Communications Director Recruitment

Communications Director Recruitment

Exec Capital provides senior Communications Director recruitment for UK firms across listed companies, private mid-market, PE-backed, family-controlled and FCA-regulated businesses. The Communications Director role typically reports to the CEO or Chief Marketing Officer depending on firm structure, and carries substantive accountability for corporate communications strategy, media relations, stakeholder engagement, internal communications, and (for listed firms) regulatory and shareholder communications. UK senior Communications Director hiring is shaped by the increasingly complex stakeholder environment — institutional investors with active governance engagement, media scrutiny across traditional and social channels, employee engagement expectations, and (for regulated firms) substantive regulator communication frameworks. The successful appointments are those calibrated to the firm’s specific stakeholder landscape.

Our practice covers UK senior Communications Director appointments across firms with substantial public profile, listed-company communications obligations, complex stakeholder bases, and broader communications-led commercial agendas. We also recruit Heads of Communications stepping into their first board-facing role and Directors of Corporate Affairs whose remit runs across media, government, regulators and investors. Every search is run by our specialist team, with Adrian Lawrence FCA overseeing each mandate.

How Communications Director recruitment works

A senior communications appointment touches the CEO, the Chair, often the CFO and investor relations, and sometimes the regulator. The process needs to reflect that. Our executive search methodology follows six stages, and we agree the timetable with you at briefing rather than promising a fixed number of days.

What the Communications Director role covers

The substantive Communications Director role typically covers four dimensions.

Corporate communications and media relations. The substantive relationship with UK and (where applicable) international media — proactive media engagement, reactive media management, executive media positioning, and (for listed firms) results-period and regulatory announcement management.

Internal communications and employee engagement. The substantive internal communications framework — leadership communications, change communications, cultural and engagement work, and (for distributed firms) the operational reality of communicating at scale.

Stakeholder communications. Engagement with the firm’s broader stakeholder landscape — institutional investors and shareholder advisory bodies (particularly for listed firms), regulators, customers, suppliers, communities, and government and policy stakeholders.

Crisis communications. The substantive preparation and execution of crisis communications — pre-positioning, scenario planning, escalation frameworks, and the disciplined execution required during actual crisis events.

Around those four dimensions sit the practical responsibilities that fill most weeks. A Communications Director normally owns the communications budget and the agency roster, decides which matters go to an external PR or financial PR adviser and which stay in-house, and sets the approval routes for anything said publicly in the company’s name. They usually own spokesperson policy and media training for the executive team, the corporate website and newsroom, executive and corporate social media channels, and the annual report narrative alongside the company secretary and finance team. In larger groups they also lead a team of specialists covering media, internal communications, digital and public affairs.

The role is also an adviser’s role. The best Communications Directors spend a large share of their time in rooms where decisions are being made, not just where they are being announced. They test how a decision will be read by employees, customers, investors and journalists before it is taken, and they are prepared to tell the CEO when the plan will not survive contact with the outside world. When you assess candidates, that willingness to challenge is as important as their media contacts.

Communications Director vs Corporate Affairs Director vs CMO vs IR Director

These four titles overlap, and firms often advertise one when they need another. Getting the title right matters because each one draws on a different candidate pool. A brief written for a Communications Director will not attract the public affairs specialist a regulated business may need, and a CMO brief will pull in demand-generation marketers rather than reputation managers.

In smaller firms one person often covers two or three of these columns. A private mid-market business might ask a single Communications Director to handle media, internal communications and the odd policy issue, while marketing sits with a separate Marketing Director. A newly listed company may combine communications and investor relations for the first year or two before splitting them. We will tell you honestly whether the combination you have in mind exists in the market at the level you want to pay for, or whether it is two jobs.

Brand ownership is the other common grey area. Where brand is primarily a customer and product matter it usually sits with marketing; where it is primarily about corporate reputation, purpose and employer brand it often sits with communications. Some firms solve this with a senior brand lead on a part-time basis — our fractional Chief Brand Officer service covers that route.

