Internal Communication
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Internal communication – also referred to as employee communication, internal employee communication or organisational communication – can be defined as everything that gets said and shared inside an organisation. As a function, its role is to curate, enable, and advise on best practice for organisations to communicate effectively, efficiently and in an engaging way.

It will include the channels used inside the organisation for communication like town halls, intranets and employee events and it should be focussed on content relevant to different employee groups aligned to the organisational strategy.

Increasingly, it includes aligning communication to organisational culture and working with leaders to help them communicate better with employees.

If you’d like to find read more about internal communication, Redefining Communications’ founder and global communications expert, Jenni Field, has written two books; Influential Internal Communication and Nobody Believes You. The first is a great practical guide to using internal communication to streamline your organisation and ensure it is both efficient and engaging.

The second book is more focussed on credible leadership – still relevant for internal communications but more focussed on leaders and managers and the role they play. You can find out more here: redefiningcomms.com/books/

There are other books on internal communication written by other experts covering more specific areas like crisis, inclusion, change and project communication – Amanda Coleman, Rachel Miller, Advita Patel and Ann Pilkington are all worth looking at.

We always advise clients to explore the employee lifecycle, the organisational culture and the employee experience to impact engagement. While there are different enablers for employee engagement success (strategic narrative, engaging managers, integrity and employee voice) you need to look more broadly at what engagement means in your organisation.

Employee engagement objectives need to be linked to the overall organisational strategy and the culture you’re trying to achieve, as they need to be linked to something that has an impact on business success.

We use the definition from Maylett and Wride: The Employee Experience is the sum of perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organisation in which they work.

For us, employee experience has three main parts: tools and processes, relationships and environment. Each of these three areas is important and depending on where you are in the employee lifecycle, one of these will be more important.

You can find out more here: The essential elements for a successful employee experience strategy | Redefining Communications

Communication is so important in building and maintaining excellent relationships at work. Do you understand your communication style? And do you know how you impact others? These questions are so important to answer to make sure you communicate effectively.

Jenni regularly works 1:1 with people looking to improve their skills to build better relationships at work. Start by taking some time to understand your own communication style and that of your team. Coaching, reading and developing the skill over time are all very achievable. We offer DISC questionnaires to help you understand your communication preferences as part of our coaching packages or as a stand alone session.

Internal communication is: “Everything that gets said and shared inside an organisation. As a function, its role is to curate, enable, and advise on best practice for organisations to communicate effectively, efficiently and in an engaging way.” (Field)

Employee engagement is: “A workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.” (MacLeod and Clarke)

Employee experience is: “The way in which employees internalize and interpret the interactions they have with their organisation, as well as the context that underlies those interactions.” (Gartner)

Effective internal communication is the key to creating excellent workplace relationships. Here are some quick tips:

• It takes time – acknowledge the symptoms of chaos, but don’t rush to fix. Take the time to delve into the root cause.
• Great storytelling – make sure you’re telling a compelling story that takes people with you and helps them understand the journey towards achieving organisational goals.
• Know your desired outcome – focus on what you want people to “think, feel and do” to make sure your messaging elicits the desired response and behaviours.
• Invest in yourself – we have to understand how we work and why we behave in certain ways to improve our relationships, so it’s essential to work towards increasing skills that improve communication, productivity, empathy and resilience.
• Know your scope – what does internal communication mean as a function in your organisation and where does it sit? Being clear on scope is important. It doesn’t really matter where it sits, as long as it supports the business strategy.

Leadership isn’t easy. There’s a huge amount of pressure on leaders to understand the complexity of their industry and organisation, lead projects, grow the business, as well as recognise team dynamics and nurture relationships.

Focus on being credible. This means you need to think about the eight practices that enable you to be seen as credible and a leader people will follow.

An audit should be carried out to help you understand whether the content and channels you use are working for your audience. If you’re doing one, make sure you have some ideas around what you want to prove or disprove.

Depending on your organisational size you’ll need a survey and/or focus groups and some 1:1 interviews with leaders. Combine this with data you have from digital channels or existing information on the channels and you’ll have the insight you need to make the changes you need.

There are lots of podcasts, books and events out there. Do you know how you like to learn? This is the first thing to consider. Jenni is a big fan of attending events and reading as that is how she learns best and for some it’s online events or podcasts. Once you know that, drop us an email and we can point you in the right direction for where you’re based.

Remote and deskless are a little different. If you have people who are remote from the organisation but sitting at laptops, there is a separate strategy needed than for those who are on the frontline and disconnected.

For remote, focus on improving digital communication across the organisation, training leaders on how to use digital tools and the importance of the different aspects of digital writing. This is a bigger cultural challenge so make sure you’re looking at meeting times, breaks and expectations.

For deskless workers, focus on the research that highlights the cultural differences between office workers and those who are deskless.

You can read more from our research here: How to Reach Deskless and Frontline Workers: Lessons from Two UK Studies | Redefining Comms

You have to focus on your credibility. Our research-backed framework covers eight practices that you need to build. This is around developing your skills and strategies around empathy, having a vision, capability and integrity to name a few of them.

