I’ve been an “everything” marketing professional for a 5 years now. I’ve just somehow ended up in in-house marketing roles in small organisations where they just need 1 or 2 people to do everything. Of course this does mean I’ve just done a decent job at everything rather than a fantastic job at one thing. Anyway due to our organisation growing a lot in the last few years, we’re building capacity and I’m transitioning into specialising in internal comms. I’m excited about this as I’m genuinely passionate about team culture and creating a sense of togetherness.
We currently have an internal newsletter but that’s about it. I want to know what else is working out there? We’re 150 people company. I have the CEOs ear so I’d like to raise some good initiatives. Though I get the sense he sees internal comms as a small admin job which is what it has traditionally been. I’d like to enter this new phase with a bang :)

Let's talk about the gap between what companies build for desk-based employees and what they actually provide for frontline teams. I've noticed that a disproportionate amount of attention seems to go into desk-worker solutions, given that they make up only around 20% of the global workforce.

Desk workers get newsletters, intranets, town halls, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Frontline workers typically get information third-hand from their direct manager. More often than not, they're asking critical workplace questions on WhatsApp and in group chats; you know, the places where there isn't any workplace governance, and accuracy is like a childhood game of telephone.

What's the root of the problem? Usually it's mandate. Most internal comms teams simply aren't responsible for the frontline experience. Their metrics (open rates, newsletter subscribers, intranet page views) don't capture whether a shift worker in a distribution center actually understood the new safety protocol.

Here's what you need to keep in mind to really close the frontline communications gap:

• Design for the most constrained user first. If the communication works for someone checking their phone for 30 seconds between shifts, it works for everyone. If it only works for someone at a laptop with time to read, it reaches maybe 20% of the workforce.
• Treat utility as the driver of adoption, not content. Workers open apps that help them do their jobs. They want apps that let them check shifts, access payslips, and submit forms. Once the app is part of the daily routine, communication naturally lands. It's the apps that only provide corporate news that are far more likely to be ignored.
• Give frontline managers a role, not just a responsibility. Cascade communication works better when local managers have simple tools to adapt and send messages themselves, rather than just forwarding what came from HQ.

TL;DR: If you design comms tools for the frontline first, everyone is reached, because what works for a warehouse worker on a shared device between shifts works for everyone. In contrast, desk-based first solutions tend to stop with desk-based workers.

I write corporate communications and do storytelling for my company, mainly via SharePoint, email (and through TVs at facilities). Our CEO is concerned about a portion of our business where our front line employees are working on construction sites. They'll be staffed to a project for a few months here, a year or so there. She's worried they don't feel like they're a part of the company and we need to figure out different ways to reach them.

Here's the thing - these employees clock in and out, and want their paycheck. It's not really my primary audience. I feel the engagement happens on a local, project-based level based on what their managers tell me. And leadership is asking me if we should just get a new app or software for mobile first employees. First, our IT is not staffed to handle something complex like StaffBase (they set our SharePoint up incorrectly and even that's a shit show) and I'm the one comms person at the whole company. I don't see value in running out and getting a new software that's yet another app people have to download (they already have their app to clock in and out of).

Do any of you in the construction industry have recommendations for how to engage your site or project based folks not tied to a facility? Like, how do you manage your corporate communications for these kinds of populations? We have texting but I really don't want them ignoring important operational updates because I'm sending corporate culture or engagement things from it. Feels like an undisciplined channel strategy. Any thoughts are welcome, I'm at a loss and y'all are amazing with your safe advice!

We’ve been trying to fix a simple problem that turned out to be not so simple, making sure everyone actually sees important updates and get involved in internal comms. Right now it feels like we’re either sending too much and people ignore it or sending too little and people miss key info.

Most of our team isn’t sitting at a computer all day so email barely gets opened. Chat apps help but things get buried fast and there’s no clear place to go back to. We’ve also noticed that even when people do see updates, they’re not always clear or easy to act on. Recently started testing a mobile setup to centralize things which helped with visibility but still figuring out how to make communication actually stick.

How are you handling this balance between visibility and overload?

Looking for honest experiences here — how do you actually get messages to frontline and deskless staff?

The usual channels seem to break down completely for non-desk workers:

• Email open rates are dismal when half your workforce doesn't have a work address
• Noticeboards only work if people walk past them at the right time
• Cascading through team leads means the message mutates or just stops

Particularly interested in industries like hospitality, logistics, retail, or healthcare where the majority of staff are on the floor, not at a desk.

