Internal Communications Guide

🎧 We’ve been experimenting with something new in internal comms… and it’s working! I’m currently running a pilot for a client where we embed short voice notes from leadership into their monthly internal comms email newsletters. No scripts, no studio polish, just leaders speaking directly to their teams instead of dense blocks of text. Our initial research showed that people were feeling disconnected from leadership, siloed, and often unsure why certain strategic decisions were being made. Increasingly, it’s the why people crave, not just the what. So we gave leaders a new way to tell their own stories via short, honest voice notes explaining their decisions in their own words. The tech setup is simple: a mic, a laptop, and a willingness to hit record, and the plan is that leaders will, from now on, be passing the mic around, depending on the business's priorities and who has a good story to tell. And it’s proving to be a real winner so far. I can’t share stats (they’re obvs confidential), but the buy-in from leadership has been fantastic. What’s been fascinating is how the tone changes when leaders speak naturally. Executives who seem distant in text suddenly sound warm, human, approachable, even funny. This is a real step change for employees used to overly corporate-sounding, text-based communication. This small shift makes a big difference. Hearing someone’s real voice, the tone, warmth, humour, and imperfection, builds connection and belonging in a way no written update ever could. It’s also backed by what we’re seeing globally: • Podcasts and audio formats continue to grow as trusted sources of information. Employees retain up to 15% more from what they hear than what they read (Edison Research). • 73% of employees say they’d rather listen to a company update than attend a meeting (uStudio). No surprises there! • And as inbox fatigue deepens, voice is cutting through where text can’t. It feels more honest, human, and memorable. Leaders in this pilot are discovering that speaking directly, not perfectly, brings a kind of authenticity that can’t be faked. It’s helping a large organisation sound smaller, warmer, and more connected. It’s early days, but it feels like the start of something important: using email not just to inform, but to connect. Has anyone else been experimenting with voice in internal comms? I’d love to hear what you’re seeing. #internalcommunications #employeeexperience #leadershipcommunications #audiocomms #digitalworkplace

As geopolitical risks continue to evolve and intensify, it is essential for communication leaders to adapt and respond effectively to these challenges.   Recent geopolitical crises have underscored the importance of proactive and strategic communication. According to the AXA Future Risks Report 2024, geopolitical instability is now the second most concerning risk for experts globally, up from third place in 2023. At the same time, disinformation and misinformation on these crises, mainly led by technology, are expanding their potential consequences. This progression highlights the growing impact of geopolitical events on businesses and the need for robust communication strategies. Here are some key insights and thoughts I wanted to share:   👉 Anticipate and Listen: Setting up an infrastructure for listening and scenario planning is crucial. By strengthening our social listening and predictive capacities, we can better anticipate crisis and understand the different perspectives that exist around geopolitical issues. As one Chief Communication Officer (CCO) mentioned in the latest European Communication Monitor (ECM) report, "We need to be prepared every day to react, and at the same time, we have to be very clear about the frames in which we want to react."   👉 Consolidate and Connect: Strengthening internal discussions and nurturing a network of communication experts with diplomatic skills is vital. In a decentralized company, this helps in ensuring that our communication as a Group is sensitive to the nuances of different geopolitical contexts. As another CCO pointed out, "You also need experienced communicators in different countries who not only have a view of their country but also understand that even in a global company there is a global view that is not necessarily congruent with the view of each country.”   👉 Navigate Ambiguity: In a fragmented and polarized world, managing corporate communications means carefully choosing what to say and how to say it. This involves balancing business perspectives with stakeholder expectations and navigating the contradictions that arise from intensifying geopolitical risks.   👉 Engage Proactively: The expectations of stakeholders, including consumers and employees, are evolving. There is an increased demand for companies to take a stand on geopolitical issues. As highlighted in the ECM report, 58.6% of CCOs agree that the geopolitical context has a very concrete impact on business, and companies need to consider this evolution.   On a more specific note, the AXA Future Risks Report 2024 also reveals that 91% of experts believe insurers have a crucial role in safeguarding against emerging risks. As Chief Communications Officer, this is something I truly believe in, and I am grateful to rely on a network of very professional heads of communications, in all AXA entities, to help us spread the word, build resilience and strengthen trust during uncertain times!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been spending some time in hospital waiting rooms once again, as my mother underwent a hip replacement operation. Sitting in one nondescript corridor the other day, I noticed a small sign with a big message for the hospital staff: “Before you speak, THINK.” T – Is it True? H – Is it Helpful? I – Is it Important? N – Is it Necessary? K – Is it Kind? It struck me how perfectly this also applies to internal communication in organisations. It’s a neat way of focusing on what really matters. Internal Comms teams are often moving fast - sharing updates, cascading decisions, announcing changes. In all that speed, it’s easy to focus on delivery rather than impact. But the THINK framework is a powerful reminder that communication isn’t just about information; it’s about responsibility. Imagine if every email message, town hall, newsletter and announcement had to pass this test: ✔ True – Are we being clear and transparent? ✔ Helpful – Does this support people in understanding what they need to know? ✔ Important – Is this worth their time and attention? ✔ Necessary – Are we reducing noise or adding to it? ✔ Kind – Are we considering the human beings on the receiving end? Good internal comms isn’t just efficient - it’s thoughtful, empathetic and purposeful. Sometimes, it’s worth taking a moment to THINK before we communicate. #InternalComms #InternalCommunications #TeamPerformance #Think

