Research announced today shows that boardroom executives in the UK lack essential communications skills. The survey of 100 corporate communications professionals, entitled ’21st Century Business Communications’ and conducted by twofourtv, looks at how companies are embracing new methods of communication and how effective ’the board’ is at communicating corporate messages.
Though boardrooms across the country are filled with the top tier of UK corporate talent, it appears that many struggle to represent the company effectively when communicating ’en masse’ to employees and third parties. Statistics from the twofourtv poll, include:
* Over 85% of respondents feel that communications skills across the executive team can be improved
* Over half of respondents, 54%, feel that their executives are not good communicators
* Only 10% of respondents believe that executives deliver corporate messages effectively
* 66% of respondents believe executives acknowledge communication with employees as a critical aspect of their jobs, but it is rarely priority
There is a growing body of evidence that supports the importance of effective corporate communications, its impact upon brand, employee moral and even share price, says Charles Wace, CEO twofourtv. With an increasing number of communication mediums, such as email, webconferencing and corporate broadcasting, being used by UK businesses, there is more pressure on executives to communicate in a concise and meaningful way. Our survey shows that there is work to be done by senior spokespeople to bring them up to scratch.
Wayne Drew, CEO of the International Visual Communications Association, continues, The most important communication problems facing businesses today are a multi-site workforce, reputation management and maintaining staff morale, all key subjects that a CEO should be commenting on to their staff. At present it seems board members are lacking the confidence and skills enabling them to talk to staff effectively. The growth of visual methods of communicating within the office means companies need to address these issues if they are to conquer the challenges facing them.
Internal communications has consistently been the most significant area of activity for visual communications companies and spending in this area is expected to continue, with average budgets rising to *50’000 per year. However the most popular methods for delivering messages are still email or printed material and it is rarely that employees get to see the ’whites of the CEO’s eyes’. Advances in multi-media technology and an increased trend towards profile raising of CEOs both internally and externally, demands that the gap in communications skills, techniques and process be filled as soon as possible.
*Source: IVCA 2003
New Research Shows Executives Lack the ’Gift of the Gab’
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