The Internal Communication Strategy Guide for Enterprise

Employee engagement has become a huge focus for global business, especially in the wake of the post-pandemic workplace culture. And a huge part of this is the internal comms strategy.

At the frontline of the employee engagement challenge, Human Resources (HR) and Internal Communications (IC) teams are trying to make sense of the facts, and align business goals with tools and strategies.

For teams looking to make sense of the world of employee engagement and to build a comprehensive internal communications plan, this is for you...

In this guide, you’ll discover what modern internal communication is in the context of other business concepts, effective strategies, the risks, who’s responsible and how to consistently achieve the right internal comms outcomes. 

What is Internal Communication?

In simple terms, internal communication is the exchange of verbal, written and even non-verbal information between (and for) people within organizations. It’s the currency invested in meaningful employee engagement as part of a coherent company culture. 

Internal communication underpins many elements of business strategy, including relaying important information; keeping employees informed and updated with business objectives and progress; sharing company news - from across the spectrum; and even ensuring there are open and actioned two way communication channels.

Put simply: The purpose of internal communication is to share information across your workforce, especially key messages. However, a good internal comms strategy should also allow for two way communication and to offer a way to collect employee feedback and action it.

Internal communication applies all across the workforce, from senior leadership through management to frontline teams. And, ideally, internal communication must be symmetrical and two-way to positively enhance employee behavior.

Why Internal Communication is Important

In business, as in life, communication underpins everything we do. Without clear communication, people wouldn't understand what is expected of them, how certain things affect them or the broader business goals, or even more broadly, what is going on...

Businesses talk about company culture and engaged employees, but only share company messaging in one direction - from the top down.

But company culture is created from the actions and ideals organizations and their employees value in their workplace; internal communication is the means by which they say and do them. When the two fall out of alignment, that’s when employees become more likely to feel disconnected, excluded, and disengaged.

Company culture blooms from a coherent internal communication strategy designed around the company’s cultural goals. This is a core principle to remember for HR and IC teams tasked with influencing and creating a positive company culture.

To put this in context: let’s suppose one of your cultural goals or values is to maintain transparency and trust. If certain information struggles to filter down from leadership levels, then your internal communication strategy isn’t reflecting your company culture.

Challenges Affecting Internal Communication

Today there are more internal communication tools than ever before. Email, intranet, messaging platforms, one to ones, group meetings, town hall meetings and project management apps...

Conversations overlap, some take part on one platform with one team, but then critical information is siloed in another channel. Key data is shared with one cohort, but missed by another due to poor communication.

So with all of these tools, the golden question (or questions): Are they adding value? If so, how? And how are you measuring that value?

Lack of Feedback

Feedback helps you understand many aspects of your workforce's comprehension when it comes to company processes. It can help you gauge sentiment, monitor progress, determine how your team collaborates and if they have met their goals. Of course it is always important to act on feedback once you receive it.

Message Overload

The average office worker receives around 100 emails per day and can also receive an average of 150 Slack or Teams messages. That's not even mentioning direct requests, phone calls and project management apps such as Asana. Basically, employees can be overwhelmed by information overload.

At least one third of employees are not reading emails, citing distractions, irrelevancy, or being overwhelmed by messages. In short, you need to make your messages concise to keep employee attention.

Legacy Communication Channels

Believe it or not, many large companies still rely on outdated communication channels such as paper notice boards or, yes really, sticky notes. While these might be convenient to jot down a message and share it quickly, the truth is these rarely hit their key audiences.

And when you need to get across essential messages for your core strategy or company mission, you can't be relying on hit or miss communications.

Slow or No Communication Strategy

According to our recent study with Unily about the state of the disconnected frontline workforce, some teams can wait for 4.5 days - almost a full working week - before receiving important updates. Worse still, our study also shows that poor frontline engagement costs US enterprises more than $80.6 billion per year.

The huge array of employee engagement statistics show that many hours of work and productivity are lost to poor communication strategies.

Who is Responsible for Internal Communication?