How can we improve communications about organizational change 🤔 📣 Communications play a pivotal role in people-centric change. High quality communications about what the transformation means for individuals and teams can help to address questions such as: Why is the transformation necessary? Who will the transformation affect? What is going to change and When? How will I be affected by the change? Some of the practical ways to ensure high quality communication about organizational transformations include (but are not limited to): ▶️ Engage in dialogue throughout the transformation process.  Creating a safe space for conversations about change can help people to rasie their concerns, hopes and fears. ▶️ Know your audience Have a firm understanding of the audience’s perspective and what information they already know and what questions or concerns they have.    ▶️ Focus on Visualization Things that people see are more likely to evoke emotions than things they hear or read. Use a variety of communication channels include videos, pictures and images. ▶️ Deliver the message with the appropriate tone and style using: ✴️ Compassion: Show the audience that you care about their perspectives and inform employees as soon as possible about the transformation including: Why, When and How the process will evolve and within what expected time span. ✴️ Clarity: Communicate clearly and repeat key messages. Just because you have communicated the message once does not mean that individuals will have heard it, internalised it or made sense of it. ✴️ Conciseness: Ensure that the message is short enough to internalize. Long, complicated sentences make written ideas hard to understand because they demand more concentration. Keep communications short, clear and concise. ✴️ Connection: Connect emotionally with the audience and provide opportunities for employees to give feedback by: ensuring appropriate channels for employee voice  and that different groups feel able to access them; actively seeking people’s ideas; and take action on feedback. ✴️ Candor. Admit what you don’t know, for instance, if an employee asks you whether there will be redundancies, and you are not sure whether they will happen or not. Your response might be: “I wish I could tell you exactly what is going to happen. We will give you updates as soon as we know them.” ▶️ Avoid overcommunicating A word of caution is required because most organizations overcommunicate about change which can lead to confusion and disengagement. Rather than overloading people with formal communications especially email build in time for conversations. Source: Hodges, J. (2024) People-centric change: engaging employees with business transformations. Kogan Page Publishing, London - Chapter 5 Joe Ferner-Reeves Lucy Carter Emma Dodworth Laura de Ruiter, PhD Lisa Cardow Inga Grigaliunaite Durham University Business School

We’re not trying to make things harder. But sometimes, we just do. In both my coaching work with leaders and my real life as a mom, spouse, sister, daughter, and friend, I see how easy it is to unintentionally create the very problems we’re trying to avoid. We want to help, support, protect, and communicate clearly, but our good intentions sometimes land as control, criticism, or confusion. And because these behaviors are often so familiar, we don’t realize the ripple effect they’re having on trust, clarity, and connection. Here are 10 problems we may be inadvertently creating at work and at home: 1. Offering advice when someone just wants to vent. (Guilty. And I coach communication for a living.) 2. “Fixing” a problem that someone else owns. Helpful intent. Disempowering impact. 3. Assuming silence means agreement. It might just mean discomfort, confusion, or an internal debate. 4. Multitasking during conversations. One eye on your phone, one on your computer, and zero on your partner or colleague. 5. Using sarcasm to mask frustration. It’s a joke except it's not funny. 6. Avoiding a hard conversation in the name of harmony. Short-term peace. Long-term resentment. 7. Jumping in before someone finishes their thought. We think we’re saving time. We’re actually stealing agency, contribution, and connection. 8. Expecting others to read our minds. (Bonus points if we get annoyed when they don’t.) 9. Holding people accountable for expectations we never actually communicated. “But it’s obvious!” is not a strategy. 10. Measuring love, loyalty, or commitment by how much someone agrees with us. Disagreement doesn’t have to mean disconnection. We’re human. We mess up. And if we’re willing to look at what we might be contributing to the problem, we also get to be part of the solution. #communication #leadership #accountability

