The value of comms

Introduction

How we feel our role and work is perceived by our colleagues and peers can have a big impact on our professional lives.  

The last part of our Salary and Organisational Culture Survey Report 2025 launch explores how comms is valued across organisations and how to embed comms as a strategic partner.

The leadership divide: How comms is valued across the organisation 

The findings from our 2025 salary and organisational culture survey indicates that although most charity comms professionals feel their work is recognised as necessary and important in principle, it’s not consistently valued in practice.  

There is a sizeable gap between how comms is viewed and how it is understood and valued, particularly at leadership levels, with 44% saying they don’t believe there is a good understanding of comms at board or senior management level. 

The anecdotal commentary adds important context to these findings, with many communicators feeling that they are carrying organisational reputation, income generation and audience engagement while still being treated as tactical service providers rather than strategic leaders:  

“Directors don’t seem to understand how vital our roles are… we have a tiny team but are responsible for over £1m per year income.” 

“Many charities undervalue marketing, internally and externally. And it is often the last thing on their priority list, hence there is usually also little budget allocated to marketing.” 

“Marketing is usually the first to go in financial uncertainty but feels very short sighted… if charities want to grow.” 

While most charity communicators (69%) told us that they feel communications is generally valued within their wider organisation, that number has fallen from 76% in 2024. We’ve also seen an increase in the number who feel that comms is not valued, which rose from 17% to 21%. 

Despite this, nearly half of respondents rated cross-team communication as ineffective, showing that there is room for internal communications to develop to filter the value of comms further in organisations.  

Actions charities can take to increase the value of comms internally   

For comms to be recognised and valued appropriately across the organisation, it’s usually less about telling people to appreciate comms and more about adapting structures, processes and updates to highlight both the work being done and the impact that comms is having. 

• Embed cross-functional practice: Integrating comms as much as possible into teams and projects at the start helps colleagues experience communications as a thinking partner rather than a final production stage or a central service. This practice can include assigning comms leads to major programmes, involving comms in plans from the beginning, and embedding comms milestones into project timelines. 

• Prioritise internal comms: If teams and colleagues across the charity don’t understand your strategy, priorities and impact and how it helps their goals, they’re less likely to work collaboratively with you. This lack of cohesion can cause comms to become fragmented. Simple leadership messaging, regular cross-team updates, and sharing decisions transparently and clearly internally can help staff understand and appreciate your external comms and its role. 

• Measure outcomes, not just outputs: Activity metrics such as number of social posts, email open rates or website traffic are useful but are unlikely to demonstrate your strategic value to colleagues. Consider how (where possible) you can map out attribution with tracking. More persuasive measures such as how you have contributed to an increase in service uptake, supporter retention or volunteer recruitment can help to connect comms work to organisational outcomes. 

The impact of perception of value on happiness and retention 

When we look at the data in more depth, we can see the correlation between how much people feel comms is valued and how happy they feel in their role. Overall, 65% of our survey respondents said they are happy in their job, but that figures rises to 92% among those who feel comms is highly valued.  

In contrast, for those who feel comms is not valued at all, 70% report feeling generally unhappy in their role (30% are very unhappy; 40% are quite unhappy).  

“Our expertise is undervalued and misunderstood and that is sadly reflected in salaries – that has been over the long-term and I don’t see it changing. In fact with AI, I think too many charities will feel they can rely on tech to do the job because they simply don’t understand what’s required or the value-add.”

Our survey shows that not feeling comms work is valued has a huge impact on wanting to remain in a role understandably, with 90% of respondents who feel comms is “not valued at all” planning to leave their roles in the next year. Even those who feel it is “not really valued” have a higher intent to leave at 47.2% of respondents. 

Just 12% of people who feel highly valued plan to move jobs in the next 12 months, compared to the overall survey average of 33%. 

“Since moving into the charity sector, I have found that communications salaries are significantly undervalued, and this appears to be widely accepted within the sector. This reflects a broader lack of understanding of the communications function within the organisation…” 

Actions charities can take to increase happiness and retention rates 

Demonstrating an investment in comms includes making sure teams are appropriately resourced and supported to do the best work possible. This demonstration goes a long way in making sure people feel their work is valued and they want to stay in their organisations.  

• Invest appropriately in people, systems and planning: Underinvestment can create reactive work, which reinforces the perception that comms is tactical. Appropriate investment allows teams to plan more strategically, evaluate, and test and learn to build on what’s working well.  

• Create clear professional development plans: Lack of development is a key driver of job dissatisfaction and can lead to a retention problem. Investing in ways to upskill your team, through mentoring or training, supports their current work and demonstrates that you value their future career progression too.  

