How to set up a corporate communication function

When an organisation decides to set up a communication function, the first thing it usually does is hire someone. A desk is cleared, a laptop arrives, an email address is created. A few weeks later someone stops them in the corridor and asks, “So what is it you do, exactly?” If there’s no ready answer, the function has started to come apart before it was ever really built.

Setting one up takes more than opening a position. Who writes what, who signs it off, whose voice the organisation speaks in — all of this gets settled in the first few months. If it doesn’t, old habits stay put and the new function ends up squeezed between them.

1. Seeing where things stand today

Communication never starts from zero. Even without a team, someone is writing announcements, posting on social media, answering journalists. Laying all of that out on the table is a good place to begin.

Which channels exist, and who runs them? What has gone out in the organisation’s name over the past year, who wrote it, who approved it? How many versions of the logo are in circulation? This list shows, for the first time, how the organisation actually sounds today. It’s usually a surprise.

2. Where the function reports

A corporate communication function works best when it reports directly to the top. Placed under marketing, HR or general administration, it slowly becomes the voice of that department and struggles to speak for the organisation as a whole.

This isn’t about titles. It’s about being close to where decisions are made. The function earns its keep when the person in charge of communication hears about decisions while they’re being made, not after.

3. The remit

It helps enormously to have in writing not only what the function does, but what it doesn’t. Where are the lines with marketing, with HR, with IT? Who owns events? Who looks after the website’s content, and who looks after the platform?

Without those answers, the function quickly becomes the place where everyone says “you can do this too”. By the end of the first year, there’s no time left for the work it was created for.

4. The sign-off chain

Hard days are a little less hard when every text that goes out in the organisation’s name has an author, an approver and a turnaround time. Who signs off a press statement? Does a social media post need approval, and from whom? Who picks up when a journalist calls on a Saturday?

All of it fits on a one-page table. Kept somewhere everyone can see it, it becomes the first document people reach for on a difficult day.

5. The core documents

A handful of documents hold a function together:

• Brand guidelines: Logo, colours, typefaces, templates.
• Style guide: How the organisation sounds. The words it uses and avoids, how it addresses people.
• Stakeholder map: Who the organisation talks to, what matters to each, who owns the relationship.
• Annual communication calendar: The organisation’s known dates, seasons and events.
• Media list: Up to date, by name, sorted by beat.
• Playbook for difficult situations: Who decides, who speaks, what happens in the first hour.

Not all of these will be done in the first month. But deciding the order in the first month makes the months after much easier.

6. Tidying up the channels

Social accounts opened years ago and forgotten, passwords still sitting with a former agency, pages nobody has touched in ages. Once every channel has someone responsible for it, much of that clutter clears itself. Closing a channel nobody looks after is often the right call. Speaking regularly on a few channels beats speaking now and then on many.

7. Measuring and reporting

When the function’s work isn’t visible, it struggles to defend itself at the first budget cut. That’s why a short monthly or quarterly report to leadership matters: what was done, what appeared in the press, how the channels are doing, what’s coming up.

Numbers help, but they’re rarely enough on their own. “Employees heard about the new policy from us first” can say more than a chart.

8. Growing the team

Most functions start with one person. There’s nothing wrong with that. The first addition usually comes for content and digital channels, then design, then events and stakeholder relations. Each new hire takes on part of the work already written into the remit. They don’t invent new work.

A short sequence for the first 90 days

1. Month one: the audit, conversations with leadership, the remit and the sign-off chain.
2. Month two: brand and style guidelines, the stakeholder map, tidying up the channels.
3. Month three: the annual calendar, the media list, the first regular report.

I’ve gathered templates for each of these steps in the Corporate Communications Workbook.

A function isn’t built with a desk. It’s built on the day someone decides who gets to say what.