“Marketing used to be seen as order takers,” explained the CMO from a $190m services firm, “but after several years, we’re now seen as business drivers.” Several years! And that’s your internal audience. Imagine how long it takes to change external perceptions. Like it or not, marketing leaders must devote time to marketing their marketing. Not once at an “all hands” town hall. Not twice via follow-up emails. Relentlessly. Fearlessly. Consistently. Across all possible channels. Personally. And via surrogates. Why is this so important? Marketing often gets a bad rap in the C-suite which trickles down to disrespect across the org. Disrespect that manifests as unsolicited advice on all aspects of marketing. Advice that can derail your well-conceived plan especially if it is centered on tactics.  Marketing is not a snowball fight. You can’t just gather your ammunition, and hurl it at your target one toss at a time. Well, you can try. But that approach inevitably fails to leave a lasting impression. Instead, think of marketing as the ball of snow rolling down a mountain, gathering girth and speed (i.e. force = mass x acceleration). Marketing is the cumulative impact of all your activities over time – starting with your internal audience. Here are several sure-fire ways of marketing your marketing internally: 🐧 Involve employees in your repositioning work. 🐧 Field and share quarterly employee surveys 🐧 Own and indoctrinate BDRs 🐧 Help employees build their personal brands 🐧 Orchestrate innovation days 🐧 Create an entertaining “this week in marketing” update Involve employees: If you expect employees to believe in the brand, make them part of the process from Day 1. Keep them updated throughout the process. Before launching publicly, create a brand certification program (easily done now with GenAI) that all employees must pass. Quarterly surveys: Don’t leave this to HR. Surveying is too important. Measure eNPS. Ask if they are proud to work for your company. Include at least 2 open-ended questions. [I’m happy to share a sample survey] Indoctrinate BDRs: Half the CMOs in CMO Huddles “own” BDRs. Ensuring that Marketing delivers qualified opportunities to Sales, BDRs also become marketing evangelists once they move up and around the org. Enable personal branding: Employees are “free” brand ambassadors and can be awesome advocates if properly trained. By teaching employees how to build their personal brands, you’re helping their careers and your company. Orchestrate innovation days: Ask your employees to work together in small teams to develop innovative solutions to your biggest challenges in one day. Have a panel of judges. Offer prizes. Implement winning ideas. Count the smiles. Update weekly: A pithy yet entertaining weekly update will educate employees on how Marketing is helping to drive the business. After a few weeks, employees will look forward to your reports.    What’s your approach to marketing the marketing?

The Silent Mistake That’s Killing Your Leadership: Poor Communication “Yeah, all good.” (But his eyes looked tired.) “I’m fine.” (But she typed that message with trembling hands.) This is where most leaders — and humans — go wrong. They hear the words, but miss the truth. 👉 Here’s the shocker: Most communication is NOT words. It’s tone, pauses, body language, silence, and even the sigh between sentences. Yet, people act as if talking equals communicating. ⸻ The Big Mistake Leaders Make They speak. They instruct. They email. But they don’t connect. • They ask, “Any questions?” when the meeting is already over. • They say, “Don’t worry” instead of actually listening. • They repeat facts and numbers, but forget feelings. • They use “but” so often, their praise feels like criticism. Result? Teams nod politely in meetings… and silently disengage after. ⸻ Analogy: The Wi-Fi Without Internet Bad communication is like Wi-Fi with no internet. The signal looks strong, but nothing’s really working. ⸻ Dialogue That Changes Everything ❌ Boss: “I need this by tomorrow. Don’t let me down.” ✅ Leader: “The deadline is tough. What do you need from me to make this possible?” One shuts people down. The other opens people up. ⸻ 3 Simple Fixes for Leaders 1. Stop using “but” ❌ “Great job, but you missed one point.” ✅ “Great job, and let’s build on it with this point.” 2. Listen with your eyes Don’t just hear words — notice tone, energy, and silence. That’s where the truth hides. 3. Ask yourself this question 👉 “Will this conversation leave them more confident than before?” If the answer is no, you’re just speaking, not communicating. ⸻ The Hard Truth Poor communication doesn’t just hurt companies. It breaks trust, ruins relationships, and kills motivation. People don’t remember the words you used. They remember how you made them feel. ⸻ ✅ Action for you: At your next meeting or even dinner table talk, don’t rush to speak. Pause. Watch. Listen. Notice. Because sometimes, the sentence you never say makes the biggest difference.