While the overall responsibility for an internal communication strategy lies with the internal comms team, or the HR team, it goes deeper than this. Senior leadership need to be able to adhere to their own communication best practices and ensure they both share timely information, and listen and react to employee feedback.

Likewise, bottom up communication needs to be encouraged by the internal comms team, with employees given access to the communication platforms.

Put simply, internal communication is a shared responsibility that should be upheld with two-way traffic; the most effective method of internal communication is cascading information.

While HR and internal comms teams are responsible for amplifying certain company communication narratives, senior leaders and team managers must also weigh in voluntarily with appropriate communication at appropriate times.  

An effective internal communications strategy should enable:

• Talent acquisition with human resources and marketing,
• Managing crisis communication,
• Planning and managing brand ambassadorship,
• Managing the internal communications budget,
• Ensuring employees are not overwhelmed with irrelevant information,
• Planning and editing content for internal communication, and
• Making sure messages are consistent on all channels.

How to Build a High-Impact Internal Communications Strategy

Effective internal communication is the circulatory system of a modern business, ensuring that vital information, culture, and purpose flow consistently to every corner of the organization. So, whether you are a growing business or a large-scale enterprise, this strategic approach will help you plan an optimize your internal comms.

Follow this step by step internal communications template to improve your existing communication strategy.

1. The Communications Tool Audit: Finding Your Single Source of Truth

The first and most critical step is to understand your current communications landscape. In many organizations, information is scattered, leading to confusion, inefficiency, and missed messages.

Perform a comprehensive audit to identify:

• What is being used: Catalog every tool, from email and instant messaging (like Teams or Slack) to intranet portals and physical notice boards.
• What is underused: Are there expensive or feature-rich tools (e.g., a corporate intranet) that employees aren't adopting? Understanding the "why" is key.
• Information sprawl: Identify where critical information lives. Is the policy manual in a shared drive, the company values on a static web page, and important announcements only in email?

The ultimate goal of this audit is to consolidate and establish a single source of truth. This is a central, reliable hub where employees know they can always find the most current and essential company information.

This dramatically reduces wasted time searching for information and ensures message consistency.

2. Identifying Optimal Channels for Broad Reach

Your workforce structure should dictate your communication channels, not the other way around. Modern teams are rarely confined to a single office, and your strategy must accommodate this reality.

Analyze your workforce structure:

• Distribution: Are your teams distributed across multiple offices, departments, remote locations, or different time zones?
• Access: What is the primary way your employees access information? (e.g., desktop computers, personal mobile devices, shared terminals).
• Type: Do you have a large proportion of deskless or frontline workers (e.g., retail, manufacturing, logistics) who do not rely on a corporate email account for daily work?

For many organizations, instant messaging platforms like Microsoft Teams or Slack offer the best blend of synchronous and asynchronous communication for desk-based employees. However, it’s crucial to integrate platforms that also manage day-to-day operations:

• Project/Task Management Tools: Platforms like Asana, Trello, or Monday.com should be used not just for task tracking but also as a dedicated communication channel for project updates, reducing inbox clutter.
• Intranet Portals: These remain excellent for hosting the single source of truth—policies, HR documents, and long-form company announcements.

By understanding how and where your employees work, you can select the optimal channel that ensures maximum reach and engagement.

3. Leveraging Visual Communications with Digital Signage

While internal portals and chat tools handle the bulk of operational messaging, they often fail to capture the attention of busy employees, especially those without desks. This is where a focused, visual channel becomes invaluable.

A digital signage solution, such as ScreenCloud, serves as the final, highly visible layer in your communication strategy.

ScreenCloud for High-Impact Messaging:

• Reach the Deskless Workforce: Place screens in high-traffic areas (break rooms, factory floors, reception, production areas) to deliver instant, visual communication to frontline staff who are often missed by email.
• Surface Key Comms: Use it to display vital information that needs to be seen at a glance across departments and locations, such as:
• KPI dashboards and performance metrics.
• Safety reminders and compliance notices.
• Live updates and emergency messaging.
• Staff recognition and company culture content.
• Bridge the Gap: Digital signage acts as a seamless extension of your existing tools, pulling live data and messaging directly from your single source of truth (e.g., Trello boards, Google Slides, or intranet feeds) and making it visible on any screen.