You’ll need to be more intentional in how you communicate and engage with others and invest in yourself and your development to grow in these areas.

You can go through our Credibility Gap Assessment to see where you need to focus your attention now: How credible are you?

Drop us an email if you’d like to explore more as Jenni can share her research in this area and do some 1:1 consultancy with you too.

You’ll need to be more intentional in how you communicate and engage with others and invest in yourself and your development to grow in these areas. Drop us an email if you’d like to explore more as Jenni can share her research in this area and do some 1:1 consultancy with you too.

The credibility gap is the disconnect between what leaders say and what employees actually experience. It’s the space between intention and impact — where a leader believes they are communicating clearly, behaving consistently and building trust, but their team has a completely different experience.

The gap exists in most organisations. It doesn’t mean leaders are bad at their jobs; it means there are specific behaviours and practices that, when missing, erode trust over time. Closing the credibility gap is at the heart of everything we do at Redefining Communications, and it’s the focus of Jenni’s book, Nobody Believes You.

Some of the signs are obvious: low engagement scores, high turnover, poor feedback in surveys, or leaders who feel disconnected from their teams. But often the signs are more subtle – teams that disengage in meetings, rumours that spread faster than official communications, or a sense that people are going through the motions.

The best way to find out is to ask. We have an online credibility gap diagnostic that helps you explore the symptoms you’re seeing in your organisation and what that might mean in terms of the leadership behaviours that need your attention: The Credibility Gap Diagnostic

Credible leadership is about being a leader people will actually follow — not because they have to, but because they trust you. It’s built through consistent behaviour across eight key practices: empathy, vision, likeability, capability, trustworthiness, integrity, supportiveness and vulnerability.

Most leaders are strong in some of these areas and less developed in others. The work is in understanding which practices you need to focus on and building them deliberately over time. Credibility isn’t a personality trait — it’s a set of skills, and skills can be developed.

This is one of the most common challenges internal communicators bring to us. You can see the problem clearly  – leaders who are inconsistent, who avoid difficult conversations, or who communicate in ways that don’t land, but influencing upwards isn’t always easy.

Start by understanding where the gap is. Is it a skills issue, a confidence issue, or a structural one? Once you know that, you can decide whether coaching, workshops, better briefing processes or a shift in how communication is measured and valued is the right approach. IC professionals are increasingly being asked to act as communication coaches for leaders, and that’s a role worth investing in. If you’d like support in building that capability, we work with IC teams and leaders together to bridge the gap.

A communication strategy sets the direction — it defines your purpose, your audiences, the outcomes you’re trying to achieve and the principles that guide how you communicate. It answers the question: why are we communicating and what are we trying to achieve?

A communication plan is how you get there. It’s the detail — the channels, the messages, the timelines and the responsibilities. Plans without a strategy tend to be reactive and disjointed. Strategy without a plan tends to stay on a shelf. You need both, and they need to be connected.

You can download some resources to help here if you want to look at plans and templates: Resources | Redefining Communications

This is one of the most important questions in the profession and one that still doesn’t get enough attention. The short answer is: you need to be measuring the right things at the right levels.

Start by being clear on what you were trying to achieve. Did you want people to understand something, feel differently about something, or do something differently?

Each of those requires a different measure. Channel metrics like open rates and page views tell you about reach, not impact. To understand impact, you need a combination of quantitative data — surveys, pulse checks, engagement scores — and qualitative insight from conversations, focus groups and manager feedback.

The goal isn’t to prove that communication happened. It’s to show that it made a difference.

The behaviours that damage credibility most are often the ones leaders don’t realise they’re doing. The biggest ones we see:

• Saying one thing and doing another. Nothing erodes trust faster than a gap between words and actions.
• Communicating only when there’s a problem. If people only hear from you when something’s gone wrong, they’ll start to associate your presence with bad news.
• Avoiding difficult conversations. Silence isn’t neutral — it creates anxiety and fills with rumour.
• Treating communication as broadcasting. If you’re only pushing messages out and never genuinely listening, people will stop believing the messages.
• Being inconsistent. Credibility is built through repetition and consistency over time. Leaders who shift their message depending on the audience, or who behave differently in public versus private, will always struggle to build trust.

There are a few common triggers: you’re going through significant change and need additional capacity or expertise; your internal communication function is being built or rebuilt; you’ve identified a problem — low engagement, poor leadership communication, a disconnected workforce — but don’t have the objectivity or resource to address it from the inside; or you need a strategic review of what’s working and what isn’t.

An external consultant brings a perspective that’s hard to get internally — we’re not bound by the politics, the history or the assumptions that can make it difficult to see clearly. We work alongside your team, not instead of them, and the goal is always to build internal capability as well as solve the immediate challenge. If you’re wondering whether it’s the right time, it probably is — get in touch and we can have an honest conversation about whether and how we can help.