Communications leaders are under constant pressure to influence stakeholder perceptions and behaviors to drive business outcomes. At the same time, 46% of communications leaders consider audience information overload a key challenge — making it ever more difficult to cut through the noise and affect tangible change. 

Forty-six percent of communications staff don’t feel that their role allows for significant business impact. The solution is to align communications initiatives to corporate objectives, ensuring the functional strategy tangibly contributes to wider business goals.

Communications leaders list aligning employee behaviors to organizational values and strategy as one of their top mission-critical priorities in 2019. Yet only 9% of communications leaders feel confident in their ability to shape corporate culture.

Fifty-seven percent of communicators feel that protecting their reputation in the face of polarizing issues is of the utmost urgency. With mounting pressure to engage in contentious societal issues, navigating new audience expectations has never been more important.