Dean Royles, chief executive of NHS Employers, the HR and employee organisation of the NHS, said at last week’s Institute of Internal Communications conference “I’ve never, as an HR person, seen the ROI for why we use telephones.” He was commenting on the oft-criticised ROI of social media. The conference’s theme, “Future-proof,” took on the need for internal communications to address a changing landscape. Royles’ commentary on social media, and other presentations throughout the three day event, addressed the impending and at times, already occurring future of IC.

Over three days of case studies, panels and keynotes, the leading minds in Britain’s internal comms came together in Bristol for the IoIC’s Annual Conference. Digital and social were key points of interest throughout the conference. Case studies regarding successes and challenges in different industries carried the theme through.

Vivi’s Venture was initially created by a concerned mother of a child with special needs to provide her daughter’s treatment. The charity was founded to offer procedures the NHS does not offer.

In the years since, it has enlarged its scope, particularly with the support of marketing and communications professionals with connections to the organisation. Mongoose Communications in particular supports Vivi's Venture through its marketing expertise, fundraising abilities and volunteers

The SAS Agency has awarded scholarships worth £10,000 to three students of The University of the Arts London’s Chelsea College of Art and Design.

This initiative is part of their second annual scholarship programme, thus reaffirming the agency’s commitment to foster creative minds and encourage talented students by easing the pressure of big tuition fees.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has announced today that Stephen Waddington was voted by CIPR Members to be the next Chartered Practitioner President in 2014.

The choice was highly debated among not only CIPR members, but also within the wider public relations community. Stephen, who currently is an executive board member and chair of the policy and campaigns committee at CIPR, received 68% of the votes.

Last year, attendees to the annual VTB Capital investment forum were treated to some of Moscow’s best opera singers. This year, the evening’s festivities on the opening night of the forum featured a James Bond-esque multimedia extravaganza. Super IB Boss and Infrastructure Superman were just two of the characters VTB’s employees took on to entertain a crowd of hundreds of investors, business leaders, analysts and journalists.

The RussiaCalling!:London Session, which has over the past five years solidified VTB Capital’s stance as the leading UK-to-Moscow bank, was held this week at London’s Andaz Hotel. The forum featured over 300 one-to-one meetings between British investors and Russian companies, a programme full of panel discussions and speakers, including the heads of VTB Bank, the CEO of the LSE and other prominent guests.

The British Government has increasingly supported the study of media and communications, and it has been investing in projects that provide opportunities for undergraduate students in their final year.

In efforts to encourage students to be more creative whilst providing them with first-hand work experience and preparing students for employment before they graduate, the NHS called for students’ projects to be used in campaign to raise awareness in health issues.

The 2013 Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate web effectiveness was published yesterday, analysing the world’s largest companies that are using digital channels to connect with different audiences, including the general public, investors, interest groups, policy makers, customers and potential employees.

The report examines the digital channels of 84 of the largest FT Global 500 companies, which were ranked by market capital.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) published its annual and financial reports for today.

The annual and finance reports are released simultaneously to provide readers the opportunity to compare the data covering the company’s financial and operational performance throughout last year.

Consulting firms are increasing their Facebook usage to focus on specific topics and build relationships. According to Source Information Services in the report “Facebook, thought leadership and consulting firms”, companies are using this social media to build their brand and highlight issues and experiences with potential clients.

The report analysed the Facebook activity of 12 consulting firms, looking at how they underline issues and solutions to drive the demand for consulting services within their communities. The report calls attention to the fact that Facebook can create a great number of potential clients.

Felton Communication, with funds from the Department of Health, created for Terrence Higgins Trust the national campaign It Starts With Me to create awareness that treatment can prevent HIV from being passed on.

As thousands of people with the disease are unaware of this fact, the campaign will run for two years in England and is targeting the two highest groups at risk of contracting HIV, gay men and African communities. These groups represent 75% of the epidemic.

Getty Images launched Visualising Sustainability, a sustainability edition of Curve. Curve is an online trends publication that provides the industry insights into changing visual content across a wide variety of industry sectors.

