Today's corporate affairs director plays a pivotal role in our biggest companies, yet the complex blend of intellectual and management skills needed to do the job effectively is making them a very rare commodity.

That is the conclusion to what ranks as the most comprehensive study ever of the fast-expanding corporate affairs role, due to be published this month by Watson Helsby, an executive search firm specialising in internal and external communications.

The report, which follows detailed interviews with communications and corporate affairs directors at 30 of the country's largest organisations – including British Airways, British Telecom, the CBI, Nomura, Pearson, Unilever and the DTI – finds that far from being about little more than “good PR”, corporate affairs can be used to solve a wide variety of internal and external business problems.

While the remit of the role – to communicate effectively with a number of different audiences – has not changed dramatically in recent years, its “strategic significance certainly has”, says the report's author, Nick Helsby.

“It is increasingly at the heart of the business, influencing direction, policy communications and operations,” he adds.

“In major publicly-quoted organisations, it is now part of the inner sanctum, advising on issues that preoccupy the highly-pressurised chief executive – the sentiment of the City, the media and other influential stakeholder groups and how best to communicate with and influence them.”

While its practitioners are not always appreciated, or even trusted, by other areas of management – largely because of a historic suspicion of anything related to PR - the function is uniquely treasured by bosses who see it as the “eyes and ears” of the organisation.

Helsby believes that this increasingly intimate relationship between the head of the organisation and their corporate affairs chief is now encouraging other directors to seek a role in corporate affairs, rather than to view it as a relatively unimportant sideline.

The research, which investigated both internal status and external influence, suggests that while some of Britain's corporate affairs directors earn modest salaries – the lowest-paid of the sample received £50,000 for his efforts last year, while the highest collected more than £200,000 – the corporate affairs function is enjoying more status than ever.

While none of the people surveyed has a seat on the main board, more than 75% sit on the executive management committee and, crucially, have a direct reporting line to the boss.

Although the rise of new media has given them an elevated status in many companies – the corporate affairs role having overall responsibility for many websites, for example – most are actively involved in the more traditional fields of shareholder and investor communications as well as employee relations.

When relationships with the media, government, Whitehall and various lobby groups are added, the corporate affairs function looks set to become “a vital brief”, says Helsby.

“Bosses don't want to be savaged in the media and rely on the corporate affairs head to keep up good relations with journalists. Having such a window, both on the organisation's internal health and on its position in the outside world, makes this a unique portfolio of strategic, intellectual and communications skills. No one knows this more than the hard-pressed chief executive.”

New media is becoming a significant part of the corporate affairs remit, says the report, and one which few other directors can lay claim to. Yet while the internet is seen largely as a “message medium” for firms, the report predicts that websites will be a key way of influencing corporate reputation and share price.

Although good communications skills remain at the heart of the corporate affairs role, the report suggests that the traditional path from financial journalist to corporate affairs director is no longer such a well-trodden one:

“As the portfolio of the necessary skills broadens out into the strategic, financial, commercial and management areas, as well as into new media communications, there are arguably fewer journalists able to satisfy all the new criteria and fewer boards willing to take a risk on them,” says Helsby.

Resourcing problems were experienced by most of those questioned for the report, with shortage of expertise most notable in writing ability, strategic thinking, business awareness and management skills.

While corporate affairs was once seen as a good training ground for staff needing to get a quick handle on an organisation's workings, Helsby believes that it has also traditionally been viewed as “a backwater for 50-somethings who were maybe past their best and needed something fairly safe to do until retirement”.

However, he predicts the rise and rise of the corporate affairs function will start to make it a department of choice for the big-hitters: “People with a legal background might have the intellectual rigour required for corporate affairs, but they tend not to have sharp communications skills.”

“And while the marketing function still tends to view corporate affairs as frothy and superficial, public relations with no commercial weight, they too are beginning to look on enviously at the deepening relationship between the boss and corporate affairs department.”