Institute of Internal Communication

“It’s a very exciting time,’” says Julian. “There’s a massive revolution happening inside organisations, big transformations about how work works.

“Employees’ relationships with employers are changing and they are very choosy about how they spend their time and where they put their energy.

“They’re living in a 24/7 business world  - an exciting backdrop,  very fast-moving and challenging, so the board needs to work effectively together to help design an organisation that meets the needs of internal communications professionals that are demanding, rapid, tuned-in, and up for the challenge.”

A founding partner of leading communications agency The Team, Julian describes himself as “a creatively trained communicator who sees internal communications as a big opportunity that has been under-represented than other communications disciplines.”

Having been involved with the IoIC and CiB for eight years, he says: “There’s now a superb opportunity to build this profession and put internal communication on a par with Marketing and HR.”

Elected in May, the current Board includes several new corporate members and aims to meet more frequently from quarterly at present to bi-monthly at least before long, and with a stronger team ethos.

The Institute has three broad types of member – agencies, freelancers and corporates. Julian says: “Our heritage has been too agency focussed so while we must continue to have strong consultant and agency involvement it’s the corporates who have the pulling power because they have the large teams that need the support and the needs.

“Accreditation is the backbone of the Institute’s offer and we have a solid foundation there, but we aim to have a significant number of FTSE 100 companies on board, to capitalise on the Institute training and development programme.

“Then we’ll start to get direct involvement between large organisations who need skills and their professional body that’s providing for them.”

Julian says he’s confident the new board is up to the task. He says: “In the past we had a few people doing an awful lot of work, but I want the load to be more evenly spread with the whole team contributing.”

More frequent meetings will speed up the pace and he adds: “I want the board to be an idea-generating team, not there just to sign off on plans so the meetings will be interactive and participative.

“We have a new CEO (Steve Doswell), a new board and energy and momentum. Now we have to deliver real value on membership. Then we’ll leap forward and off the treadmill of churning 5% of members every year into real growth.

“Awards, events and conferences will be just the start. The Institute needs advocacy to be a major player in business because every day there’s something in the media for us to talk about - because every business is going through change that requires internal communication skills.

“We don’t want to be like the AA where you pay your money and hope you never have to make the call. If we were more like the National Trust you’d take great pleasure in paying your money, because you’ve already got five or six great things in mind before the year starts.”