Last week Delphi hosted a dinner for 15 in-house tech comms people to discuss the big challenge facing us all in 2025: how we navigate today’s complex, noisy, polarised world.
It was a lively and sometimes passionate discussion – there was no doubt it struck a chord with comms leaders facing new pressures and demands almost daily. Here are four takeouts from the conversation.
🔍 Businesses are adjusting to fresh scrutiny
Over the past decade, many people expected businesses to play an active role in socio-political events, from the pandemic to climate change, MeToo to Black Lives Matter. The changing political environment has challenged some (but not all) of these assumptions. Like every group of professionals, comms folk have different opinions on this and their approaches vary from organisation to organisation. Some are vowing to keep ‘showing up’ with support for values-driven movements they think remain important. Others are adjusting their policies and tone, or reducing their external profile.
🌎 US connections make things tricky
For many UK-based tech comms leaders, a key challenge in 2025 is balancing differing expectations in the US compared to Europe. If your company is HQ’d in the US, it feels obliged to respond to political changes there – it’s probably either a supplier to the federal government or at least regulated by them. But many of these responses (especially from tech companies) are going far beyond the typical corporate reaction to a new administration, and can be difficult to justify to UK or European audiences who are much less supportive.
🧑💻 Internal audiences come first
In recent years, outspoken employees have created many challenges for tech companies. Through internal organising and new messaging tools, they could make bigger demands of their management. That level of employee activism seems to be diminishing somewhat now (perhaps as economic conditions tilt the power balance back towards employers). Nonetheless, tech comms leaders still see employees as their number one audience in navigating 2025’s nuances – explaining decisions to them, and keeping them on-side, remains crucial.
📈 Rely on your strategic priorities – and accept the consequences
Ultimately, every tech business will need to calibrate its way through 2025’s complexities by deciding what’s important to them. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer and it will depend on the strategic aims of the organisation. Some will be happy to remain outspoken about social justice or sustainability; others will prefer to focus elsewhere. One outcome of this is that customers and employees might increasingly vote with their feet, as companies’ stances become clear. Maybe that’s something that company bosses will need to get used to, as it becomes harder (and perhaps impossible) to please everyone.
Do any of these points resonate as you grapple with navigating 2025?
