Future of Work Trends Report IoIC, The Institute of Internal Communication

Our work landscapes are in the midst of profound and unprecedented change.

The first two decades of the 21st century have seen rapid acceleration in the advancement of communications technologies. Most notable are the rise of the smartphone and its everincreasing computational power , and the ongoing and rapid expansion of the Internet.

The continuous and unprecedented availability of information via our smartphones significantly impacts how we behave as humans, as communities, as societies and as nations. Information ubiquity also creates profound shifts in the way we run our organisations.

In parallel, the make-up of the UK’s working demographic is shifting. As older generations retire and new generations embark on their working lives, attitudes and behaviours shift. Shaped by the environments they grew up in, younger people at work today are far more digitally dextrous by default – as a generational cohort, they have a significantly different communication style.

To add further complexity, our wider political, economic and environmental backdrop is in turmoil. In the next decade we’ll need to reconfigure both our political and economic frameworks if we stand any chance at all of repairing the ecological damage humans have caused.

What does all of this mean for the internal communication profession? Effective internal communication has the power to transform working lives by helping people feel engaged, connected and purposeful – that they matter at work – ultimately making for better organisations and, by extension, enhancing society.

At IoIC, we believe that effective internal communication is the lifeblood of an organisation, enabling all stakeholders to know, at any given point in time, what’s happening within the organisation and what’s expected of them.

In his 2019 bestseller, What You Do Is Who You Are, Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz describes the link between communication and trust. He writes: “In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust […] As an organisation grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.”

As the places in which we work continue their journey of disruption and transformation, the need for robust, clear and cohesive communication has never been more critical. As the only dedicated professional body for internal communication, we want you to feel empowered to influence change positively, as it’s happening.

This is why we’ve created this report. We believe that an enhanced understanding of the convergent forces shifting the very nature of work will ease the way for smoother transitions into new working landscapes. Internal communication has a pivotal role to play in moving all of this forward, so this is just the first in a series of practical tools that we’ll develop to enable members to better understand and better understand the myriad opportunities that lie ahead.