Five Key Takeaways from NIRI 2022
The 2022 National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) conference was well timed. Investor relations officers (IROs) are on the front lines managing increasingly anxious investor sentiment during a period of tremendous uncertainty marked by a downturn in public trading markets. As disruptive as COVID-19 was in 2020, the pandemic was just a sign of things that would come to pass in 2022. IROs need mentorship and fellowship. And that’s what they got (and more) at NIRI 2022.
As a member of the 2022 NIRI Annual Conference Committee and Service Provider Council, I was in the privileged position of helping to shape the agenda and recruit speakers. It’s an awesome and humbling role that gave me a first-hand insight into the key takeaways from the event based on attendee feedback. Here are some that stand out:
1. In-person conferences are back
Attendance returned to pre-pandemic levels, exceeding our expectations. And mind you we’re all attending events with full knowledge that the pandemic is still with us and mingling in person increases the risk of exposure. It’s easy to see why we’re willing to take that risk, though: we’re all eager for the face-to-face human connection that’s been denied to us since 2020. Especially now. Uncertainty brings people together. We need to check in on each other and gain the assurance that comes with a conversation with a friend and college.
2. School is in session
The overall attendee feedback was incredibly strong by every measure. Why? It was more than the networking: it was the learning. The sessions, which ranged from effective speaking to measuring IR success, received uniformly high scores. To be sure, some sessions scored higher than others, but the across-the-board strong ratings speak to IROs’ eagerness to learn and advance the state of the art for the profession. And this makes total sense. Of anyone in a corporate communications role, IRO professionals arguably need to learn more. The stakes of not learning are getting higher, too: from ever-changing privacy regulations to myriad ESG issues related to the rise of stakeholder capitalism, IROs are on the front lines of some dramatic change. And they need to communicate their companies’ positions on evolving issues to an increasingly anxious audience. Missteps can hurt a company’s bottom line in the seconds it takes for a stock price to move.
3. The IRO is a brand ambassador
The phrase “brand ambassador” sounds kind of lofty and highfalutin, doesn’t it? But that’s what the best IROs are now. The highest-rated NIRI 2022 session focused on communications, including public speaking strategies, writing for IR, and stakeholder communications. This sounds intuitive, right? After all, IROs have needed to communicate well for years. But their audience is growing, and each audience wants to be communicated to differently. With the rise of stakeholder capitalism, IROs are more acutely aware that everything they say and do affects not only investor sentiment but all public sentiment, including how job seekers, employees, and customers view the brand. So, IROs are under pressure to figure out how to build trust with all those audiences and understanding the nuances of how to speak and write for them is part of that. Employees want insight into a company’s financial performance just as investors do, but their motivations may differ, and the level of information they need may differ vastly. IROs are learning how to communicate more broadly.
4. Board accountability is increasingly important
One recurring theme is how it’s increasingly important for IROs to help their Boards identify and manage risks. This is a reminder that the remit of the IRO goes beyond investors. Boards can have an enormous impact on a brand’s reputation, and yet their role is getting more challenging and fraught with risk, too. For instance, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently proposed that businesses report the levels of cybersecurity expertise that their Boards possess. Companies are increasingly under pressure to link board remuneration to ESG performance. IROs are taking proactive steps to manage associated risks.
5. ESG is as big as ever
ESG has been important to IROs for some time – mostly due to sustainability (the “E” in ESG) becoming a more consequential investment risk. Then in 2020, a global outcry for racial and social justice created a spike in communication about ESG, especially the “S” in ESG. Going into the 2022 conference, I think it was reasonable to wonder whether that sensitivity to ESG related issues would remain as strong given the fact that economic uncertainty is rearing its head. Well, ESG remains important, but how we define ESG is changing. For instance, being inclusive also means making a website accessible to people with disabilities, and legislation is compelling more businesses to be compliant. But just a few years ago, the mandate to be inclusive was more limited. Here we see another example of the IROs’ mandate going beyond the effective communication of financial results to a narrowly defined audience.
School is always in session
And now comes an interesting challenge: the event is over, and IROs have settled back into their day jobs. How will IROs continue to get the mentoring and training they obviously crave all-year-round? How will they get those things in a remote or hybrid working environment (beyond a Zoom meeting)? If you are an IRO, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you are keeping up the momentum after the event! Contact us or learn more about Investis Digital’s investor relations solutions here.