By strategically deploying visual communication, you ensure that important messaging is impossible to miss, significantly enhancing engagement and message retention across your entire organization.

How can you be sure you're implementing the right corporate communication strategies, instead of simply sugarcoating overused tactics? Not everyone will find verbal monologues, meetings and speeches from leadership the most effective way to communicate, and that’s okay. Here are tips to make sure your workplace communication is effective.

The Benefits of Good Internal Communications

Internal communication may not be afforded as much consideration and budget as other business initiatives; but it directly impacts your organization's bottom line. Below are a few reasons why an effective internal communication strategy is essential.

Improved Efficiency

With better organization comes improved efficiency. Consider the fact that people who know what to expect and who know what is expected of them are more likely to be able to deliver when required.

And this is why internal communications strategies can help to create and optimize best practices across the company. This can cover a broad range of operations from informing employees of new workplace policies, health and safety protocols, available training, or even something as simple as changing office hours.

Increased Feedback 

Discourse arises if communication only flows in one direction. Feedback enables management and leadership teams to measure how employees are meeting their goals and how they are collaborating with their managers and co-workers.

As well as managers communicating their expectations, two-way internal communication gives employees an accessible means of expressing how they feel, what they’re working on, and what could be improved.

Internal PR

Your employees should be your biggest advocates, and an informed and engaged workforce is part of this. Sharing wins, organizational goals, employee wins and keeping everyone in the loop about key metrics can all contribute to positive internal PR.

Your internal PR strategy might include an internal company newsletter or a process of encouraging employees input for various processes - especially those that affect them directly.

Consistent Communication

With a strategy of consistent content, you can build a level of expectation and reliability. This means employees are more likely to understand when and were to find core messages, especially those that affect them. And it also means that the internal comms team your managers or business leaders also know where to go to share those ever important internal messages.

Better Engagement

When you encourage productive communication between supervisors and team members everything feels more open. By sharing access to channels where people can find information and give their input, your workforce will be more likely to engage with whatever the focus is.

Providing effective internal communication tools, offering virtual meetings, or asynchronous options for feedback, are all forms of productive communication between managers and workers in all environments, such as factories or remote locations.

Reduced Employee Churn

It's a fact that a good employee communications plan can genuinely, and quite drastically, reduce employee churn. The saying that people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers is especially true - with 75% of employees saying they left a job because of a manager.

In fact, employee engagement statistics show that good communication strategies result in 87% less desire to move roles.

Decreased Workplace Anxiety

The modern workplace can be stressful - with more demands on the average worker than ever before. In fact, one study from 2020 suggests that 88% of workers felt that stress at work was greater than five years ago (2015).

And when you consider everything from internal working policies to health and safety legislation can affect how someone does their job, having an internal communications plan to guide and offer feedback to workers can be a great source of reassurance.

Improved Security

Poor internal communications can have a detrimental effect on company security, especially when it comes to the challenge of shadow IT. This is where employees bypass company policy or processes and share data or access information via unauthorized devices - potentially causing multiple cybersecurity flaws. In fact 37% of employees have shared sensitive information outside of offical channels.

A clear internal comms strategy, with consistent messages can help people understand what is required and where to find the information they need.

Risks of Bad Internal Communication

As we can see from the benefits of a clear and strong internal communication plan, the risks can be both damaging to company culture and expensive.

• High employee churn
• Lost productivity hours
• Potential security risks
• Risk of missed process or policy updates
• Increased costs due to productivity issues
• Low employee morale
• 'Them and us' mentality

As you can see from this list, taking a few steps to improve internal communication can very quickly return dividends to management, senior leadership and the company overall.

One of the most alarming stats from our own study about the impact of frontline friction is the issue with delayed sharing of important updates. With some frontline workers not receiving important updates for almost a full working week - 4.5 days - in the era of digital communications surely this is something that can be fixed quickly and easily.

Which Internal Communication Tools to Use?

Every business is different, but internal communications across modern SMBs and enterprise usually means having multiple tools to reach different workforces.