Head of Communications vs Communications Director: getting the level right

Many searches that start as “Head of Communications recruitment” turn out, once the brief is worked through, to need a director, and the reverse happens too. The difference is less about title and more about where the person sits and what they are trusted to decide.

• A Head of Communications typically runs the communications function day to day, manages media and internal channels, delivers campaigns and announcements, and escalates sensitive matters to a director or the CEO. They may report to a Communications Director, a CMO, a Chief of Staff or the HR Director.
• A Communications Director owns the communications strategy, advises the CEO and board directly, attends executive committee or is a regular presence there, signs off what is said in the firm’s name and leads during a crisis.
• A Director of Corporate Affairs adds government, policy and regulatory relationships to the communications brief and is usually an executive committee member in larger or more regulated organisations.

If the person will brief the board, front the response to a serious incident and challenge the CEO on messaging, you need a director whatever you call the role. If they will deliver a plan set by others, a Head of Communications is the right hire and is often a better fit for a growing business that does not yet face heavy media scrutiny. We run Head of Communications searches on the same basis, and the candidate pool often overlaps: today’s strong Head of Communications at a large firm is tomorrow’s Communications Director at a mid-sized one.

Hiring a Director of Corporate Affairs

Corporate affairs is the broadest version of the communications brief. A Director of Corporate Affairs usually leads media relations, internal communications, public affairs and government relations, sustainability or ESG communications and, in some firms, community investment. The title is most common in businesses whose licence to operate depends on public policy: utilities and infrastructure, transport, healthcare, energy, food and drink, gambling, financial services and businesses that contract with government.

The candidate pool is different from a straightforward communications search. Strong corporate affairs candidates often combine an in-house communications career with time in Whitehall, a regulator, a trade association or a public affairs consultancy. They understand how policy is made, how select committees and consultations work, and how to brief officials without overstepping. When we run these searches we test political judgement and policy literacy as carefully as media skills, because the cost of a misjudged intervention with government or a regulator can be far higher than a poor news story.

Corporate affairs leaders also tend to work closely with the sustainability function, particularly where the firm publishes climate or social commitments that attract scrutiny. If your sustainability agenda needs its own senior owner, our sustainability director recruitment team works alongside this practice.

The candidate pool

Five pools recur. Sitting Communications Directors at peer firms. Most direct pool. Step-up candidates from Heads of Communications or Senior Communications Manager roles at larger firms. Natural growth pool. Senior partners from PR and communications consultancy practices transitioning. Common pool with substantive senior client experience. Senior journalists and editors transitioning to corporate communications. Particularly common for media-intensive firm contexts. Ex-government and regulator communications leaders transitioning to corporate roles. Particularly relevant for regulated firms.

Each pool brings strengths and gaps that the brief and interview process should account for:

• Peer-firm Communications Directors are the lowest-risk hire but the hardest to move. They will want a clear reason to leave, which usually means a larger remit, a seat on the executive committee or a business at a more interesting point in its story.
• Step-up Heads of Communications bring energy and current operational skill. The test is whether they have advised a CEO directly and handled a serious issue with real authority, rather than executing someone else’s plan.
• Agency partners have broad exposure across clients and sectors and are used to counselling chief executives. Some find the shift to a single employer, internal politics and line management harder than expected, so we probe their in-house experience or their reasons for wanting it.
• Former journalists and editors know how newsrooms work and what makes a story. The gaps can be internal communications, budget and team management, and the patience required for corporate approval processes.
• Government and regulator communicators bring discipline, crisis experience and policy literacy. They may need support adapting to commercial pace and to a board that measures communications against business outcomes.

Professional standing helps in assessment. Many candidates hold membership of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Royal Chartered professional body for public relations, which awards Chartered PR Practitioner status and sets a code of conduct for members. Agency-side candidates are often from firms belonging to the PRCA, which requires members to follow its professional charter and codes of conduct. Membership is not a requirement for the role, but it is a useful signal of continuing professional development and ethical standards, and we check it where candidates claim it.