Communication is not about saying what we think. Communication is about ensuring others hear what we mean. Internal communications is about making employees feel good, engaged, informed, & connected. 🚙 It’s the engine behind culture, alignment, & business success. 🔗 It’s the bond that holds the teams together. 🩵 It’s about influence, not control. 📘 It turns corporate strategy into something real for the people. 💪 Internal communications is imperative. However, if everything is hyped to the max, then what is truly important? If all things are A+#1, then which one is truly first among equals? Thanks to technology, we can reach pretty much all employees all the time with everything that ever needs to be communicated. ❌ Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. ✔ We should limit broadcasting & embrace narrowcasting. Segment messages based on employee roles & locations. Defining clear segments & working groups for communication allows you to quickly send a message to the right individuals at any time. ✔ Make communication asynchronous. One example would be a post made on an employee App that others can respond to at any time. Asynchronous communication can be particularly effective for remote teams & those working across multiple time zones or languages (‘inline translations’ is a must). ✔ Move from broadcasting to conversation (interactive channels, Q&As, polls, surveys, feedback loops). ✔ Include your frontline workers. They hardly complain about too much communication. They miss it & too often miss out. ✔ Put in meaningful efforts to truly understand what your employees want. There is no bottom-up communication fatigue … as long as people don’t feel that their voices fall on deaf ears. ✔ Adopt an internal communications platform to connect with your employees at the right time, with the right information, & where they want to receive it. A platform that allows employees to opt in or out of certain information & updates.  ➡️ What has worked for you to reduce internal comms fatigue? Share your tips 👇👇👇 🍯

#100RulesofThumb — Rule 30 Always err on the side of providing more context than what you think is necessary. —— It's common to assume that what's obvious to you is also obvious to others. But this is rarely the case. As a rule, while communicating, always assume asymmetry in information. In other words, you should always assume that the other person knows less than you think they do about a given subject, context, or project. This isn't to belittle anyone's intelligence or experience; rather, it's a safeguard against the curse of knowledge. You see, once you get good at something, you forget what it's like to be a newbie. You're in marketing, and you think everyone knows what "CTR" or "ROAS" means. Trust me, they don't. And even if they do, you're usually better off assuming they don't while documenting stuff. Because you never know who is going to go through your documentation in the future. Don't assume; explain. Likewise, if you're running behind on a project, don't go radio silent. Tell your team what's up. A simple "Need another day, still grinding" goes a long way in keeping people's trust. When you assume symmetry — that is, when you think the other person knows what you know — you're setting the stage for misunderstandings. If you're a project manager and you assume that your team knows the project's background as well as you do, you might skip crucial details when assigning tasks. This will cause needless delays and errors. Or if a team member doesn't fully understand the problem you're trying to solve, they're less likely to come up with creative solutions. They might not even know how high the ceiling is for breaking the rules. And when things go wrong due to poor communication, it's not just the project that suffers. Team members may start to lose faith in each other and in the leadership, and we all know how that goes. Hence, always provide context when communicating. Whether it's an email, a meeting, or a one-on-one chat, make sure to include the 'why' and the 'what' along with the 'how.' Another slightly hard to implement idea: After you've communicated something, ask the other person to summarize what they've understood. This will quickly reveal any gaps in their understanding. Ambiguity charges high interest, and we all pay it in lost time and screw-ups. You want to be the person who cuts through the fog. Make things crystal clear, and you'll save everyone a lot of headaches. Also, when you provide more context, you're opening yourself up feedback. Maybe someone has a better idea or a quicker solution. Maybe they'll tell you to take a breather. Either way, you're better off than working in a vacuum. No one is going to punish you for being elaborate. So be elaborate and don't leave any space for obvious questions. In the long run, it will save you a lot of time in going back and forth on trivialities.

Everything you do that sends a message is a form of communication. Too often leaders get caught in the myth that ‘internal communication’ is the verbal or written messages, like emails and team meetings. But your behaviours also send messages, and they’re not always positive. A few prime examples: - The Say / Do Gap: you say one thing, and do another. Like sharing the new company values, that include ‘respect’, and then being very disrespectful to a colleague in a meeting. - Bad Timing: sending messages out of hours constantly sends a message that you don’t value your employees’ time; or always turning up late to meetings, sending a message that you don’t value their time. - Body Language: asking for feedback, and then looking incredulously at the person when they are finally brave enough to share it. So when working on your communication as a leader, also bring awareness to the unspoken ways you’re sending messages. Given that humans are very attuned to facial expressions, body language, and behaviour, you may not be sending the message you think you are! [Image description: A blue title with red text that reads: Three ways your behaviours communicate messages. Below are the three ways mentioned in this post, with a corresponding icon for each. The 'say-do gap' has a confused face icon; the 'bad timing' has a clock with an arrow around it; and 'body language' has a person sitting cross legged and with crossed arms.]