Welcome to communication competencies

Welcome to the home of the Internal Communications Competency Framework. We developed it on the basis of a substantial piece of global research, in the hope that it would be valuable to the internal communications profession.

Whilst our colleagues in HR, Marketing or Accountancy all have well-defined competency and professional development frameworks, as internal communicators, we generally have to judge for ourselves what we should be doing and how well we’re doing it.

That’s where the competency framework is designed to help. It sets out the skills, knowledge and experience needed to be a high-performing internal communications professional. As you will see, we’ve built it in a ‘mix and match’ format, so you can tailor it to fit your own role, your internal communications structure and your organisation. There is no ‘one size fits all’ internal communications role and therefore no fixed definition of outstanding performance.

Using The Framework

If you are an internal communications professional, the competency framework is freely available on this site for you to use as you wish. We only ask that you clearly and visibly reference Sue Dewhurst and Liam FitzPatrick as the source, whenever you use it.

If you are an internal communications consultant, please do not use this framework for commercial purposes. We’re sure you will appreciate that we invested a lot of time and effort in developing the framework and carrying out the research behind it, and retain the rights to it as our intellectual property.