Why communications is firmly on the Chief People Officer agenda
There’s a shift happening in how Chief People Officers think about brand, reputation, and communications.
This used to be primarily the concern of the marketing and communications teams but increasingly, it is a focus for leaders of people functions. Because brand today isn’t just built through campaigns – it’s built through employee experience.
As Jeff Bezos famously put it: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
What’s increasingly clear is how directly that conversation shapes talent outcomes. According to a report by LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying and a strong employer brand reduces turnover rates by 28%. Candidates are forming their view of an organisation long before they speak to anyone there. In a world where employee voices on social media consistently outperform corporate messaging, that view is being shaped from the inside out.
And crucially, that perception is built day-to-day through communication. How clearly strategy is explained. How consistently leaders show up. How decisions are framed and understood. How confident managers feel translating priorities for their teams.
Gartner’s research into Employee Value Proposition (EVP) underlines the point. Only 21% of employees said their organisation communicates about their EVP enough, and 75% of HR leaders admitted they are not doing a good job of communicating their EVP internally. The gap between what organisations offer and what employees actually perceive is, in most cases, a communications gap.
This is a pattern we see in our own research. In the report Corporate Affairs in 2026, from influence to clarity, published by Global Communications Search Partnership (of which Taylor Birchwood is a founding member), we surveyed over 200 senior corporate affairs leaders globally. The findings reveal a striking disconnect: 92% say their leadership team understands the importance of reputation, and 85% say managing reputation is an active board consideration – but only 63% include reputation as one of their top three functional priorities.
In other words, the value of reputation is recognised at the top of the house, but it isn’t consistently being backed by the investment of time, resource and attention.
For CPOs, one finding should stand out in particular. When corporate affairs leaders were asked to rank stakeholder audiences by their perceived importance to the CEO, employees came third – behind customers and investors – with just 11% ranking them as the most important audience. The report notes that the internal audience “remains under-weighted relative to its importance” and makes the point directly: if employees do not understand or believe in the organisation’s strategy, external credibility becomes significantly harder to sustain.
This matters because reputation is built from the inside out. And the mechanisms through which it is built are fundamentally communications mechanisms.
Communications is one of the primary ways a CPO can shape culture at scale, build or erode trust, translate strategy into something people actually understand, and close the gap between what an organisation says and what it feels like to work there.
Because that gap is where reputation risk now sits. Employees experience it first, candidates see it next, and increasingly, it doesn’t stay internal.
The question for CPOs isn’t whether communications matters. It’s whether it’s being fully recognised as one of the most powerful levers on the people agenda and structured and resourced accordingly.
Author: Wayne Reynolds, Managing Partner
Wayne is a Managing Partner at Taylor Birchwood, where he advises boards and leadership teams on hiring the best corporate affairs, investor relations and communications talent at the most senior level.
Published: June 2026