Why crisis-readiness belongs in the brief

Communications Director appointments are particularly sensitive to the dimension of crisis-readiness. Strong Communications Directors operate substantive crisis communications frameworks before they’re needed — pre-positioned messaging, established media relationships, internal escalation protocols, and (for regulated firms) prepared regulator engagement. The pattern that recurs is firms appointing Communications Directors as routine peace-time hires and discovering at the first crisis that the foundational work hasn’t been done. The fix is calibrating the brief to require substantive crisis communications experience, not just steady-state operational communications.

At Exec Capital we run Communications Director searches with the crisis-readiness dimension built into the brief and assessment. Strong candidates evaluate firms carefully — the existing communications function maturity, the realistic stakeholder landscape, the CEO and Chair’s substantive engagement with communications, and any matters in the firm’s recent history that bear on the role. Our specialist team handles every senior Communications Director mandate, with Adrian Lawrence FCA overseeing each search.

In practice, we test crisis-readiness in three ways. First, we ask candidates to walk through a real incident they led, from the first call to the final statement, and we listen for who made the decisions, how quickly they established the facts, and what they would do differently. Second, we look at what they built before anything went wrong: a crisis manual, holding statements, a trained spokesperson bench, a media monitoring set-up, and an escalation route that works out of hours. Third, we check with referees who were in the room at the time, not only with former line managers.

Communications in listed, PE-backed and regulated firms

Listed companies

For a company with shares admitted to trading, communications is bound up with disclosure law. Under UK MAR, issuers must make inside information public as soon as possible unless the conditions for delay are met, and the FCA’s Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules (DTR 2) set out how that obligation works in practice. Listed issuers are also subject to the UK Listing Rules, which replaced the old Listing Rules in July 2024. A Communications Director at a listed company does not own disclosure decisions — those sit with the board, usually through a disclosure committee — but they must understand the rules well enough to keep media, employee and social messaging inside them, particularly around results, trading updates and transactions. They work closely with the investor relations director, the company secretary and the company’s brokers and financial PR advisers.

Companies in the commercial companies category of the UK Listing Rules also report, on a comply-or-explain basis, against the UK Corporate Governance Code, which expects the board to understand the views of the company’s key stakeholders and to engage with the workforce. And under section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, directors must have regard to employees, customers, suppliers, communities and the company’s reputation for high standards of business conduct. A capable Communications Director gives the board the evidence and the channels to do that, and helps write the section 172 and stakeholder engagement narrative in the annual report. Our listed company board construction guide covers how the wider board fits together.

PE-backed businesses

In a private equity-backed business the communications agenda is narrower in some ways and sharper in others. There is no public shareholder register to manage, but there is often a buy-and-build programme, integration messaging after each acquisition, and an exit process where employee, customer and media messaging has to be handled carefully. Sponsors tend to prefer a pragmatic, hands-on leader who can run communications with a small team and a modest agency budget, and who understands that the equity story and the operating story need to match.

FCA-regulated firms

In financial services the Communications Director is not a senior manager function under SMCR, but the role sits close to several. Customer communications have to meet the Consumer Duty’s consumer understanding outcome, financial promotions rules apply to anything that could amount to an invitation or inducement, and communications with the regulator about incidents or enforcement need careful coordination with compliance and legal. The Communications Director works alongside the SMF16 compliance oversight holder and, where relevant, the SMF17 MLRO, and should know when a message needs their sign-off. We run these searches through our financial services executive search practice.

If, while preparing a communications hire, you find the compliance function itself needs strengthening, many smaller firms bring in senior compliance cover on a part-time basis. Our fractional compliance officer service places experienced SMF16 and SMF17 holders for a set number of days a month, and we also recruit interim Chief Compliance Officers for short-notice cover. Note that SMF16 and SMF17 remain pre-approved roles, so the FCA approval timetable needs to be built into any plan.

When to hire a Communications Director: permanent, interim or fractional

Not every communications need justifies a permanent board-facing hire on day one. The right format depends on how much is happening, how long it will last and whether you need someone in the building every day.

Where the real need is marketing leadership with a communications element rather than the other way round, the marketing route is usually a better fit: our interim CMO and fractional CMO services cover that ground, and our guide to fractional, interim and part-time CMOs sets out the trade-offs.