• Improve comms literacy across the organisation: Comms can be undervalued because colleagues don’t understand what good strategic communications involves. Offering internal learning can help others to better understand and collaborate more on what’s needed to deliver effective communications. Start by translating buzzwords and key concepts to frame it in a way everybody can get on board with.  

The impact of charity size, type of role and strategic thinking 

We see that the size of an organisation can also affect how comms is perceived by those within it.  

Small charities (1-10 employees) have the highest percentage of people feeling “highly valued” at 45%, while only 20-33% of respondents at medium, large and extra-large charities say they feel comms is highly valued, perhaps suggesting that as charities increase in size the value may not be as apparent if siloed working or “invisible work” has emerged.  

There are sizeable proportions across small, medium and large-sized charities who feel comms is not valued (21% for small charities, 14% for medium charities and 30% of larger charities).  

Note that extra-large charities report overall the highest value rates, but this may be due to our data size for this group at 8% of the respondents. 

There also appears to be an emerging perception gap between leadership and mid-to-lower-level staff when it comes to how valued comms is felt. 57% of CEOs and half of directors feel comms is highly valued, while just 19% of those in manager or lead roles and 13% of senior executives feel it is highly valued. Managers are most likely to feel it is only “somewhat valued”.  

Perhaps this is because those closest to leadership levels are more likely to be the recipients of leadership praise and understanding. Questions then arise about how feedback and information is cascaded.  

However, percentages rise again when you look at those in executive officer and assistant roles. This “horseshoe” effect, coupled with our findings in our salaries and responsibilities section, seems to suggest that those in the mid-levels are getting pinched in their roles and therefore feeling comms is less valued as a result.  

Interestingly those with more delivery-focused roles feel comms is less valued, and this may be a disconnect between leadership conversations and those happening on the ground.  

Those specialising in PR and media are the most likely to feel their work is valued by their peers (69.2%), followed by general communications generalists (66.3%), while just over half (51.4%) of those in digital roles feel their work is valued. 

Our previous article looked in more depth at strategic thinking, and when we consider how leadership around strategy impacts the value of comms, we see that having formal strategies in place significantly boosts the perceived value of comms organisationally. 

In organisations with a dedicated comms strategy in place, 32% feel highly valued, compared to only 15% at those without one. Despite this connection, only 40% of respondents have a communications strategy. 

Similarly, 31% of those with a digital strategy feel highly valued, compared to 20% of those without one.  

Overall, strategic direction helps the wider organisation get on board with the comms team’s work. However, we may see more positive strides in the years that follow with comms and digital matters increasingly climbing up board agendas in the current operating environment.  

Similarly, 31% of those with a digital strategy feel highly valued, compared to 20% of those without one. 

Overall, strategic direction helps the wider organisation get on board with the comms team’s work. However, we may see more positive strides in the years that follow with comms and digital matters become increasingly climbing the board agendas in the current operating environment.  

Actions charities can take to increase the strategic representation of comms  

It is therefore important that communications is embedded more strategically in organisational planning, wider impact measurement and leadership decision-making, to increase the perception of the value of comms.  

• Reposition comms from transactional to strategic: Define your comms as a strategic function that helps deliver organisational goals, considering what you audience or actions you are trying to influence as well as what format or channels should be used. For example, if you’re launching a new service, comms shouldn’t just promote it, but help shape how it’s designed, framed and understood by your audiences and stakeholders.  

• Have comms representation at senior decision-making level: If comms is absent from leadership conversations, it will always be reactive to what comes through the pipeline when information eventually reaches the team. So, it’s vital that your comms lead attends senior leadership meetings. Encourage your organisation to create formal routes for comms input into risk, strategy and programme planning, and involve comms in trustee reporting to help support better discussions. 
• Connect comms directly to your mission: Outline clearly the causal links between comms and your outcomes and impact across the organisation. For example, document and track how comms work has increased awareness of your services, improved engagement and supporter retention, or influenced policy discussions. It’s important to show the impact across the organisation and to co-own results, than just focusing on what you delivered.  

Our findings across the years unfortunately show a persistent cultural issue across the sector of viewing communications as discretionary rather than a key strategic function that builds trust, shapes understanding, enables engagement and protects reputation. While we have seen some positive movements in some areas in the 10+ years we have been benchmarking comms views, there is still some work to be done.  

Our data indicates that we need to focus less on saying communications matters and more on helping organisations understand how it matters, through strategic inclusion, realistic resourcing, leadership literacy, impact reporting and evidencing. Until then, the anecdotal sentiment running through the data will likely persist: “Senior staff really need to take communications seriously in this current climate.”