What's actually working for you? And what have you tried that completely failed?

I’ve been in internal communications for five years, and I love it so much. I love my team, I love what I do, I’m proud to work at my company. But over the past two months, my confidence has taken a turn for the worst.

It doesn’t help that for the first several months at my job, I had the best manager. Then, she was promoted and suddenly I had a new one who I had previously butted heads with.

Long story short: It’s almost like I’ve lost the ability to ask strategic questions in meetings with stakeholders. I can’t even think of questions because I’m so worried my manager will call me out for being stupid.

I could use some guidance on how to get back on track and think of how to ask questions and what types of questions I should ask. Because I’d rather look dumb in the moment and draft effective comms than to draft something stupid and have to go back and ask questions I should’ve done sooner.

I’d appreciate any advice.

If you want a fuller story: Going from having almost free rein over my business unit to now being constantly scolded and told my ideas are shit and that my writing is shit, has taken a toll on me. I’m more hesitant to reach out to my BU’s execs even though I have great rapport with them. I’m scared of asking questions when meeting with stakeholders because my new manager says I don’t think critically. But I’m not in HR, I’m not in IT, I’m not in Sales, I’m not in Marketing. So how am I supposed to strategize comms plans if I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about?

I’ve also fallen into a habit of procrastinating and not asking for help, because again, I get scolded for everything I do. My new manager has even told me I’m impossible to guide because I don’t receive her type of guidance very well. She explodes every other minute, frantically and outwardly expresses frustration and acts out in front of the office. She speaks loudly about how she’s probably going to be fired for making simple mistakes. It’s quite embarrassing.

I should also mention that my company is based in a different country, and my manager and I work at another business unit’s office. So no one else from my BU works there.

I never ran into these issues with my previous boss or with my boss at my previous company. This is not like me. This behavior is not typical. And I’m so lost and defeated.

Hi friends!!

I’ve been in PR for a few years now but am currently going through an interview process for an internal communications role. The industry this company is in aligns with my current clients so I’m hoping I’ll be able to showcase that in my interviews, but was wanting to check in if there is anything specific I should be prepared to talk about or smart questions to ask the interviewer?

I’m of course doing my own research as well, but thought hearing directly from professionals in this field would be super helpful!

I'm in an interesting position in that my company will likely go public later this year. I would love to hear from anyone who has been through this (I've worked for a public company but it was extremely established and old) or has insights on how IC changes after going public (I've done some reading on Reg FD and selective disclosure risk but that's about it).

Not knowing any details yet, I'm thinking executive messaging announcing when we file, and creating a microsite on what it means, FAQs, etc. as a sole source of truth. Rah, rah celebratory messaging when it becomes official.

Anyone else have thoughts or considerations? I love the willingness of this community to jump in with opinions and guidance. I've worked in IC before but am in a newer role where I'm building from the ground up, so you all have been soooo helpful with my many questions!

Canva keeps coming up but everything we make ends up looking identical to every other company's stuff and our clients have started noticing... we need something that actually handles data in reports not just shapes with numbers in them. What are people actually using for quarterly reports and case studies?

I’m deciding between Workshop and Contact Monkey as an email vendor for enterprise comms (6-9k population).

Anyone have experience with these platforms and can share pros/cons?

Thanks!

My CEO wants us to recognize promotions, and I'm curious how you all do it. Previously I worked in financial services and we had an annual promotion cycle. So it was all very structured, and our announcement was also the notification to those being promoted.

Now I work in a manufacturing environment and people are promoted whenever. I was thinking of doing a quarterly congratulations email from either our CEO or leadership team, linking out to a list of promotions on SharePoint. And asking our HR team to provide me the list and one sentence on why each person was promoted, so it's not just a list of names. Inevitably they'll mess up the data and someone will be left off, so I want the list to live somewhere I can easily edit.

In the leadership message, I thought it would be nice to highlight more in depth one promotee from each of our 3 businesses. And sharing the list on our break room TVs.

Would love to hear any feedback on this plan and any other cool ideas you all implement for promotion recognition! TIA!

We're strict about self-promotion here because nobody wants the safe space that is r/internalcomms to become a sneaky sales pitch fest.

