The results of this year's European Communication Monitor
With almost 2,200 practitioners from 42 countries this is the largest and most comprehensive transnational strategic communciation study worldwide that has been conducted annually since 2007.
Again this year, the opinion that top management doesn't understand the communication practice has been shared by the majority of all participants - 84%. Furthermore, 75% admit that they are having difficulties proving the impact of communication management on organisational goals. These are the main barriers for the furher professionalisation of the industry. This in turn is fascinating as according to 82% of survey respondends organisations are nowadays interacting much more with stakeholders through various media outlets and have many more touchpoints with them in comparison to five years ago.
A new focus in this year's analysis was ethical issues and standards, which did represent some interesting, but not that surprising findings:
However:
As the main reason for this 32% practitioners report that traditional code of ethics provided by the PR profession are outdated. On the other hand, 93% are certain that there is definitely a need for such rules.
Not surprisingly social media is still a big, big strategic challenge for professionals and will continue to be one in the next three years as stated by more than 46% of the participants (54.9% in 2011; 53.7% in 2010; 45.0% in 2009). Other identified important issues are linking business strategy and communication effectively (44%) and the need for addressing more audiences and channels with limited communication resources (34%).
Further on the subject of the digital evolution and the social web, it seems that the importance of social media tools for the communication role has been steadily growing, including:
However, there is a massive gap between identified importance and actual use of these tools:
This could be explained by the fact that as admitted by participants they have rather moderate social media skills. To improve their knowledge practitioners believe the following ways to be suitable:
I find it absolutely fascinating that the majority believes the private use of social media is imperative to gain the necessary knowledge and skills. And I don't say it is unreasonbale; no, it is in my opinion the best way to learn. I only think it's fascinating because according to my dissertation findings many practitioners simply don't want to use social media privately to get better at it (more on that in a future post very soon).
To sustain what I've found, it seems that the number of communicators who will not train at all is increasing up to 14% this year from 9% in 2011.
There is also a lack in management skills and business knowledge (31% and 22% respectively) and there is a reported need for further personal development in these areas. What the study concludes here I find rather scary:
"...academic education and expectations of communication professionals regarding management, business and communication qualifications are not matched and that this is a serious problem for both sides to address: i.e. for academia to (re)claim relevance and professionals to get access to the type of knowledge they need."
It seems the profession has a long way to go (so do I), however this way would not only be challenging, but therefore also quite interesting and I am very much looking forward to being part of it.
For more details you can check out this video, or you can also have a look at the full report in the slidershare presentation below (or get the downloads here).