It was with extreme irritation that I discovered this weekend that London’s department stores have already begun to stock their shelves with Christmas goods! It seems that the countdown to 2012 has begun already, and although in my personal life I have no intention of thinking as far ahead as the presents I’ll be buying my family, in our professional lives it’s definitely the time of year where we’re obliged to start making our plans for the year ahead.

We at the CEC are no different, and in our never-ending quest to stay at the cutting edge of the Communications space, it’s vital to us that our agenda be set by our members most pressing needs. With this in mind, we recently polled our clients to identify where we should be focusing our energies with our upcoming work.

Check out 4 trends that we’ve observed from the data:

Observation #1: Engaging employees with corporate goals and supporting change remain the top priorities for communicators

CEC research indicates that the average employee experiences 3.5 major changes every two years, ensuring that the need to navigate these turbulent times, and maintain employee engagement at the same time, remains high on every communicator’s agenda.

• Thoughts from CEC: Check our studies, Mobilizing the Workforce for work on engaging employees around organizational objectives, and Building a Change-Ready Organization for work on supporting organizational change management.

Observation #2: Communicators are placing increased emphasis on reputation management and on supporting growth in emerging markets

2012 is the first time in a few years that proactive reputation management has figured in communicators’ top 5 priorities.  Interestingly, communicators have simultaneously placed an increased onus on supporting growth in emerging markets.

• Thoughts from CEC: It seems possible that the increased focus on reputation management might be to aid and abet emerging market growth. Check CEC’s work on Reputation Management, and on communicating in a global organization.

Observation #3: Communicators are rethinking their approach to external communications. We asked our members in which areas their 2012 strategy would differ most significantly from previous years. The response was interesting – the top three areas in which Communicators expect to change their approach were in branding, CSR, and reputation management.

• Thoughts from CEC: The external environment continues to evolve apace, so this isn’t necessarily a shock, but we were still interested to observe that the most externally-orientated activities took up all three of the top picks by communicators. Check CEC resources in this space:

1. Differentiate Your Corporate Brand
2. Protect Your Reputation
3. CSR Management

Observation #4: Consultative partnership will be key to Communications’ success

We asked respondents to identify the key to the achievement of their goals in 2012 and beyond. In line with trends that we’ve observed in recent conversations, the #1 answer was the need to play a more consultative role with business partners.

• Thoughts from CEC: Global data from CEC’s high-value Competency Diagnostic indicates that consultative competencies such as critical thinking, business acumen, and an ability to focus on outcomes aren’t quite as well honed as traditional comms competencies (writing skills, oral presentation, channel management). CEC is building out materials to help close competency gaps – access our work in progress page on Modern Communicator’s Skill Set.

Help to direct our work – Based on analysis of this data, and on in-person member feedback, one of our major focuses for 2012 is likely to be around how Communications can enable proactive reputation management; we’d love to hear from you on what’s happening in the environment that is making this a priority for you. What are you doing differently? Get in touch with the Arlinda Mezini to help direct our work in this area!