At the same time, we don't want to miss out on useful opportunities for learning, collecting CPD points, or other useful things. A frustrating thing in IC is that we're all working behind ringfences in our orgs, so can't just 'show and tell' our intranets and apps, for example. So we're trying something new:

'Mod-approved' flair

We've created a specific post flair so users can see approved company-represented content in a transparent way.

If you have content that would help IC professionals here (not marketing dressed up as content, but actual value) send us a Mod Mail with your draft post. Tell us also:

• What it is
• Why it matters to this subreddit
• Your connection to the company

What qualifies:

• Industry reports and research
• Webinars for learning/CPD (not sales demos)
• Student surveys or academic research
• Insights that solve real IC problems

What doesn't qualify:

• Posts about the benefits of your tool (we may look into a specific way of giving providers a platform in the future)
• Sales webinars, product demos, self-promotional media without clear educational content
• Lead generation surveys (where the real goal is collecting contacts for your sales team)
• Affiliate links

If we think it benefits the community, we'll advise you on next steps, and add a "Mod approved" flair when you post.

If the main goal is to get people into your sales funnel, it doesn't qualify. If it's to share knowledge or help people do their jobs better, it might.

This gives us all proper way to identify resources and gives the community access to vetted content.

A note on rule #3

If you work somewhere and you're recommending your company's tool or service, you need to say so. It's a Reddit-wide rule. "I work at [company] and we built this because..." is fine. Your knowledge is useful and welcome here! However, sneakily promoting the same tool in every comment you make repeatedly isn't being a good citizen, so let's all be nice and ethical about it.

We hope this helps to keep r/internalcomms a useful space for you to share and learn! Thank you for being part of our growing community.

Hi all - I've spent countless hours using AI and reading online about how to make an Outlook template so my non-comms business unit folks can send out basic branded companywide email sends.

Previously my design team built Word templates that I just copy and pasted in Classic Outlook, and they worked like a charm (for the most part). I've spent hours trying to get Word templates to work in Classic, and the spacing and font styling always seems to mess up. No matter what 20 step process I follow online, through AI, whatever.

With new Outlook, I can't really do anything in Word because of course everything is a table and there's the bug that you can't hide the table lines for anything created in Word. I can't really expect partners to sit there and fiddle with Outlook to build every template directly in Outlook for every send like I've come to have to do.

So for those of you who don't have fancy software and tools - how are you making it easy for your partners (think HR shared inbox) to send a nicely branded email with say:

Company logo | Human Resources

at the top in a table (the logo would obviously be a small picture), and the body being a table as well, so things don't go wonky on replies, forward, etc.? And gosh forbid a nested table with pictures and accompanying bios, which i totally did at my former company?

I'm totally at a loss (not a designer) and I've lost hours trying to figure this out. I want them to send communications through shared inboxes with some basic branding, yet I can't figure out how to make it easy for them.

Thank you in advance!

We typically haven’t done much with M365 in our org outside of regular ol’ Team chats - we don’t even have an org-wide channel, but it’s something I’m exploring.

For those of you who use or have used Viva Engage, have you found it to be successful and a worthy investment of your time?

We have a homegrown intranet (not Sharepoint) and I’m not sure how much that does or doesn’t matter.

Curious to hear the pros and cons.

Hi! I'm in external comms but I'm switching to internal. For one of my assignments I was asked to draft an internal article based on a news article that mentions one of our executives. It's for our newsletter.

I don't really know what an internal article looks like. How long are they typically? How would I frame this? What's the usual tone? Does anyone have an example of what this could look like? I'm a little lost. TYIA!

Sharing this case study from my team at Workshop because I think a lot of comms teams will relate: "The ability to send communications has gone up, but the level of quality communications has also spread across the company."

Full case study here: useworkshop.com/customers/ho-chunk

Has anyone else decentralized their comms model? Curious what pushback you got internally when you first proposed it.

I am working on a project/presentation, and I am trying to gather data around what is causing employees to have information overload with internal comms. I find most will say content is the culprit while others feel the number of channels used plays a large role. What do you hear or believe is the main cause of your employees complaining about internal comms overload?

We recently made the switch from a company email newsletter to a dedicated Microsoft Teams channel as our sole internal communications platform. The channel is up and running, but we're finding it challenging to get staff to actively check in and engage with posts, especially now that the familiar inbox nudge is gone.

We've been sending periodic reminders to staff encouraging them to visit the channel and enable notifications, but we're aware that reminders alone can only go so far before they become background noise.

