Internal communication priorities and barriers… and how AI will change the game

by Wayne Aspland:

Recent Gallagher Employee Communications Reports suggest our profession has been in Groundhog Day for years. Thanks to AI and accelerating change, that’s all about to change according to a new paper being published next week.

Recently, I took a look at the new 2025 Gallagher Employee Communications (formerly State of the Sector) Report. As always, it’s an awesome read.

In particular, I looked at this year’s top priorities and barriers. What is clear from this is that our profession is dominated by three big hitter issues:

Capacity and workload is the #1 barrier. Added to that, change fatigue is #2. Conversely (and perhaps not surprisingly) refreshing the IC strategy is a top 5 priority as well.

Poor line manager skills is the #3 barrier this year. On top of that, improving manager communication is the #2 priority for the sector behind engaging teams on purpose, strategy & values.

Lack of clear direction from the top is the #4 barrier and poor leadership communication is #5. On the flip side, boosting leadership visibility is the #3 priority for the sector.

Nothing new…

Now, in reality, these big hitters are nothing new.

In fact, the archive of Gallagher reports seems to show they’ve been with us for years.

I went back and looked at the priorities and barriers in 2022 and 2019 and they were largely the same (although their severity did seem to dip in the 2022 results).

In 2019, volume of communication and lack of resources were both in the top five barriers. Perhaps as a result, refreshing the IC strategy and building or restructuring the team were the #5 and #6 priorities.

Poor line manager skills was the #2 barrier, while enhancing leadership communication was #4 and enhancing line manager communication was #8.

Lack of support and/or direction from senior leaders was in the top ten in both earlier reports.

But that’s about to change. Enter AI…

If I’m brutally honest, this feels like Groundhog Day. These same issues have been playing on loop for years.

But, that’s about to change. AI will see to that.

You see, AI is going to have a very material impact on all three of these issues.

First, it’s a no-brainer that AI is going to augment a large amount of our day-to-day work and free us up to deliver more value with the same resources. It’s ability to streamline and improve everything from content creation to planning and administration to research and brainstorming is well documented.

Second, AI will lead to a growing need for communication training for all employees and leaders. That’s because some of our day-to-day tasks will become democratised across the organisation. In that environment, communication training will be desperately needed to ensure cohesion across the organisation.

Finally, there will be an opportunity… no, a need… for the communication team to not just influence senior leaders but join them. In the rapidly changing world we are moving into (yes, it is going to get faster), the C-Suite is going to need far more support on culture and alignment, comms training, crisis preparedness, the stakeholder voice and much more.

AI could be Communication’s Golden Opportunity

Next week, I will be releasing a new paper called ‘#Comms2030. Why AI might be communication’s golden opportunity.’ It will be accompanied by a presentation which imagines a day in the life of a communication professional in 2030.

This paper has been supported by the Centre for Strategic Communications Excellence (CSCE) and a number of senior communication professionals from Australia and around the world.

It looks at how our organisations may evolve over the next five years and what, as a result, they may need from us.

Without giving too much away, the news is very good for our profession… provided we take the opportunity to step up.

Mind you, the news could be very different if we don’t.

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If you’re interested in this paper or hungry for more information on AI, check out my free webinar with Sia Papageorgiou of the CSCE next week. At ‘Transforming with GenAI: Kick-start your GenAI Journey’ we’ll discuss the key findings of the paper and provide lots of helpful hints on how to make the most of GenAI.

There are two webinars to accommodate the different time zones.

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Wayne Aspland is an Australia-based communication professional and writer.

Written by: Editor