How to Build a Winning Internal Communication Strategy

When it comes to internal communications, firing messages into the ether and hoping for the best has never been a winning move.

Yet, without a formal internal communications strategy, that’s exactly what businesses are doing.

Like leadership expert Lee Bolman said, “A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.”

In other words, you've got to plan first; you can’t just get stuck in and expect outcomes to magically materialize.

Why do you need an internal communication strategy?

Without a strategy, your internal communications are left open to interpretation, have no structure, and can become a dumping ground for bad information.

When you implement a formal strategy, all stakeholders (including management, frontline workers, desk-based staff, and even contractors) know the expectations when consuming and sharing information pertaining to your business and how it aligns with overall business objectives.

Often completed with an internal communications app, this strategy enables team members to come together in a single environment and send and receive formalized communications, creating a two-way stream of communications across the business.

How to create an internal communication strategy in 8 steps

1. Understanding the business context and current situation

Before you can start to make inroads on the future of your internal communications, you must understand the lie of the land. Without this crucial first step, everything else that follows may not be in the best interests of your business.

Run an internal audit: Discover how you communicate cross-department, which tools get used, and what’s missing.

Define internal communication goals: Make it clear why you’re seeking improvements and what your future desires are for the business.

Get employee input: Learn what employees feel they need to create a great internal communications experience.

Discover how your team really feels: Gather anonymized thoughts and feelings with Workvivo insights.

2. Identifying communication needs and business goals

Discover what works and what needs to change to meet your employees' needs. When you’ve captured current and future requirements, prioritize requests using the MoSCoW scoring method. Ensure that communication needs directly support key company goals.

Create a “to-be” state: Document your end goal for how your business communicates internally at the end of the project.

Write your “why” statement: Relate your to-be state to rationale behind moving ahead with a formal internal communications strategy.

Define the steps to get there: Create a timeline of events with key milestones to visualize the time and effort needed to implement.

3. Defining audiences & stakeholders

Your business is made up of different departments, seniorities, personality types, and preferences for content consumption and communication. Capturing all these helps shape how you’ll kick things off.

Identify all parties: Who is classed as an internal member of your business and needs access to formal employee communications?

Define stakeholder needs: What are the differing needs per department, seniority, etc.?

Create communication types: How do these different stakeholders prefer/need to send and receive company updates and engage in internal discussions?

4. Establishing core processes and selecting channels/tools

With all your gathered insight, decide on how best the majority of your staff will communicate. Make considerations (and even exceptions) for those with modern ideas that some staff may not have been subjected to (e.g. asynchronous communication, internal podcasts, etc.)

• Create a standardized method of communication: Decide whether written, video, or audio updates work best for your company.
• Define channels within your business: Drill down into how these methods of communications will be best received. Email, intranet, collaboration apps, etc.
• Select an internal communication app: You need a central hub to house your internal communications. This is usually a social intranet or dedicated internal communications app.

5. Defining key messages and content pillars

While your internal communications will be open to personalization and individuality, any communications from the top (corporate communications) should be consistent to set expectations to the rest of the business.

• Confirm the tone of your internal communications: Decide whether you stick with corporate speak or introduce a more informal way of communicating updates.
• Set content pillars: Introduce common themes, channels, or templates that get updated regularly.
• Encourage two-way communication: Enable comments and make it clear that discussion and employee feedback is always welcome.

6. Determining roles and responsibilities (competencies)

When you roll out a new content and communications tool, you must define who can and can’t post, edit, or delete. Think about the ramifications of enabling too free or too strict access when deciding roles and responsibilities.

• List who will be affected: Split every type of user into categories for sending and receiving communications.
• Decide content owners: While everyone may be able to comment on and like posts, you may choose to restrict all-staff content to specific people or groups.
• Empower content moderators: Outside of content owners, elect those who can make changes and lead discussion once content has been posted. Consider automatic moderation to avoid things like profanity and inappropriate speech.

7. Setting KPIs and measurement plans

Once in place, you’re going to need to know whether your new internal comms strategy is performing. Lean on intranet metrics and platform insights to gauge the sentiment and usage of your teams.

• Measure progress for continuous optimization: From day one, collect data on usage and ongoing adoption.
• Use data to inform future plans: Learn from patterns and trends (like open rates, onboarding time, engagement levels, etc.) to identify ongoing changes.
• Communicate why you’re measuring: When staff know you’re tracking to ensure appropriate usage and to best meet their needs, they’re more likely to be open with feedback.

