Thought Leadership

Leading Communications Efforts for the 2020 Election

A year to launch a digital workplace app? Try two months

After generating goodwill with employees for its communications around COVID-19, a large US rail transportation firm wanted to continue that momentum with its digital transformation and create a true employee engagement platform for its 20,000-person professional and unionized workforce (80 percent of whom are spread across 22 states).

Meaningfully Measuring What Matters

Clare Conley, senior director of Corporate Communications at Qualcomm, led a Think Thursday discussion figuring out how to get the most out of and measure a high touch program that seeks to raise awareness, shift perception and sometimes not drive coverage.

Sports & Social Justice

Traci Otey Blunt, senior vice president of corporate communications and Jon Schwartz, senior vice president of communications and public affairs at the National Football League (NFL) joined us for a discussion about how the NFL is reexamining where they fit in the larger fight against injustice. 

How Employee Input Drove Mubadala’s Successful Return-to-the-Office Plan

Like other companies, employees of Mubadala, a global investment firm based in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, began working remotely in March. During the Emirates’ lockdown, the government sanitized public spaces, instituted nightly curfews (with SMS reminders to residents), ramped up testing and launched a contact tracing app (required for all residents and people visiting the area). After the number of COVID-19 cases began to decline in the UAE in early June, the Emirates relaxed restrictions on gathering in public places and organizations started to consider returning to offices.

Resilience and Transformation in a Time of Change

Research Findings on the Transformed Role of Communications The COVID 19 pandemic and concurrent global societal unrest have caused a massive shift in how organizations operate and serve their stakeholders. Businesses are left to determine without hesitation how to survive and flourish amid the realities of our collective new normal. For communications professionals, this is both an enormous challenge and opportunity. Communicators have adapted to an environment that requires more frequent and transparent information sharing and embraced the role of helping their organizations create clarity, alignment and security for all stakeholders. At the same time, communicators must also embrace transformation by rapidly deploying digital technologies at scale to measure impact, recalibrate messaging and anticipate or mitigate potential risks. And finally, communicators must reinforce and amplify their organization’s corporate stewardship and continuously “do the right thing” while being responsive to, and engaging with, the diverse views of stakeholders. The world is filled with risk and rewards. The communications profession increasingly finds itself at the center as corporate leaders tackle the realities of running a business in an era of historic transformation.