Top four themes from CIPR Horizon Conference

On Tuesday 14 November 2023, I went to CIPR’s Horizon conference. There was a phenomenal line up of speakers and co-hosts.

The day was packed with great speakers, here are three top themes I took from the day:

Gen Alpha

Gen Alpha will be joining our workforces in the next decade.

Some of them are growing up with their lives documented on line by their influencer parents (see this link for a thought provoking, and frankly scary look at what they may experience and think of this when they are older). Gen Alpha is currently under the age of 8, there will be 2 billion of them by 2025 and they are set to be the most diverse generation to date. It’s estimated that 65% of them will be working in jobs that don’t even exist yet… Jay Richards

The shift this generation will bring to workplaces and how we communicate in the coming decade will be significant. As this generation arrives, the last of the post war Baby Boomer generation will be retiring and some of Gen X too. The impact to our internal communication systems and how we design them will be vast. I wonder if we’ll still be talking about the same issues we do today. The generation ahead of Gen Alpha is already pushing back more on their online interactions, looking for more in person and it could be that Gen Alpha will want more in person interactions through work too.

Burnout

Subira Jones The Corporate Hippie®, shared her story of burnout – it really resonated. So much so I was the first to applaud, a little too early 😉 (yes that was me if you were there).

Her journey from investment analyst to her life today is a story of constant doing, pushing herself and determination that cost her her health, and eventually forced her to rethink her life.

The Corporate Hippie was born and her advice for anyone facing levels of stress that are leading to burnout is to take three steps to re-assess your career and life and put out the fires in your life. 1. Life Audit – get rid of the unnecessary stress. 2. Lifestyle – know who you are, what you value and truly enjoy. 3. Career – build your career to bring your values and purpose to life and feel connected.

Communication teams are busy and thrive on positive stress. But this can easily tip into the negative with too much stress, too many projects and demands on your time. Getting clear about your purpose as a team, your delivery focus and what matters most to the organisation will help temper the inbox and demands on your time. Listen to your audience, what do they really need? And use your internal communication purpose and strategy, organisational values and strategy to guide your work and push back where you need to.

Communicating sustainability

When it comes to sustainability, we heard that some of the messaging has been wrong for some time – the fear and threat we see through many channels has made many want to close their eyes and ears and run away from it all according to Diana Verde Nieto.

Whilst we already have much of the tech and solutions to change our ways and we have a chance to make things better, the thing missing is the hearts and minds to make the change. Cue communications – that’s our job, that’s our skill and expertise.

Mark Shayler demonstrated how powerful connecting hearts and minds with a tough message can be – he took us on a musical rollercoaster through the ages and peppered it with the stats and facts on sustainability from the last 70 years. Ultimately, words matter and today enterprises can and should be a force for good and communicators can be the Babel Fish for sustainability.

Having recently completed an audit for a large organisation on the subject of sustainability communications I found that all the groups wanted more interaction, more face-to-face and more discussion. They want to talk and share ideas about what they were doing, what they could do and impact what the organisation could do as a whole. It’s important to be honest about the challenges you face as an organisation, sustainability is a way of doing things, a journey rather than a set goal.  Communications needs to bring people on that journey, that needs honesty to build trust for change.

When you’re in a position where you face the need to address the big issues of your investments and your business models and operations that run counter to sustainability aims, and you’re promoting turning off lights, it can feel piecemeal at best, hypocritical at worst. Having open and honest conversations about the ‘journey’ of sustainability and finding ways to constantly do better will be essential.

AI and business

Katie King, MBA gave an incredible session on AI. Her experience and knowledge is incredible from her membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Taskforce for AI to her business experience she’s amassed extensive knowledge.

She shared her scorecard to help you assess your readiness for AI projects and help you identify opportunities for your business. And also, this advert from Heinz ‘even AI knows Ketchup is Heinz…’ shows a fun side to experimenting with AI.

I’ve been experimenting a little with AI tools to help manage different aspects of my work such as transcripts and meetings, and providing the starting point for workshop scenarios and content. There is a huge opportunity with AI, and also quite a bit of fear about its impact in organisations. Finding a balance for your organisation, what the appetite and readiness is now, and the governance needed are vital to understand how it can be used to help you in your work.

There is some great guidance from CIPR for communications professionals.

#CIPRHorizon