Don’t know how engaged your teams are? Learn from Workplace Insights to uncover all your internal communications metrics.

8. Aligning with resources & budget

Before you press the button on your new internal communications tool, you likely need to gain buy-in to justify your investment. Make sure you gather all monetary aspects as part of your internal communication strategy too.

• Define existing resources: What can be reused or replicated from current tools?
• Calculate budget needed: Get an idea of the expected cost of an internal communications app across your number of users.
• Write the business case: Using real-world data, write the business justification for spending money to create a better internal communications practice.

Internal communication strategy best practices

Once you’ve created your internal communication strategy, it’s time to put it into action. When getting started for the first time, make sure you abide by these communication best practices for early adoption and continuous usage and improvement:

1. Prioritize transparency, authenticity, and timeliness

Content shared internally should be for the purpose of bettering and empowering staff. Even the smallest post should come with the goal of adding value.

Ensure this by being open, honest, and posting when the content will be most useful. At the other end of the scale, avoid sharing unhelpful content for the sake of it and think about the repercussions of late or expired content.

2. Create genuine two-way communication and listening

Use features like pulse surveys and employee polls to encourage feedback from staff—rather than allowing your internal communications to become a one-way system.

Use comments to get real-time reactions to content and allow staff to have discussion in both private and public groups.

3. Use audience segments to tailor your approach

Not all your internal content will be relevant to every user in your business. To avoid content overwhelm, group departments or user types together so they only receive what’s important to them.

Once grouped, users can choose to filter out unwanted content or you can send to specific groups by default.

4. Ensure clarity and conciseness (cut the jargon)

While you’ve decided on your tone of voice for strategic internal communications, when it comes to posting content and communicating with stakeholders, it’s important to be to the point and make life as easy as possible.

Here, avoid complex terminology that will stop users in their tracks and have to work out what you really mean. Consider using tools like Hemingway Editor to make your content easy to consume.

5. Empower managers as communication champions

The term “top-down” gets referenced a lot when planning internal communications. But it’s impossible unless you give managers the power to make changes, encourage discussion, and lead by example.

When introducing a new tool, or even just a new process, they must be the first to know and have the relevant access to drive adoption and engagement from day one.

6. Leverage the power of storytelling

Merely posting updates won’t win users over. Instead, focus on creating a narrative that includes the people on the other side of the post.

Content, even the one-way communications, must be viewed as helping take stakeholders from position A to position B. This might be through how-to content, inspirational postings, or even career development.

7. Align communications with company culture and values

It’s important to reinforce your company values within your internal communications. While it may be tempting to simply write a post and send it out in the ether, don’t forget that your audience is part of a larger project.

Use your content to continuously build company culture and for the betterment of staff at all times.

Internal communication strategy examples

When you’re armed with a strong internal communications strategy, it pays dividends in terms of employee engagement and workplace culture.

Learn from these four real-world examples of internal communications:

Royal Berkshire NHS

Royal Berkshire NHS moved from fragmented channels (emails, social media, static intranet) to a unified platform, resulting in 84% staff registration and 83% weekly active users, streamlining communication for over 7,000 employees.

Enabled secure, targeted messaging and urgent push notifications, improving compliance and allowing tailored communications for specific departments.

Hosted the NHS Staff Survey almost exclusively on the new communication platform, achieving the highest response rate to date and notable engagement improvements: 75% felt empowered to suggest improvements and 89% confident in their responsibilities.

Keyloop

Keyloop achieved 92% employee registration and 80% weekly active users within three months of launching a new communications platform for over 2,000 staff across 26 countries.

Enhanced leadership visibility and global connectivity with regular CEO updates and interactive Q&A sessions, overcoming previous coordination challenges.

Reduced email overload by shifting to targeted, engaging posts; 70% of employees reported improved access to company news, and employee recognition posts increased by 40%.

Nordell

Nordell reached 100% of employees, including manufacturing staff without regular computer access, by replacing paper notices and word-of-mouth updates with a digital platform.

Enabled instant sharing of company news and urgent updates, resulting in 85% weekly active users and a 50% reduction in communication delays.

Created a new digital engagement culture with over 60% of posts focused on employee achievements and team events, strengthening workforce connection.

A+E Networks EMEA

A+E Networks EMEA launched a centralized digital hub for 300+ employees across six countries, achieving 100% registration and 70% weekly active users.

