Don’t Mistake Internal Comms for Culture Change

As internal communicators or employee experience professionals, we’ve all been there: leaders announce they want to change their organization’s culture, and put all their eggs in the basket of increasing comms and engagement activities. 

But you cannot communicate your way to culture change. 

Leaders and teams need to do the heavy lifting of re-architecting organizational behaviors, systems, and symbols if they want lasting change. And while the internal comms team undoubtedly has a role to play, it’s not the only actor.  

In this blog, we’ll look at what can go wrong when culture is confused with comms, the lessons you can learn from this, and the important role internal comms should play in culture change. 

When culture change goes wrong

Internal communications reflect culture; they are not a substitute for it. Messages need to align with people’s day-to-day reality. When they don’t, culture change is just corporate theater that further erodes trust, collaboration, and engagement. 

And in all cases where culture is performative, the results are the same: 

• Employees are told one message but see another, leaving them confused.
• Psychological safety is low, stifling creativity, slowing innovation, and preventing problems being aired.
• Engagement, and therefore productivity, suffer as employee distrust and cynicism mount.

Each of these impacts weaken the culture internal comms teams have been asked to promote. Thankfully, there are lessons we can take from them: 

• Culture must be lived and breathed by leaders, and felt by everyone – desk-based and frontline employees alike.
• Visible signals of culture have to move at the same pace as culture change – employees need to see continuous investment in infrastructure, not just the former.
• Two-way communication and bottom-up feedback are critical; they’re how you measure culture change impact, identify issues, and course-correct if necessary.

What culture really is 

To drive effective culture change, we need to be comfortable with what culture really means. At its simplest, a company’s culture is built on three things: behaviors, systems, and symbols. 

1. Behaviors

If you tell your people your organization needs a particular type of culture to succeed, then you must be specific on the behaviors you expect. 

For example, if you want to have a culture of innovation, how do your people need to behave to create that change? What are the behaviors that will indicate whether you’re on the right track or not? 

Providing clarity on expected behaviors is the foundation for culture change. 

2. Systems

Your systems and processes need to reflect and reinforce these behaviors. 

For example, if you’re looking to foster a culture of greater collaboration but your org structure and working rituals keeps people working in siloes, it sends conflicting messages to your people.

In the end, you won’t get the change you need. 

3. Symbols

Symbols are enormously powerful in signifying culture. 

For example, you may say you want a people-first culture, but if your senior leaders all sit on the top floor of your headquarters in separate offices, what message does that send? Symbols are often overlooked when attempting to change culture, but the messages they transmit are equally as impactful as those of behaviors and systems. 

What role should internal communications play? 

IC teams play a range of roles in shaping and distilling culture, so let’s take each of our three elements in turn. 

1. Behaviors

Leadership behaviors are the ones that really move the dial on culture change. Research from MIT Sloan Management Review suggests CEOs shape up to 70% of workplace culture through their actions and decisions, and that 80% of culture change initiatives fail without active CEO involvement. 

Internal communications teams should help to codify behaviors, coach leaders on storytelling, and use all available channels to showcase executives leading from the front on culture. 

Storytelling is important not only for bringing your culture to life, but in creating a common understanding of it. The story you write forms a bridge between the often-conceptual PowerPoint or poster, and what your organization actually needs your employees to do differently day-to-day. 

Sharing examples of what you mean helps with comprehension and acts as a tool for amplification – spreading best practices, spotlighting great work being done, and illuminating the activities that demonstrate your desired culture. 

2. Systems

Different behavior from leaders is not enough in itself to usher in change; the systems must alter as well. For example, how does your company operate day-to-day? Are the internal processes supportive of the new culture? 

Internal communications teams can support by surfacing employee feedback to leaders, and analyzing our own systems to make sure they reflect the target culture. For example, are our channels two-way and transparent?

3. Symbols

It’s the same with symbols. If your company says it wants to be more customer-centric, but your leader is spending most of their time in internal meetings, that doesn’t add up. 

As internal communicators, it’s our job to highlight these discrepancies, address them where we can (for example, working with the CEO’s team to analyze their diary and look for opportunities to live the culture), and be continually vigilant about the unintended messages being sent out by leadership symbols (such as corner offices and return-to-office mandates). 

Ready to drive culture forward?

Many organizations confuse culture with communications, doing a disservice to both. 

The work that goes into culture change is deep, long-term, and transformative. 

Internal communications teams have a central role to play in ensuring it is launched, embedded, and sustained, but it needs to be rooted in aligned and consistent behaviors, systems, and symbols.