Our regular look at some of the news, views and opinions from around the wonderful world of IC…

A new report is highlighting how stressful pitching for new business can be.

The survey, commissioned by PowerPoint rival Pitch, says stress related to the pitching process has driven one in nine professionals in commercial and creative roles to leave their jobs.

They gathered responses from over 1,000 business professionals in the US and the UK, and many said they felt things were getting worse because of the pressure of the current economic climate.

Another thing that came out of the survey was that people wanted to spend less time on the technical aspects of pitch presentations and more on creativity and relevance.

Over 40 per cent, meanwhile, wanted more time spent discussing the structure and content of presentations before diving into the design phase. A similar proportion said too much time was wasted on formatting sales decks when it could be better spent developing ideas.

You can read more here.

Employee experience? What’s that?

There’s lots of talk around the internal comms community currently on the subject of ‘the employee experience’. But what does it actually mean? ‘Different things to different people’ is probably the realistic answer.

But wait up. The Exchange Inc has done its best to come up with a definition in its white paper ‘What Is EX, Really?’ – and it’s a pretty impressive piece of work.

Sasha Wight, Director of Employee Experience at wrkflow, says: “Finally! A white paper on employee experience with no BS and nothing but pure gold insights. This is the most complete analysis of the space I’ve read to date.”

Ready for your close up?

Meanwhile, on a completely different topic, how are you looking on your virtual meetings? In your jimjams with the dog draped over your lap? In full power-dressing mode ready for whatever the world lobs your way? Or somewhere in between?

However you present yourself, there are lessons we can all learn from Hollywood when it comes to your Zoom or Teams calls, according to body language expert Traci Brown.

She lets you in on some industry secrets focusing on things like the position of your camera, what should − and shouldn’t − be in your background, and whether or not to wear make-up.

Check out her 11 top tips here…

Don’t be a text pest…

And finally, we all know that in these days of mobile phones and agile working, we’re pretty much always available.

But is it OK to text an employee? And do employees have to accept a text as a reasonable form of communication?

Well, Courtney Barratt from ContactMonkey suggests there are five times when texting may be the most appropriate way to get in touch.

And one of them is to do with the weather.

Check out Courtney’s LinkedIn post here – and then maybe ask your colleagues whether they’re OK with you sending them texts.

See you next month!

Any thoughts on the pressure of pitching, the employee experience, or whether texting colleagues is appropriate? Drop us a line or comment below, and we’ll be back with more IC news next month.