UK plc has endured a torrid time of late, but communicators have come out the other side to find they’re needed now more than ever, says James Bennett, head of content at internal communications research and training company Melcrum Publishing  

The last two years have delivered some of the most bizarre business twists in recent living memory. Just think back to the sudden disappearance of Lehmans and the rise of taxpayerowned banks. Who would have thought one of the world’s biggest and most bullish investment houses would sink without trace in 24 hours and that most of Britain’s largest banks would, in effect, be repossessed by the government and funded by the public – the very people they managed to fool for so many years?

But this peculiar pattern is, unlike the Dow or the FTSE, maintaining a steady course and matters are getting stranger. The markets can’t make up their minds whether Greece’s imminent bankruptcy will infect the rest of Europe; energy companies are blaming each another for the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster; while Britain’s Prime Minister resigned so he could stay on for another four months. Meanwhile, house prices somehow continue to rise, coalition governments are suddenly the flavour of the month and we’re all talking about recovery as if the economy had just woken up from a bad dream.

So how are we, as professional communicators, bearing up in the face of such mixed messages? We’ve gone through the mill but emerged in good shape because we’re needed now more than ever. We should be the antidote to all this confusion, and in many cases we have been.

British Airways may be struggling to cope with heavy losses amid further industrial action but I’ve heard there’s some great communication work being done behind the scenes to rebuild the brand; British Gas, a business previously seen as traditional, backward and with poor customer service has recently undertaken a massive employee engagement plan that has played a huge role in improving its external and internal image, while the Big Four accounting firms remain in the Best Companies top 10 purely because their communication teams have, for example, adopted social media to recruit, retain and re-engage their workforces.

In the last two years, severe budget and headcount cutbacks have made communicators reexamine the roles they play within organisations, often been left alone to deal with huge problems and left with enormous, and very unstable, change communication issues. In effect, those whose job it’s been to simplify the confusion have become equally confused. I told you things have been weird.

This has meant that many have had to prove their worth. Somehow this has worked. In a study released at the end of April, recruiters VMA found that, in the last two years, there was increasing advocacy of the profession by CEOs, with 68% of respondents stating their senior executive teams are either supportive or key advocates for internal communications (up 12% on 2008). This has been mirrored by changes in reporting lines with more heads of internal communication now reporting directly into the CEO.

But there’s still far more we can do as recessionproofed communicators. We now need to impart the lessons we’ve learned such as influencing senior leaders, delivering projects on a shoestring budget, and teaching new communicators to develop commercial acumen – arguably the most important deficit and skills gap that communicators have today.

For UK plc to be in a stronger position in the future, we need to educate and prepare ourselves for far more bizarre business twists because there are plenty left in the tail.