Watch: President Mandy Pearse’s December video update and end of year review

In her final monthly update to members, CIPR President Mandy Pearse reflects on December's activity and celebrates several landmark moments from her year as President.

This month saw the launch of our first CIPR Business Leaders Survey report – a member-exclusive resource exploring current business confidence in public relations including plans to hire and recruit.

December also saw the year's final issue of Influence magazine launch and we celebrated our new Chartered Practitioners, Fellows, and Corporate Affiliates.

December highlights:  

• Our new Business Leaders Survey – delivered by global market research agency, 3Gem – highlights how two-thirds of businesses surveyed intend to hire or recruit PR professionals in the coming months. Read more.
• We published our Q4 Influence issue which includes topics on COP26, government communications, the art of creating an earworm, and much more. Read more.
• We welcomed four new organisations as Corporate Affiliate members in the last three months. Read more.
• We announced the latest round of Chartered Practitioners as six members achieved the highest standard of professional accreditation in the PR profession. Read more.

2021 highlights:  

• We welcomed 1,900 PR professionals to membership.
• We won bronze for the best association Covid-19 response at the Covid response Awards, silver for the best leadership team at the Association Excellence Awards, gold for the best conference and overall winner at the National Association Awards.
• Members demonstrated their commitment to their professional development as 23,000 CPD activities were recorded. 
• Many organisations joined the ‘heard’ and hosted positive conversations about mental health in PR following the launch of our Heard Mentality campaign.
• We launched our new Tourism and Hospitality Group and Crisis Communications Network, awarded three grants under our new Research Fund, hosted the industry's first climate change and PR conference, and published the world's first PR-themed children's activity book.
• We published new guides on measurement and evaluation, on how to avoid disasters on Wikipedia, on how to go from comms pro to CEO, on the industry's readiness for AI and Big Data, and on helping organisations when they need to communicate suicide.