Every year, I wade through stacks of trend reports and predictions to see what patterns emerge to help you understand the big things to focus on for the year ahead. This year, those predictions highlight an internal communication identity crisis, revealing a profession at a crossroads, caught between tactical execution and strategic transformation.
We’re seeing a real split emerge. On one side, there are practical, day-to-day insights about channels and content. On the other hand, there’s big thinking about what internal communication actually is and what it needs to become. This division has been building for years, but 2026 might be the year it finally forces us to make some decisions about our professional identity.
The problem we’re not talking about
Internal communication is being pulled in two directions at once. We’re expected to execute flawlessly on the tactical work – the emails, the videos, the intranet updates. But simultaneously, we’re being asked to solve increasingly complex organisational challenges around trust, culture transformation, and change management. These aren’t just different skill sets. They’re fundamentally different roles.
The reports and predictions for 2026 reflect this tension. Some focus on optimising workflows and mastering new technologies. Others question whether “internal communication” even describes what we do anymore. This isn’t just semantics; it’s a signal that the profession is outgrowing its original boundaries.
Why this matters now
This split matters because ambiguity about our role limits our impact. When leaders and organisations as a whole don’t clearly understand what internal communication can contribute, they either underutilise the function or overwhelm it with mismatched expectations. More critically, when we as practitioners aren’t clear about our professional identity, we struggle to develop the right capabilities, make strategic choices about where to invest our energy, or advocate effectively for resources.
The stakes are particularly high right now. Organisations are navigating unprecedented change; from AI integration to workplace transformation, to ongoing trust erosion. They need a sophisticated communication strategy, with expert advice, not just polished messaging and a robust channel mix. But if we’re still seen primarily as the people who “send emails and manage the intranet,” we won’t be positioned to deliver what leaders actually need in organisations today.
The four universal themes
Despite the range of predictions, four themes appear consistently across nearly every report and article. These aren’t trend-of-the-month topics, they’re fundamental forces reshaping how organisations operate and how employees experience work and that has a direct impact on the world of internal communication.
Artificial intelligence dominates the conversation, but it’s messy. The AI discussion spans everything from workflow automation to cultural adaptation to the existential question of what human judgment means in an AI-augmented workplace. Whether you’re focusing on upskilling your team, redesigning processes, or rethinking organisational structures, AI implications touch every dimension of internal communication work. The urgency here isn’t false, this technology is moving faster than most of us can adapt, and communication teams need strategies, not just reactions. Strategies that move away from just the tools and into the foundational skills that will make a difference to the profession.
Trust remains the perennial challenge for internal communicators, HR professionals, and leadership teams. This shows up everywhere in communication work – in channel selection, tone, content development, transparency decisions, and advisory conversations. Trust isn’t a single initiative or campaign. It’s the underlying culture that determines whether any communication strategy can succeed. The question for 2026 isn’t whether to focus on trust, but how to make trust-building systematic rather than aspirational across your entire communication approach. This means we need to go wider than channels and content and into leadership and management behaviours and the culture the organisation is operating in.
Line managers emerge with particular strength in this year’s predictions, appearing in multiple ways. There’s the ongoing tension around manager cascades versus direct-to-employee communication. There’s growing recognition that the manager experience fundamentally shapes broader employee engagement. Whatever your internal communication strategy aims to accomplish, managers are increasingly understood as either the key enablers or the primary constraint. This requires rethinking how communication teams support, equip, and partner with managers rather than simply delivering messages through them. How can internal communication teams finally crack this challenge and be involved in the communication experience for employees that is directly linked to line manager communication skills.
The re-humanisation of the workplace captures something essential, even if the phrase itself feels slightly awkward. This encompasses the renewed focus on wellbeing linked to engagement, the push for leaders to show more genuine vulnerability, and the broader cultural shift toward valuing employees as whole people rather than just a ‘human resource’. Sociabble frames it well: “The future will belong to companies that combine technology with humanity, using digital channels to make communication more transparent, inclusive, and impactful for the entire workforce.” None of this is minor, it is core to how organisational culture either supports or undermines employee experience and as a result, the leadership conversation is imperative.
The tactics are still important
Beneath these universal themes sits a collection of more specific, operational insights. These represent the practical reality of internal communication work and they include:
- Short-form video
- Data-driven approaches
- Outcomes-focused measurement
- Storytelling
- Digital employee experience
- Mobile optimisation
- Governance frameworks for both the IC function and the digital workplace
- Email effectiveness
- Reduced content creation paired with increased contextual understanding
- Generational considerations and cultural agility
What’s interesting isn’t that these topics emerge this year, many have been discussion points for years. What’s notable is that they’re bubbling to the surface simultaneously, suggesting that tactical execution is becoming more sophisticated and demanding even as strategic expectations expand. This dual pressure is precisely what creates the professional identity tension we’re experiencing.