Drove high engagement: 89% engaged with posts and over 50% shared their own updates and shout-outs; 333 videos posted in the first year.

Prioritized open, two-way communication and leadership visibility through video updates, while supporting targeted messaging, social feeds, and inclusive recognition programs.

Common mistakes to avoid

If you’re new to internal communications, there’s a ton to learn. However, you don’t have to make the mistakes rookies do if you’re aware of the pitfalls business often fall foul of.

• Lack of strategy/clear goals: Treating comms as purely reactive or tactical.
• Purely top-down approach: Neglecting employee voice and feedback mechanisms.
• Inconsistent messaging: Conflicting information from different sources.
• Information overload/irrelevance: Not prioritizing or targeting communications effectively.
• Using the wrong communication channels/tools: Mismatch between message type and delivery method.
• Not measuring impact: Failing to track effectiveness and make data-driven adjustments.
• Ignoring middle managers' role: Not equipping or involving them in the communication flow.
• Lack of authenticity/transparency: Especially in leadership communications.
• Treating the strategy as static: Not reviewing and adapting the plan regularly.

Create an effective internal communications strategy with Workvivo

At the heart of your internal communications must be a platform that’s both easy to consume and easy to contribute to.

Workvivo is designed for all parties to excel when it comes to internal comms, thanks to features like surveys, podcasts, newsfeeds, and group chats.

You get access to corporate components like town hall recordings and bulletins. But you also get more intimate elements like ‘Ask the CEO’ Q&As and career development planning.

Whether you’re a small business tying different parts together or a large organization that needs to streamline internal operations, Workvivo has the tools to complement your strategy.

Want to replicate the internal comms success of Royal Berkshire NHS and Keyloop?

Get a live 1:1 demo of Workvivo today.

Internal communications FAQs

What is an internal communication strategy?

An internal communication strategy is a working plan, refined over time, that forms the structure of how your teams and individuals communicate with regards to internal business matters.

The strategy incorporates the following, which must be completed before rolling out a new internal communications tool, then updated as your business changes:

• Understanding the business context & current situation
• Identifying communication needs, purpose & goals
• Defining audiences & stakeholders
• Establishing core processes & selecting channels/tools
• Defining key messages & content pillars
• Determining roles & responsibilities (competencies)
• Setting metrics & measurement plans
• Aligning with resources & budget

Who is typically responsible for developing and managing the internal communication strategy in an organization?

The internal communication strategy is usually the responsibility of an HR department or leader in smaller businesses. However, larger businesses may employ specialist internal communications teams or directors to plan, implement, and manage their internal communications strategy.

What's the difference between an internal communication plan vs strategy?

An internal communication strategy acts as your high-level guide, defining the overarching goals, purpose, and direction of communication within your organization. It focuses on the long-term vision, answering why you communicate and what key objectives you aim to achieve, such as improving employee engagement, fostering alignment with company values, or managing organizational change. The strategy identifies key audiences, establishes core message themes, outlines the desired tone, and ensures internal communication efforts directly support broader organizational goals. It's about setting the destination and the overall approach before planning the specific route.

In contrast, an internal communication plan is the detailed, actionable roadmap for putting the strategy into practice. It focuses on the specifics of execution—the how, when, where, and who. The plan outlines concrete activities, specific messages and content, chosen channels (like emails, town halls, intranet updates), timelines and frequencies, responsibilities for different tasks, and the metrics that will be used to measure success against the strategic goals. While the strategy provides the direction, the plan details the specific steps, tools, and schedules needed to effectively reach your communication destination in the short-to-medium term.

What should be included in an internal communications strategy?

• Understanding the business context & current situation
• Identifying communication needs, purpose & goals
• Defining audiences & stakeholders
• Establishing core processes & selecting channels/tools
• Defining key messages & content pillars
• Determining roles & responsibilities (competencies)
• Setting metrics & measurement plans
• Aligning with resources & budget

How does supporting a remote or hybrid workforce impact your internal communication strategy?

When planning an internal communications strategy, the grouping of remote, hybrid, or in-office personnel can be beneficial for more relevant and continuous usage. Use segmentation to ensure different user types receive the right content. For example, home workers don’t need to receive bulletins about keeping their office work environment tidy for a special visitor next week.

You must also consider the inclusion of remote workers in your internal communication as some may feel disconnected if not part of face to face business conversations and/or are last to receive company updates. By using a cloud intranet tool like Workvivo, you ensure every type of worker has access to the latest information and can take part in two-way conversations.