Comms teams are engaged and burning out at the same time.

Eighty-eight per cent of communicators call themselves engaged. Eighty-one per cent report burnout. The researchers point at connection between colleagues, not workload.

Michael Reaney  ·  18 September 2026  ·  4 min read

New research from the Institute for Public Relations, produced with The Grossman Group and published on 9th September 2026, complicates the usual story about burnout in communications teams. The survey of 419 communications professionals, recruited through the online panel Prolific and fielded between October 2025 and January 2026, found that 88 per cent of communicators describe themselves as engaged in their work, a proportion many functions would envy. At the same time, 81 per cent said they experience burnout at least sometimes, a 22 percentage-point jump on the 2025 report. Forty per cent said they are likely to look for a job at a different organisation within the next year.

Those two findings together would normally point to workload as the culprit, and to efficiency, headcount or better tools as the fix. The report's own analysis argues otherwise. According to David Grossman, founder and chief executive of The Grossman Group and a trustee of the Institute for Public Relations, "one of the most important findings is that engagement is fundamentally relational." Communicators who feel emotionally distant from colleagues report lower engagement than those citing burnout, pay or job security, a pattern the researchers found held even as artificial intelligence tools take on a growing share of day-to-day production work.

That is worth sitting with. Communications functions have spent much of the past two years being told their central challenge is technological: which AI tools to adopt, how to fold them into a workflow, how to measure the output. This research points to a parallel risk sitting underneath that one, inside a profession whose job is managing other people's connection to an organisation while its own members report feeling steadily less connected to each other. A team can be engaged and burning out at once, and the finding here is that the first does not cancel out the second. The researchers link the erosion specifically to weakening bonds between colleagues, separate from the hours logged.

For a chief communications officer managing a function through an AI transition, the practical implication is that retention plans built around workload relief or job-security reassurance may be aimed at the wrong variable. A short checklist worth running against your own team:

1. When did you last ask someone on your comms team how connected they feel to their colleagues, rather than how busy they are?
2. Is your retention plan built around reducing hours, or around the working relationships that faster, AI-assisted production has left less room for?
3. If your most reliable performer were burning out, would you find out from them, or from their resignation letter?

Worth reading

• The Institute for Public Relations and The Grossman Group, "2026 Employee Engagement in Communications Report" (419 communications professionals, fielded October 2025 to January 2026, published 9th September 2026): the anchor study above. 88% of communicators report being engaged; 81% report burnout at least sometimes, a 22 percentage-point jump on the 2025 report; 40% say they are likely to leave their organisation within a year, up from 31% a year earlier; emotional connection to colleagues is the strongest single driver of engagement. Institute for Public Relations, 9th September 2026
• Executive Presence, "The Executive LinkedIn Report: 2026" (fourth annual analysis, more than 6,000 executive posts and 33 million impressions, published 25th August 2026): the average executive LinkedIn post now reaches 14% more people than the same period a year earlier, and original personal storytelling comfortably outperforms reshared or promotional content. The same report notes executives remain reluctant to post under their own name, still worried about looking self-promotional or saying the wrong thing, so the reach gain is going to those who have already got past that hesitation. PR Newswire, 25th August 2026

The moves

• Microsoft has announced that Frank X. Shaw, chief communications officer, will leave the company at the end of December 2026, after 17 years in the CCO role and nearly three decades at Microsoft across multiple chief executives. Shaw told staff he does not have another role lined up and is not retiring. Microsoft says it will consider internal and external candidates and has not named a successor.