What a Communications Director typically delivers in the first 90 days

A new Communications Director should be judged on what they learn and set up in the first three months, not on headlines. A realistic first 90 days usually looks like this.

Days 1–30: listen and audit

• One-to-one meetings with the CEO, Chair, each executive and key heads of function to understand priorities and concerns.
• An audit of the current function: people, agencies, budget, channels, approval routes and recent coverage.
• A stakeholder map covering media, investors, regulators, government, customers, employees and communities, with the state of each relationship.
• A review of crisis preparedness: is there a plan, is it current, who are the spokespeople and have they been trained?

Days 31–60: fix the foundations

• Close the most serious gaps found in the audit, starting with crisis planning, holding statements and escalation routes.
• Agree spokesperson and sign-off policy with the CEO and, for listed firms, align it with the disclosure committee.
• Set up or refresh media monitoring and internal feedback channels so the business can see how it is perceived.
• Begin introducing themselves to the key journalists, analysts or policy contacts the business depends on.

Days 61–90: set the plan

• Present a communications strategy to the executive team and board, tied to the business plan and the main reputational risks.
• Agree resourcing: what stays in-house, what goes to agencies and what the team needs to look like over the next year.
• Propose a small set of measures the board can track, such as message take-up, employee understanding and response times on issues.
• Run at least one crisis simulation with the executive team.

If a candidate cannot describe how they would approach these three months in your business specifically, that tells you something. We use this framework at interview and share it with the appointee as part of onboarding.

Compensation and Package Structure

Pay for communications leaders varies widely with the size and profile of the business, whether the role sits on the executive committee, whether it includes corporate affairs or investor relations, and location. Rather than quote headline figures that will not fit your situation, we benchmark each mandate at briefing against comparable roles and the candidates we expect to approach.

The structure of a package is usually more telling than the base salary. Typical components include:

• Base salary, set against the scope of the role and the level of board exposure.
• Annual bonus, often tied partly to company performance and partly to agreed communications objectives.
• Long-term incentives in listed companies, such as share plans for executive committee members, and equity or management incentive schemes in PE-backed businesses.
• Pension, car or allowance, private medical cover and the usual executive benefits.
• Flexibility, which matters to many senior communicators given the out-of-hours nature of the job, but needs to be balanced against the need to be available when something breaks.

In regulated firms, bonus structures for staff whose roles fall under the remuneration codes may be subject to deferral rules; the bonus cap for bankers was removed from 31 October 2023, and the FCA and PRA have since made further remuneration reforms (FCA PS25/15 and PRA PS21/25). Your HR and reward team will know which rules apply to your firm.

For interim and fractional Communications Directors, pay is quoted as a day rate. Our day rates include our fee, so you see one number for the cost of the engagement.

Engagement and fees

Permanent Communications Director appointments are normally run as a retained search: we are engaged exclusively, we commit a team to the mandate, and the search is run to an agreed plan with regular reporting. Retained search suits board-facing roles where discretion, market mapping and a thorough assessment matter. Contingent recruitment, where a fee is paid only on placement and several agencies may be working in parallel, can work for more junior communications roles but rarely produces the best result at director level. Our guide to retained and contingent executive search explains the difference in more detail.

The fee structure is agreed with you at briefing and set out in writing before work starts. For interim and fractional appointments we work on a day-rate basis, and the day rate includes our fee. Whichever format you choose, the engagement includes:

• A briefing meeting and written role specification.
• Market mapping and direct approaches to candidates, including those not actively looking.
• Interviewing and assessment, with written candidate reports.
• Interview process design and coordination.
• Referencing, offer management and notice period support.
• Contact with you and the appointee through onboarding.

Who we place

We recruit communications leaders for organisations where reputation has a direct effect on value, licence to operate or the ability to hire and keep good people. Typical clients include:

• Listed companies on the Main Market and AIM needing a Communications Director who understands results cycles and disclosure.
• PE-backed and founder-led businesses preparing for growth, acquisitions or exit.
• FCA-regulated firms including banks, insurers, asset managers, lenders, payments and fintech businesses.
• Family-owned groups and family offices, where privacy and the family’s own reputation are part of the brief, often through our family office executive search practice.
• Professional services firms such as law, accountancy and consultancy practices.
• Businesses in policy-heavy sectors: energy, infrastructure, healthcare, transport, food and drink, consumer goods and technology.