As an example, a mid-sized manufacturing company will likely have at least three distinct workforce areas they need to connect with: The factory floor, the head office and a logistics or dispatch area - as well as a break out room or cafeteria, and most likely a reception or foyer area.

Another much more complex example might be in a healthcare setting such as a large hospital. Here there might be multiple specialist departments, an administrative centre, break rooms, staff cafeterias

While there might be some overlap between some departments, with many different workers working in their own areas and many having limited access to a company device, connecting with these employees is a challenge that internal communications teams have been trying to overcome for years.

Here are our suggestions for the best internal comms tools to use:

Email

While email is one of the most common communication tools, it isn't always the most effective. Inboxes can quickly become cluttered and messages can be easy to ignore. While this might be a given in most workforces, it likely is not the most effective internal comms tool.

Company Intranet

The corporate intranet portal has come a long way, and today tools such as Unily, Firstup and Staffbase offer a much more comprehensive and employee focused experience. These tools offer a central resource for accessing information, viewing updates and engaging with company news and policies.

Most modern enterprise businesses use some form of company intranet portal to centralize their communication strategy across their diversified workforce.

Instant Messaging Tools

Microsoft Teams and Slack are perhaps the best known messaging tools for large businesses. However some businesses do also use apps such as Google Chat, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram.

These are obviously great tools for real time communications, and can also be very useful to share timely updates and reminders.

File Sharing & Central Repositories

Having access to essential files, or being able to share data in a quick, accessible and secure manner, is one of the most important parts of an internal communication strategy. While some intranet portals do offer this type of access, most will integrate with file sharing apps such as Google Drive, MS Onedrive or Sharepoint or even Notion.

Task and Project Management Suites

Keeping track of project progress, who is in charge of what, and impending deadlines is all part of good strategic internal communications. Project management tools allow everyone to stay aligned with business goals and even to communicate in real time about specific projects. Tools such as Monday.com, Asana, Notion and Trello are some of the most popular options here.

Conference and Meeting Apps

In the era of hybrid and remote workers, or global workforces, being able to connect with everyone easily is a huge part of internal communication. Tools such as Zoom, Google Meet and Teams have made it easier to jump on a call and discuss important developments, work on projects remotely in real time and even share company wide presentations such as a Town Hall meeting.

Digital Signage

Most of these apps require some type of device access to view the information. But digital signage tools such as ScreenCloud surface this important employee communications content in a visible manner, ensuring everyone gets the memo. ScreenCloud is especially useful for reaching frontline teams or deskless workers and is also a powerful tool for office based teams to keep track of performance data and other KPIs.

Employee Reward Platforms

Everyone loves a reward - and while reward platforms aren't internal comms, per se, they are great for employee engagement. What's more, they're also great for building a bit of corporate culture and can actually feed into your broader communication strategy, with a focus on performance, team wins and more.

A tool like Awardco or Bonusly can be useful for both recognising performance and offering incentives too.

Better Employee Engagement with ScreenCloud

When it comes to connecting different parts of the business, digital signage is unbeatable in it's reach. This is why more and more global organizations are turning to ScreenCloud to share their internal comms messaging.

What's more, ScreenCloud integrates seamlessly with many of the most popular internal communications software including:

• Intranet portals: Unily, Firstup, Staffbase, Simpplr, MS Viva/Sharepoint.
• Live chat and project management: MS Teams, Slack, Monday.
• Data and file sharing: Sharepoint, Google Workspace, MS OneDrive, Dropbox.
• Live streaming/meetings: Zoom, Google Workspace, YouTube, Slack.
• Data and dashboards: PowerBI, Google Sheets/MS Excel, Zendesk, Grafana.
• Content: Canva, Google Slides, OneDrive, Poster My Wall.

View our growing line up of 80+ ready to go app integrations.

If you're looking to create an internal communications strategy that reaches your whole workforce, wherever they are, make sure to include ScreenCloud as part of the picture.

Find out for yourself how digital signage can be one of your best internal communication channels. Sign up for a FREE trial today, or book a demo to find out more.