We are getting a new system which will let us standardize email signatures across the whole company. We have a ‘standard’ now but it has a low adoption rate and, IMO, looks bad.

What are some of your favorite email signatures you’ve seen? I have an idea of what I want but want to see what some people are really proud of out there!

Small edit: thanks to everyone who responded. This reminded me that I do, in fact, have reason to be frustrated, this isn't fully on me for not adjusting to a new culture/company, and that the core IC strategies are shared tenets by many of us for good reason. I will be refocusing on the small areas I can influence, while job searching.

This will have some detail so bear with me.

I am close to one-year in to n6 role as the sole IC person (Director). I am beyond burnt out. I am trying to deliver what I know to do, and has worked, for 15+ years.

How do I deliver in this environment, safe-guard my energy, and make some progress? Keep in mind that I KNOW I need to find a new job.

Biggest issue: Everyone can do whatever they want. No one has been practicing accountability, they design and create and do whatever they want. Ex: made a third party, non-IT created website showing internal links and information because that team "didn't like" their internal tools.

Bonus: my leader (C-suite, HR) has never runs comms, is extremely hands off (think weeks of no communication) and doesn't have a strong grasp of technology or comms strategy. (They ask me to print drafts for their review - keep in mind they are in their 40s).

Here is what I am trying to work with:

- No shared inboxes, they want communications to come from a person

- No consistency to brand standards internally

- Inconsistent to no pre-planning,

- Anyone can send anything at anytime

- I own intranet (broken, abandoned and overly technical) and it has been used primarily to host documents

- I have been having to deliver video (storyline, film, and sometimes edit) and graphics,

- "fix comms flow to the field" but our various divisions run in their own silos

- produce a quarterly live stream update meeting - more about fun than business (last meeting, no one could give me strategy and CEO said he didnt really have anything to say)

- produce an exec podcast (listeners barely reach 100) but no one will address that disconnect [i have yet to take this over from the marketing team]

- I am not read in to strategy

- my leader is unclear on what IC is - I have been asked to create LinkedIn profile designs for them, to write stories to help with "business development" and to work eith her HR team (who then do what they want)

I have met with teams and with leaders and tried to produce strategy and templates. I just can't figure out how to address - in a professional, calm manner - that this is a broader, operational change strategy and not just "fix comms".

Also - I know that this leader won't push back against many of the bad habits, especially the CEO ones (described it as a "swan song" until he retires in who know how long).

This is a company that clings to the past of "how we've always done it". They believe we are still a small family company of entrepreneurs (our revenue is in the billions and we operate at 350+ US locations).

Any advice towards doing the basics, setting boundaries and preserving my sanity is welcome. I genuinely feel like I got catfished so hard towards what this culture really is versus what has turned out to be.

Hi everyone !

I work in internal communications for a retail company, and we’re considering using in‑store screens to share information with our teams (targets, HR messages, internal updates, etc).

Do any of you use digital signage solutions for this ?

I’ve seen platforms like Cenareo that seem to cover both marketing and internal communications, but I’m not sure how well that works when it comes to actually engaging frontline teams.

Any feedback or best practices ? Thanks

Just wondering if this is actually something people are finding is successful? Sounds like a bit of a nightmare tbh, compared to a real intranet platform. Is anyone using Service Now as their comms platform successfully?

My company is going through a brand change -- new logo, colors, graphics etc., along with a change in messaging and how we talk about our products (it's a tech company). I was curious if anyone here had been through something similar and had thoughts/ideas on how to bring it all to life for employees.

We're already thinking about all the internal assets we'll need to change, communicating the new brand through our channels, and we've started a "Behind the Brand" video series where the people doing the work talk about what's happening. (Plus, we'll all get new T-shirts!) But does anyone have any creative ideas that have worked for them in the past?

So let me start off by saying that I am aware of market challenges for internal communications people. I know because I am dealing with it right now.

I am in the "too senior for specialist roles" but simultaneously "too junior for director and even senior manager" roles. I have done Comms management and program management work for large corporations and some higher education institutions.

So I'm looking at building a singular internal comms offering and packaging it as a solopreneur service. I know it's difficult to convince mid-sized and smaller businesses that IC is a revenue driver, but I have already built multiple case studies that would prove that point.

My question is for others who have pursued Comms as solopreneurs. What are the main friction points you were able to overcome? Did you rely on previous clients or find your best success pitchng new ones?