A second survey finds the same shape: more mandate, no more resource to meet it

A UK survey of corporate affairs leaders, published within days of Page's CCO study, describes the same condition from a different angle: a remit that keeps widening without the resource to meet it.

Michael Reaney  ·  23 October 2026  ·  3 min read

VMA Group, the UK recruitment and advisory firm specialising in corporate affairs and communications, published its Shaping Corporate Affairs & Communications 2026 Industry Report on 5th October 2026, drawing on more than 100 senior corporate affairs and communications leaders across the UK. The report's own summary describes a function that continues to expand its strategic influence while navigating mounting pressure from stakeholder scrutiny, regulatory complexity, resource constraints and rapid technological change, and names AI literacy as one of the more significant capability gaps the profession now faces. VMA has not published a quantified breakdown behind that summary, so the finding is reported here as a direction, not a precise figure.

That direction matches, almost exactly, the quantified version of the same pattern reported here last week from the Arthur W. Page Society's Page Navigator Benchmark Trend Report 2026: 65.9 per cent of 179 chief communications officers across 33 countries said their job's scope had expanded over the past two years, while 45.9 per cent said they had not been given the resources to match it, with headcount growth and budget increases both falling year on year. One survey of 179 CCOs across 33 countries and one survey of more than 100 UK corporate affairs leaders, taken independently and published within days of each other, are now describing the same condition from two different angles. That stops being one function's complaint and starts looking like the standing shape of the job.

The practical risk is treating the gap as something to close with the next budget cycle rather than with a different production model. A function whose scope keeps widening while its headcount holds flat is being asked, implicitly, to do the extra work by absorbing it as unpaid overtime unless something about how the work gets made changes first.

Three questions worth running against a communications function this quarter

1. Of everything added to the remit in the past two years, how much runs on a process built for the old scope, and how much has actually been redesigned for the new one?
2. If the next resourcing round is flat, which part of the current workload gets the production-model fix first, and which part simply stops happening?
3. Who in the function is already measuring the gap between mandate and resource, and are they the person who gets to act on it?

Worth reading

• VMA Group, Shaping Corporate Affairs & Communications 2026 Industry Report (more than 100 senior UK corporate affairs and communications leaders, published 5th October 2026). The findings above come from this report's own public summary; VMA has not released a detailed figures breakdown. VMA Group, 5th October 2026
• Spencer Stuart, 2026 U.S. Board Index (proxy-statement analysis of S&P 500 boards, proxy year May 2025 to April 2026, published September 2026). Board refreshment hit a decade low, with 364 new independent directors appointed in 2026, the fewest since 2016, while chief executives took 37 per cent of those new seats, the highest share since 2012. A tightening market for new board seats, concentrating further around chief executives, is the wider context for how rarely a communications background reaches the boardroom at all. Spencer Stuart, September 2026
• Ragan's Center for AI Strategy, "Prove the ROI of AI before leaders ask" (Stephanie Nivinskus, published 15th October 2026, based on Ragan's AI Readiness Assessment, more than 200 communicators). Most respondents have moved well past experimenting with AI, but only 22 per cent can document measurable improvement or return, measurement scored lowest of eight adoption areas assessed, and 53 per cent of teams have no AI metrics defined at all. The gap sits exactly where comms measurement has always been weakest, now with a newer, faster-moving subject to prove. Ragan, 15th October 2026

The moves

• Bosch: Prof. Christof Ehrhart will leave Bosch on 31st December 2026, at his own request, after leading communications since 2019 (internal and external communications, governmental affairs, industry-association relations and strategic brand management). Bosch announced the departure on 15th July 2026 and said his successor will be announced at a later date.