Curve looks at how the term sustainability has expanded from raising awareness about environmental consciousness into a strong and well-established concept that is currently integrated in to people’s daily lives.

Fostering the development of the next generation of PR leaders has been one of the CIPR’s main objectives in recent years. The Institute partners with the PR Academy, one of the industries top training organisations, and bestows qualifications of its own on those who train or retrain as PR professionals.

The CIPR has announced this week that it will, through a partnership with PRIME Research, award graduates with fellowships for undertaking applied public relations research. The £4,000 CIPR PRIME Fellowship will allow the winning graduate to participate in a six-week work placement at PRIME’s Oxford offices over the summer.

Teradata and eCircle’s Conference Connect 2013 was held in London’s O2 Arena. The annual conference has been happening for 8 years, and this edition brought together over a thousand people, scaling up the event’s size in comparison to the average of 600 attendees in 2012. The event highlighted key issues for marketers, such as big data uses and how experimentation can lead to an understating of consumers’ preferences and as a result affect decision-making.

Hermann Wimmer, the international president of Teradata Corporation highlighted that big data is available online and it provides valuable information that should be tracked through social media channels via controlled testing to understand costumers and he believes “speed is important when integrating data across all channels”.

Corporate communications has, of course, been radically altered by the growth in new technologies, internal communications is no different. The use of apps and smartphones has opened up new frontiers for internal communicators and technologies like Yammer have introduced new ways for comms teams to engage employees.

At the Institute of Internal Communications’ annual conference on 22-24 May in Bristol, experts in the industry will share their thoughts on the fast-paced world of internal communications.

The red falcon of Denmark-based health and safety training and solutions provider, Falck, acts as an 83-year-old iconic symbol of quality service. With a history of consumer trust and brand reputation behind it, the Falck Safety Services business looks to expand its services and increase its investments following this month’s rebrand.

The group acquired Nutec, an offshore and maritime safety training provider in 2004. Known as Falck Nutec, the business works with extractives companies, crisis managers, those in renewable energy and others, all in high-risk, fast-paced environments. Last week, it was rebranded as Falck Safety Services to reflect the diversifying of the activities within its portfolio.

It’s that time of year again. The time when 100s of pages of pdfs are hoisted off the printer, the time when CEOs are interviewed and investors are alerted. That’s right, it’s annual report season.

But for some, it’s not simply business as usual as annual reports are being adapted to suit the needs and realities of modern businesses. At Black Sun’s “Demystifying Integrated Reporting” seminar last week, those in the know documented the sea change occurring in corporate reporting.

Communicate magazine is pleased to announce a landmark new conference, “Best practice: corporate reporting,” which will examine the strategies, trends and future of corporate reporting.

The 2 July event will cover the issues that impact annual reporting, engaging with new audiences, changing expectations and the trend toward integrated reporting. Speakers include a duo from the Integrated Reporting Council, a policy advisor from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, ARM Holdings’ director of sustainable development, and many more.

Admiral PR announces the launch of the SociaLIGHT Index, which attributes scores to social media channels usage by the top 200 companies in Northern England.

The quantity and quality of content was evaluated alongside with an analysis of social media influence, whether they have a blog and the number of and quality of backlinks to the website of a brand. The Index had over fifteen different social media and online markers, which were analysed and scored out of 100 to determine a company’s success.

The future of the media is bleak. Many criticise Leveson as being about a decade late, news outlets are closing left and right and free online content is eliminating the desire for paid news.

Bad news for journalism, but good news for corporate media, according to Tom Foremski. At last night’s CIPR Thought Leader event, Foremski – a former Financial Times editor and current tech blogger at the Silicon Valley Watcher – spoke on the quality and increasing relevance of corporate media, known in previous incarnations as contract publishing, brand journalism and content marketing.

The Living Group is announcing its study on social media and brand content for professional services firms. The Living Ratings survey has a long history in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Annual Reporting in joined-up financial communications.

Living Ratings developed a study after a wide analysis of social media communications in the UK with focus on the leading legal and accountancy firms. With social media’s rising importance to global communications today, companies increasingly need to link social media, microsites and websites.