“IoIC became an institute in 2010 precisely in order to put professional development at the heart of IC”

There’s been some debate on social media this spring around whether internal communication is a profession. As you might expect, the question is not new to IoIC, the organisation I’ve led as chief executive for the last five years.

There are several definitions of what a profession is and between them they span a broad space. At one extreme is a medieval guild with a strict code of practice and the threat of banishment or worse for those who stray from its narrow path of permitted conduct. At the other is a loosely-drawn set of work practices describing any kind of work.

One broad definition describes a profession as a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification. I guess most people would argue that medicine is clearly a profession and so is law. But can the same be said for IC or for HR? Or even for pub management or beauty care? It depends on what you have to do in order to practise.

The emphasis on prolonged training and a formal qualification is interesting. IoIC became an institute in 2010 precisely in order to put professional development at the heart of IC. We’re a membership body, we exist to develop both the practice of IC and the people who practise it. We created the foundation and advanced diplomas in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and we’ve since invested time and money to gain a rigorous university-based external accreditation ‘seal of quality’ for them both (can other ‘accreditation’ providers say the same?). IoIC is also the professional body connected with the Kingston diploma, now the MA in IC management. We set high standards and we test practitioners against them. It takes time but when candidates reach those standards, employers can rely on the fact that an IoIC diploma-holder or a Kingston graduate is a professional worthy of the name.

As a linguist (another profession), I learned early on that the early roots of a word can help throw light on its contemporary meaning. Here, a quick check on the etymology of the word ‘profession’ reveals that it comes from the Latin ‘profiteri,’ to declare openly, and by the time it had found its way into middle English, a profession had become a declaration of vows made on entering a religious order.

The religious reference seems apt to me because there always used to be what I saw as a bit of theology surrounding IC. Was it part of PR, journalism, marketing or HR? Was it a hybrid of those practices, or something entirely different and unrelated? My view after nearly 30 years in IC puts me in the ‘hybrid, and therefore different’ school. There’s a related question about where IC should sit in an organisation. My view: wherever it can be most effective, add most value, wield most influence and have access to the key decision- makers. That will vary between organisations. Skilled internal communicators should be organisational linguists, able to speak the ‘local’ business language.

To be honest, though, that question no longer matters. Thanks to the work of IoIC, thanks to the engagement boom, thanks to the work of people like Alex Aiken and Russell Grossman in the government communication excellence programme, thanks to the pioneers like Bill Quirke and John Smythe and the entrepreneurial drive of the likes of Marc Wright at simplycommunicate, Andrew Thomas at Cravenhill (publisher of this magazine), Kevin Ruck at PR Academy and Rachel Miller of AllThingsIC, internal communication has come of age as a profession. And as I step down from my role as chief executive of IoIC, I’m very satisfied with that.

Steve Doswell is chief executive of the Institute of Internal Communication