how quickly reputational issues can escalate. That has expanded the role of communications into digital, content, creative, analytics, and more direct coordination with marketing. In other words, the environment has become too fast, fragmented, and high-stakes for communications to remain a back-end support function.

3. How does the report say the communications function itself needs to change in order to meet these expectations?

The report argues that strategic credibility starts inside the function. Communications teams need to change how they think about themselves, how they organise, and what capabilities they prioritise. The report contrasts an older model built around reactive storytelling and service delivery with a newer model based on strategic planning, business acumen, insights, measurable outcomes, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

A recurring theme is that the modern function must be agile, multidisciplinary, and insights-driven. Teams can no longer rely only on classic PR strengths such as writing, media contacts, and message development. They now need broader capability across employee communications, risk and crisis, brand and corporate positioning, change communications, digital, creative, data, and analytics. The report explicitly describes the ideal talent profile as “T-shaped”: people with deep expertise in one area, but enough breadth to work across multiple strategic contexts.

The report also argues that relationship-building with senior leadership is essential. Functions that are seen as more strategic have typically earned closer CEO and C-suite access, often by combining stronger counsel with better evidence of impact. It recommends integrated strategic planning, clearer governance, clearer roles, and more consultative team behaviour. The implication is that structural change alone is not enough. A communications team only becomes strategic when it shows business understanding, connects its work to organisational goals, and consistently executes at a high level.

4. What does the report reveal about investment priorities, technology, and capability gaps?

One of the clearest findings is that expectations are rising faster than resources. The report says communicators are being asked to do more, across more areas, with stronger proof of business value, but many are not receiving proportional budget increases. It notes that only 6% of CCOs expected a budget increase of 15% or more, while 45% anticipated a budget decrease or no change in the coming year. Later benchmarking pages show a similar tension, with 54% expecting some increase but 46% expecting budgets to stay flat or decline.

Within that constrained environment, CommsTech emerges as the headline investment priority. The report defines this as the tools, technology, and data that allow communicators to target, measure, and shape perceptions and behaviour. Seventy percent said CommsTech was a top investment area, and the report positions it as central to proving ROI and connecting communications work to business results. But it also shows that adoption is still immature: 44% report baseline media-impression measurement, yet only 30% map revenue growth back to communications activity.

The report is especially useful in showing why adoption is slow. Barriers include difficulty justifying large tech investments, weak support from CEOs or business leaders, IT ownership conflicts, poor collaboration with marketing and sales, and internal team struggles to adopt digital tools and analytics. So the report is not simply making a pro-technology argument. It is saying that technology only matters if organisations also invest in skills, processes, governance, and data fluency. Capability gaps in change communications, analytics, and ESG are also singled out as emerging needs.

5. What are the main implications and conclusions for communications leaders and organisations?

The report’s main conclusion is that this is a pivotal moment for the communications profession. The external environment has created an opening for communications leaders to claim a more central role in business strategy, but doing so requires deliberate change. Communicators must demonstrate business acumen, link activity to outcomes, invest in specialist capability, and speak the language of strategy, ROI, and performance. In the report’s framing, the opportunity will not convert automatically into influence. It has to be operationalised.

For organisations and CEOs, the implication is equally strong. If they want communications to function as a true strategic partner, they need to bring it into decisions earlier, provide closer access to leadership, resource it properly, and recognise reputation, trust, employee engagement, and stakeholder alignment as business-critical issues rather than peripheral concerns. The report even suggests that some companies are beginning to elevate reputation into shared business goals and leadership accountability.

The report’s final perspective is practical rather than theoretical. Across its “playbook” sections, it repeatedly returns to six or seven concrete ideas: have a clear vision for the function, align communications with business strategy, combine planning with insight, improve governance and process, build multidisciplinary teams, invest in people and specialist skills, and prove impact through measurement. That makes the report less a prediction document than a management guide for how communicators can turn heightened relevance into durable strategic authority.

21 September 2021