The bigger shifts reshaping internal communication
Beyond tactics and themes, several fundamental shifts are redefining what internal communication means and what practitioners need to be capable of delivering. These aren’t incremental changes; they’re transformational for the profession:
The workplace experimentation that followed the pandemic is reaching its conclusion. For five years, organisations have been running informal experiments around flexibility, location, and work arrangements. In 2026, this needs to move from experimentation to operationalisation. That means bringing together culture, technology, HR, and communication to define what the modern workplace actually looks like and removing the ambiguity that creates ongoing uncertainty for employees. Internal communication teams will be central to landing whatever approach organisations adopt, which means we need strategies that go beyond announcing decisions to helping employees understand and navigate new workplace realities.
Burnout, wellbeing, and engagement have been simmering as background concerns, but they’re becoming impossible to ignore. Research increasingly demonstrates strong links between wellbeing and engagement, which connect to both burnout and psychological safety. As Fast Company notes, “2025 exposed what happens when well-being is ignored, and 2026 will be the year the consequences force leaders’ hands. Well-being stops being a bonus and starts being a fundamental business strategy—if leaders want to survive and thrive.” This requires a genuine mindset shift from leaders, which means internal communication teams need to influence leadership thinking, not just implement leadership directives.
AI’s impact on the communicator’s role centres on judgment and advisory capability. HiBob captures the shift: “AI has made knowledge easier to access, which means factual recall is no longer a key differentiator. What sets people apart now is their ability to interpret, question, and apply judgment.” The technical skills around channels and content remain important, but the value increasingly comes from experience-based judgment, strategic insight, and the ability to help leaders navigate complexity. These capabilities require different skills and development needs than the traditional IC skill-building models.
Change communication and internal communication are converging into a unified practice. For years, these have been treated as related but distinct specialisations (something I’ve never really understood given the amount of change I have done in my career) but that separation is collapsing. As Ghassan Karian observes, “Leaders desperately need a human being who can make sense of chaos, decode emotions, and help land change without breaking the organisation—or its people.” Organisations exist in a state of continuous change now. Internal communication teams that can’t help them navigate transformation effectively won’t be able to deliver what’s needed. This isn’t about adding change communication as a speciality; it’s about recognising that effective internal communication is inherently about guiding people through ongoing evolution.
Time has become the new currency in workplace value discussions. Multiple reports showed employees valuing time over salary increases. This fundamentally changes workplace conversations around flexibility, and the Return to Office discussions we are seeing again and again. The experimentation-is-over theme connects directly here – organisations need clear approaches that acknowledge time as a primary employee concern while still enabling effective collaboration and productivity. How organisations balance operational needs against lifestyle expectations from employees is going to be a focus, and tricky balance, for leaders in 2026.
Perhaps most provocatively, questions are emerging about whether “internal communication” accurately describes what the function actually does in modern workplaces. Should we be talking about being people-first internal communication (nod to Emma Bridger and Lee Smith for their latest book with the title)?
Should we frame the work as organisational effectiveness? Does internal communication as a label limit how leaders understand and utilise the capabilities in the team? This question has been surfacing more frequently in industry conversations, suggesting genuine uncertainty about professional identity at a foundational level.
What this means for you and your team
These insights create both pressure and possibility. The pressure comes from expanded expectations without necessarily expanded resources or authority. The possibility comes from organisations increasingly recognising that internal communication expertise is essential to navigating complex change successfully.
For individuals, this means making deliberate choices about capability development. Technical skills around channels and content remain foundational, but judgment, strategic thinking, and advisory capabilities become differentiators. It means deciding whether to position yourself primarily as a tactical executor or as a strategic advisor – and recognising that both roles have value but require different competencies.
For communication teams and functions, this requires clarity about role definition and scope. What can your team realistically deliver? Where do you need to influence versus execute? How do you build credibility for strategic advisory work while maintaining operational excellence?
These aren’t simple questions, and different organisational contexts will give you different answers.
2026 will reveal which direction the profession moves – toward tactical work or strategic influence, or perhaps toward finding ways to genuinely excel at both. I’m watching for how additional industry reports frame these questions in the coming months, and I’m particularly interested in the conversations that emerge at industry events throughout the year. This isn’t just about predicting what’s coming; it’s about actively shaping what internal communication becomes.
All the reports and articles that informed this report are available – just let us know if you’d like the full list.
