Blurred Lines -The Rise of the Hybrid Role

A notable trend in the world of corporate communications in the past decade or so has been the rise of the hybrid role. Just a few years ago, I was commenting on how Communications Directors were being called upon to input into a broader range of business issues than ever before and business acumen was close to the top in the rankings of skills most valued by clients. That discussion seems obsolete now; business acumen is a given and the majority of senior communications and investor relations mandates I have worked on since then which started out as ‘pure-play’ positions have since become hybrids – a quick straw poll confirms it: A candidate who began a new role two years ago as a Communications Director is now a Director of Communications, Brand and Marketing; another comms lead has added sustainability to his remit alongside both internal and external comms; a Group Head of Investor Relations now oversees both IR and Communications, another has bolted on corporate development to his IR responsibilities. The picture is clear: when it comes to the capabilities and skillsets of corporate & marketing communicators, the lines are blurring. And the kinds of individuals clients are looking to hire are those with a blend of hard and soft skills.

Companies are merging roles and skillsets and calling for their communications & marketing teams to be able to deliver against an ever-increasing range of KPIs and triple bottom line targets, including a clear strategy for their social purpose. Digital skills have seen a meteoric rise as we know. An understanding of e-commerce and SEO, the ability to work with big data, to analyse and measure the impact of a social media campaign on a company’s reputation – and bottom line – are all valuable skills and companies are going to need more of them in the years to come, including how to incorporate new technologies and AI into business functions. These tech-savvy, hybrid roles are the domain of course of Gen Z for whom anything but a permanently connected, app-rich, online life is unthinkable, since they’ve grown up in a world in which devices have been a fixture. Gen Z, we are told, want different things from work and life.  ‘Old school’ corporates with ponderous procedures, box-tick value systems and ‘if it ain’t broke, why fix it?’ attitudes hold no interest for millennials, much less still for Gen Z (and the proudly South African generation of ‘born frees’). Change, disruption, opportunism, entrepreneurialism are the norm for them, as is a fierce belief in the importance of diversity in all its forms and a deep sense of needing to make an impact on the world they live in. I suspect they couldn’t care less if a job is a hybrid of ten different roles – if it’s interesting, disruptive, and involves the use of cutting edge technology to somehow improve the lives of others and/or change the way people think they’ll grab it with both hands. Business leaders need to find a way to bridge the gap between this new work-force and the traditional hallmarks of successful, aspirational companies such as good leadership, engaged employees and the ability to attract and retain the right people. HR has a critical role to play in this regard, as a two-way mirror between the leadership team and this new breed of employee. And before this, there is a role for universities and colleges preparing people for the workforce. Perhaps schools should be asking different questions too – not ‘What do you want to be?’ but ‘What skills would you like to acquire and how would you like to use them?’

Role profiles now are often quite dazzling in the sheer scope of responsibilities and skills they call for.  That said, where a role calls for knowledge of a broad range of disciplines or areas of expertise, I have found that clients are usually willing to ‘flex’ to some extent, prioritising certain requirements over others and acknowledging that there elements which can be learnt and others which are harder to teach. Relationship management, leadership and mentoring skills, the ability to collaborate and influence come with experience and ‘time in the trenches’, and are more difficult to acquire for serial entrepreneurs who may spend more time eyeballing several screens than several other humans…

Effective corporate communicators do what they do well because of number of things: they understand how to articulate and adapt a corporate narrative to a wide range of stakeholders and how to use that narrative to manage a crisis and their company’s reputation; they know how to influence leadership teams and boards to engage with their stakeholders consistently and transparently. As we know, every one of an organisation’s stakeholders has a voice and a wide variety of platforms and channels through which to make it heard. Today’s stakeholders demand insight into the inner workings of companies, an end to the secrecy of boardrooms and ever deeper scrutiny of management teams. And rightly so. We’ve seen what happens to companies who think they’re too big or impenetrable to fail. Given this corporate landscape, hybrid roles which call for a deep understanding of stakeholder management, customer & employee experience and brand management, which ensure consistency of messaging and a speed- to-response are clearly the way forward and are here to stay. Let’s hope we can all keep up.