The CCO job is growing faster than the budget behind it

Two thirds of chief communications officers say their remit widened over two years. Close to half say the resources did not follow, and almost all of them have been through a structural review because of it.

Michael Reaney  ·  16 October 2026  ·  3 min read

A survey of 179 chief communications officers across 33 countries, published by the Arthur W. Page Society as the 2026 edition of its Page Navigator Benchmark Trend Report and covered by O'Dwyer's PR News on 7th October 2026, found that 65.9 per cent of respondents say the scope of their job has expanded over the past two years. Close to half, 45.9 per cent, say they have not been given the resources to match that wider scope. Almost nine in ten said they had reviewed their organisation's communications structure in the past year, which is itself a sign of how widely the mismatch is felt.

Set against Page's 2025 survey, three resourcing lines moved against the function. The share of CCOs reporting headcount growth fell from 49.4 per cent to 35.2 per cent. Budget increases fell from 39.1 per cent to 36.5 per cent, while budget decreases rose from 24.8 per cent to 31.1 per cent. A function whose remit keeps widening is not being given more hands or more money to cover it, and on those three measures the gap is opening rather than closing.

One line moved the other way, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving it out: the share reporting headcount decreases fell, from 37.8 per cent to 29.1 per cent, and the share holding headcount flat rose from 22.8 per cent to 35.8 per cent. Fewer teams are shrinking. What has largely stopped is growth. Static is the new normal, and static against a widening remit is the same squeeze arriving more quietly.

AI is not the explanation, at least not yet. Only 2.6 per cent of respondents said AI had resulted in job eliminations over the past year, with the same share reporting employees redeployed into new roles and about 1 per cent reporting new roles created. The biggest factor named for shaping what companies expect from communications is business transformation, cited by 79.7 per cent. The pressure is coming from the business changing shape, not from the tooling replacing people.

What the work actually consists of has not caught up with the talk about it either. Out of 22 job duties, media relations sat at the top, followed by corporate reputation, organisation-wide employee communications and content creation. AI strategy ranked 19th. The remit is described as transformed while the time is still spent on the standing commitments, which is one reason the resourcing argument is hard for a CCO to win: the new expectations are additions, not substitutions.

That combination explains why a structural review has become close to universal rather than exceptional. When the job grows and the headcount does not, the only way to close the distance is to change how the work gets done, not simply to ask for more people to do it the old way. A review that stops at the org chart, moving boxes without changing the production model underneath them, will show up again in next year's survey as the same gap with a new shape.

Three questions worth asking the function this quarter

1. Which of the commitments added to the remit in the past two years came with its own capacity, and which were absorbed by the same team?
2. If headcount stays exactly where it is for the next twelve months, which part of the production model changes, and who owns that change?
3. Of the 22 duties the function carries, which three would be stopped first if something had to be, and has anyone outside the function agreed to that order?

Worth reading

• Arthur W. Page Society, Page Navigator Benchmark Trend Report 2026 (survey of 179 chief communications officers across 33 countries; covered by O'Dwyer's PR News, Steve Barnes, 7th October 2026). The figures above come from this coverage. One caution for anyone quoting it: the coverage describes headcount decreases as up slightly while the figures it reports show them falling, from 37.8 per cent to 29.1 per cent. The figures are the data. Read it as growth stalling rather than as every resourcing line moving against the function. O'Dwyer's PR News, 7th October 2026

The moves

• Nvidia: Anna Soellner departs as head of corporate communications after roughly four months, having joined around June 2026; no reason has been given for the exit. She reported to Mylene Mangalindan, who leads Nvidia's communications team. Before Nvidia she spent more than eight years running communications at Reddit, where she helped steer it through its 2024 stock market debut, with earlier roles at the Motion Picture Association, the Center for American Progress and the US Treasury. Reported by Geoff Weiss for Business Insider on 10th October 2026 and picked up across the trade press the same day.