2025: Nine emerging corporate communication trends

The business agenda requires you to identify what makes you unique and effectively communicate that to your audiences across various channels. Meanwhile, your audiences expect your business to be a force for Good, outline its strategy and demonstrate results.

Here are nine emerging corporate communication trends for 2025 relevant to your corporate reporting, sustainability, and digital channels.

Corporate reporting

1. Engaging stakeholders strategically

As the old mantra goes, we’re all in it together. Stakeholders are taking centre stage in corporate communication, and the emphasis is shifting from corporates claiming they are “working for stakeholders” (really?) to a more authentic “working with”.

The change emphasises how these relationships provide insight for robust decisions and plans. This turns on its head the corporate narrative tradition that positions stakeholder engagement content after the business strategy. The emerging trend is engagement-before-strategy, highlighting the context and rationale of informed, responsible corporate objectives.

2. Outcome-based governance communication

Governance reporting, like Cinderella, is finally coming to the ball. The updated UK Corporate Governance Code enshrines outcome-based communication in regulation. This changes how governance effectiveness and controls are disclosed, highlighting how they support overall success. The poor sibling of strategic reporting transforms into an essential component of the business story.

The trend changes governance reporting from top to bottom. Upfront, result-oriented highlights replace boilerplate board composition dashboards. Further down, leadership performance and accountability communication emphasise how remuneration policies promote long-term sustainable outcomes.

3. The impact of your value chain

The business model is a company’s beating heart. After the first wave of CSRD reporting, capital markets are increasingly focused on responsible risks and opportunities. Those presenting a compelling narrative about competing within sustainability-driven market forces will be rewarded.

The sustainability communication paradigm is evolving from risk resilience to value creation. This shift necessitates a more detailed description of every aspect of a product’s value chain. Furthermore, new space is being created to explain the direct and indirect relationships – upstream and downstream – in generating value.

Sustainability

4. ESG integration

Henry Ford said, “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” COP29 emphasised the importance of collaboration between finance and sustainability teams, especially in light of regulations such as the EU Taxonomy and CSRD.

Reporting practices increasingly avoid isolating ESG factors from financial aspects, favouring more integrated approaches. This is implemented through double materiality assessments, which encompass financial risks and opportunities alongside ESG issues. In 2025, more than ever before, businesses will be expected to articulate how they integrate sustainability into their strategies, emphasising the connection between their strategic decisions and non-financial performance indicators.

5. Nature-related disclosures

Biodiversity has currency, literally. The world’s natural capital is limited, and biodiversity loss can impact supply chains, corporate reputations, and financial performance. Businesses increasingly recognise these risks, driven by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and Science-Based Targets.

Investors use these frameworks to evaluate whether companies incorporate these risks into their strategies. As non-financial key performance indicators expand, disclosing biodiversity metrics such as land use and species inventories will become standard practice.

6. Real-time reporting

Vision, planning, and results – these three simple yet complex principles guide most corporate communication. Stakeholders expect companies to be a force for good and to possess a robust strategy for delivering positive outcomes. New carbon accounting tools require fewer assumptions and offer greater reliability. Improved climate tracking identifies efficiencies and implements strategies that contribute to sustainability goals.

Real-time ESG performance tracking is emerging as a necessary tool for maintaining a competitive edge through continuous and accurate data. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Corporate communication and sustainability reporting trends emphasise frameworks and data sources that reveal a better business.

Digital

7. Strategic Integration of AI

The year 2025 is set to be a pivotal one for AI. After a year of exploring and experimenting with AI in 2024, companies will shift their focus to strategic and measured implementation. The aim is not to reduce the workforce but to improve communication efforts.

This will be achieved by intelligently using AI within the organisation and in collaboration with agency partners, enabling more targeted and personalised communication strategies.

8. AI Training and Governance

AI is advancing more quickly than the efforts to regulate it, so remaining ahead of policy changes is more crucial than ever. As the EU AI Act approaches implementation in February 2025, organisations of all sizes must establish rigorous training and governance frameworks to ensure the responsible use of AI.

Significant resources will be allocated to developing these frameworks and training employees on ethical and effective AI practices. Therefore, proactive planning and the development of AI training programmes are essential. We offer workshops to help organisations in this process.

9. Enhanced stakeholder engagement: A year-round, multi-channel approach

Silence – no words, updates, or new information – can be annoying, frustrating, or damaging. Corporate and Investor Relations teams often operate with limited resources. By leveraging AI and strategic planning, corporate communication can transition from periodic reporting to a continuous, targeted, and personalised engagement strategy across multiple channels. This shift addresses a long-standing aspiration for many organisations, frequently constrained by budgetary limitations.

As AI tools mature and become more accessible, we anticipate moving towards more personalised communication while focusing on core principles such as brand consistency and equity.

If you’d like to discuss this, or any other subject, please get in touch with Richard Costa, Consultancy Director, at richardc@gather.london

We’d love to know what you think.