Member feedback in action

You've asked for us to help raise your credibility as internal comms professionals with the IoIC memberships.

We are currently developing a self-assessment form that members can complete to ensure they are assigned the appropriate grade and can progress alongside their career achievements.

As an added bonus, we’re creating virtual badges that you will be able to download each year and use on your LinkedIn, social media profiles, or email signatures to further highlight your designation.

IoIC members want support and advice for career progression.

We understand it can be challenging to establish or determine next steps for your career, particularly if you’re newer to the profession. The IoIC is currently putting together a series of career videos in which we will be sharing the professional journeys of a variety of IC professionals to help identify some possibilities you may have never considered.

As you may have read earlier in the year, we’re also working to improve the IoIC Profession Map, making it more interactive and developing a digital self-assessment tool for members. We expect the new and improved version to be available within the next year.

As you can imagine, finding the right trainers and developing courses can take time, so in the meantime we hope you’ll continue to explore our existing training courses, including the new courses released this year.

In order to further support training and development, and create accessible opportunities for all, we are working on developing a suite of affordable bitesize and on-demand training, as well as exploring as well as exploring free training exclusively for members.

Members want to see us advocate more for the impact of IC on organisations, and to develop more research and thought leadership.

Beyond the Future of Work reports, we are thrilled to be able to announce some exciting our work on developing our IoIC Manifesto and the IC Index which will be launching this summer at our IoIC Festival.

We are also currently working on a partnership that will allow us to further tap into the topic of AI and share research around this subject which is not only growing in popularity, but also relevance and impact for our roles as internal communicators.

There are so many possibilities and big topics that are currently being explored within the profession, and we are excited to share our thoughts and get involved with each one, but we want to do it the right way. We have been taking time to be able to partner with the right subject matter experts so that we can ensure the resources and information we provide is reliable, and appropriate for our profession.

Feedback has shown us that you, our members, would like to see more templates, guides, and case studies.

We have since released two new case studies from our IoIC Award winners, and launched three new downloadable and editable templates for easy use and adaptation.

We are currently working to refresh existing guides and factsheets to ensure they are current with the new professional climate, as well as developing a Change Communication Strategy Guide, and Psychological Safety Factsheet.

Due to the detailed nature of some of this content, the process of creation and peer reviews, and the size of our team, we want to reassure you that though some content may take longer to develop it is solely due to the professional standards we strive to maintain.

In order to ensure you are receiving the latest news about the topics that interest you by updating your contact preferences through your IoIC profile. This includes subscribing to the quarterly Voice magazine and verifying that your mailing address and contact information are current.

Following your request for additional resources for freelancers, we’re working on developing an agency and freelancer listing through our new website. This is something that we have been wanting to explore further, but needed the right platform which we have now have through our new and improved IoIC.org.uk.

Additionally, we’d like to remind members of the resources available through our Legal Helpline- Croner. We’ll be sharing some useful tips and resources from their site in the coming weeks, but again encourage you to explore all your member benefits to ensure you’re getting the most out of your experience.

We understand the desire for more face-to-face events, and opportunities to connect with other members in similar career stages or on specific topics of interest.

With feedback showing that members were unaware of the volunteering opportunities that exist at the IoIC, we launched our Get Involved campaign in January to share the different ways our members can take part.

A big thank you to everyone who completed the Get Involved forms, we have now gone back to everyone who was interested in volunteering for the IoIC and, wherever possible, matched them to a role.

Across March (and a little into April) the IoIC team took to the road to visit some of our regions. It was great to have the opportunity to meet so many members in person, and especially lovely to see two of our Network Leads Ann and Melanie who are currently working on plans to reinvigorate the Scotland and Central regions, respectively. As well Crystle who continues to lead the London Network. We were thrilled to also receive interest from other attendees to get involved with their regions and we appreciate the enthusiasm!

We know there is still work to do, but we will be taking the time to work on this development over the summer and look forward to bringing you a plan in the autumn.

We’ve also been exploring options and opportunities to develop a community forum so that members can continue these conversations and support each other.

We are currently working through these requests and we cannot run regional networks without secure volunteer support so thanks to everyone who helps and has offered to help.  If you are interested in being a Network Lead for any of our other current regions, please take a look at our vacancy board and let us know if you think you could run a regional network.