Lead image for Why Companies Need Communications as a Growth Strategy.
Businesses are systematically pulling back from the function that shapes how the world understands them, and it is a curious decision, particularly at a time when the business landscape has never been more competitive, and information has never moved faster. Writes Temi Faseyide, a Communications and PR Manager.
Investing in communications as a strategic business function for growing businesses is a catalyst for growth, helping to define a company's direction, shape market perception, and articulate the critical milestones that influence its long-term trajectory.
Long established as a business function for managing public opinion and corporate image, we're seeing a shift in which this skill is being deprioritised. As of 2024, media and communications job postings had fallen 23% below pre-pandemic levels, among the lowest posting indices of any professional sector tracked.
The prevailing instinct is to defer. To build first, scale later, and communicate somewhere in between, not recognising that by the time most businesses are ready to speak, the market has already formed an opinion without them.
Reducing investment in communications does not eliminate costs, but shifts it elsewhere resulting in gaps and deficits that are considerably more expensive to repair.
Communications is not a function businesses invest in once they have scaled. It is a fundamental storytelling engine that builds credibility and serves as one of the most powerful drivers of business growth.