The roles we fill include Communications Director, Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs, Director of Corporate Affairs, Head of Communications, Head of Corporate Communications, Head of Internal Communications at senior level, and combined communications and investor relations roles. Communications leaders often work closely with the people function on change programmes, so we regularly run these searches alongside CHRO recruitment and Chief of Staff recruitment for the same leadership team.

Other ways to hire communications and marketing leaders

This page covers permanent and interim Communications Director, Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs searches. If your need sits elsewhere, these pages are the better starting point:

• Marketing-led leadership: Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Director searches, plus interim and fractional CMOs.
• Shareholder communications: Investor Relations Director searches for listed and pre-IPO businesses.
• Brand leadership on a part-time basis: fractional Chief Brand Officers.
• Practical hiring advice: our step-by-step guide on how to hire a Communications Director.

Frequently asked questions

What does a Communications Director recruitment agency do?

A specialist search firm works with you to define the role, identifies and approaches suitable candidates (most of whom are not actively looking), assesses them in depth and manages the process through to offer and onboarding. At Exec Capital this is run as a retained search with a dedicated team, overseen by Adrian Lawrence FCA.

What is the difference between a Head of Communications and a Communications Director?

A Head of Communications usually runs the function and delivers the plan; a Communications Director sets the strategy, advises the CEO and board directly and leads in a crisis. If the person will brief the board and front the response to serious incidents, you need a director whatever the title.

What does a Director of Corporate Affairs do?

A Director of Corporate Affairs usually covers media relations, internal communications, public affairs, government and regulator relationships and often sustainability communications. The role is most common in businesses whose licence to operate depends on public policy.

Should our Communications Director report to the CEO or the CMO?

Where reputation, stakeholder relationships or crisis risk are significant, the Communications Director should report to the CEO. Reporting into marketing can work in consumer businesses where communications is mainly about brand and product, but it tends to limit the role’s authority in a serious incident.

How long does it take to recruit a Communications Director?

It depends on the seniority of the role, the size of the candidate pool and notice periods, which at director level are often three to six months. We agree the timetable with you at briefing and report progress against it throughout.

Can you find an interim Communications Director at short notice?

Yes. Interim communications leaders are often needed for a crisis, transaction or sudden departure. We draw on our network of experienced interim communicators and agree the start date and day rate with you directly.

Is a fractional Communications Director a sensible option?

For a growing business that needs senior judgement and a communications strategy but does not yet have the volume of work for a full-time director, a fractional appointment of one to three days a week can work well, usually alongside a junior in-house team or an agency.

What should we look for when hiring a Communications Director?

Evidence of handling a real crisis, a track record of advising a chief executive, credible media and stakeholder relationships in your sector, internal communications experience, and the confidence to challenge the executive team. For listed or regulated firms, add an understanding of disclosure obligations or the regulatory environment.

Do Communications Directors need a professional qualification?

There is no mandatory qualification. Many senior communicators are members of the CIPR, and some hold Chartered PR Practitioner status. It is a useful indicator of professional development and ethical standards, but track record matters more.

Is a Communications Director a senior manager function in an FCA-regulated firm?

No. The Communications Director is not an SMF role under SMCR. The role does, however, work closely with SMF holders such as the compliance oversight function (SMF16), and customer communications must meet Consumer Duty and financial promotions requirements.

Further reading

For role-specific senior hiring guides, see our CMO hiring guide, CHRO hiring guide, and the rest in our Knowledge Centre. For UK communications professional standards, see the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the PRCA, linked above. For listed-firm communications frameworks, see the FCA’s disclosure rules referenced in the section on listed companies.

Communications professionals looking for a move: this page is written for employers, but we are always interested to hear from experienced Communications Directors, Heads of Communications and corporate affairs leaders. Please register your details and see our current opportunities.