The Problem With Urgency Inflation in Internal Comms

Pop quiz, comms pros: open your inbox and count the “urgent” messages you've seen (or sent) this month.

How many were actually urgent? Yeah, I thought so.

Here's another question: How many could have waited until literally any other day?

Most of them, right? 

It’s our fault. 

We’ve created a culture where urgency is the default, even though we know deep in our hearts that when everything is flagged “urgent”, nothing feels urgent. Stick around, we’ll fix it together.

The urgency arms race

It started with good intentions. A CEO wanted important messages to stand out. HR worried their policy updates would get lost. Product managers believed their launches deserved top billing.

But urgency became our default mode. We all know the drill: @channel, @everyone, @here notifications flooding channels constantly. Subject lines like “ACTION REQUIRED”, “TIME SENSITIVE”, “URGENT RESPONSE NEEDED”. As if everything became mission-critical, drop-everything-now important.

Employees developed urgency fatigue (and your open rates show it). They started treating “urgent” emails like background noise, scanning subject lines with the same enthusiasm they'd reserve for spam. A system outage gets the same red-flag treatment as holiday party reminders. When genuine crises hit, such as security breaches requiring immediate password changes or safety incidents demanding instant response, those critical messages get lost in the noise. 

The cost is real: delayed crisis response, ignored safety protocols, and communications teams that have cried wolf so many times, nobody listens when the wolf actually shows up.

False urgency hurts you

True urgency has specific characteristics: immediate consequences for inaction, time-bound requirements, and direct impact on employee safety, security, or job performance. False urgency is everything else dressed up in crisis language.

Real urgency looks like, “The office is shutting down due to severe weather”, “Security breach requires immediate password changes”, or “System outage affecting all employees”.

False urgency sounds like, “Important update about next quarter’s goals,” when it’s sent in the middle of this quarter, “Urgent reminder about annual review deadlines,” sent three weeks before the deadline, or “Critical information about the holiday party.” 

I once got a “TIME SENSITIVE: Update your emergency contact information,” which hadn't changed since I’d joined the company six years earlier, but all I saw was the “urgent” and the “emergency” in the subject line. (It probably got above average open rates, eh?).

There's a reason “crying wolf” became an idiom over 2,000 years ago. Aesop knew that false alarms destroy trust. 

Yet here we are, marking cafeteria closure notices as “critical”, then acting shocked when nobody cares about actual emergencies.

Urgent: When is it really?

Before you slap that red exclamation point on anything, apply some tried and tested methodology to determine if it's truly urgent.

The Consequence Timeline Test: Ask what happens if people don't see this information for 24, 48, and 72 hours. If the consequences don’t compound significantly within 24 hours, it’s not urgent, it’s just poorly planned.

The MoSCoW Method: This requirement-prioritization technique works for communications too. 

• Must have (safety, security, compliance)
• Should have (strategic updates)
• Could have (nice-to-know info)
• Won't have (everything else)

Only “Must have” qualifies for urgent treatment.

The Reverse Impact Analysis: Start with the assumption that your message isn’t urgent and work backward. What would need to be true for this to actually require immediate attention? If you’re stretching to justify urgency, you probably don’t have it.

This isn’t just corporate methodology for the sake of process. It’s a diagnostic tool that forces you to confront whether you’re solving a real problem or just transferring your planning anxiety onto your audience’s attention.

Why does everyone think their message is so urgent?

The urgency epidemic isn’t just about poor planning or dramatic personalities. It’s rooted in deeper organizational dysfunction.

The attention economy makes every department compete for employee eyeballs. When inboxes are flooded and chat channels are constant notification streams, urgency feels like the only way to break through.

Urgency becomes a way to transfer planning failures onto the communications team and employee attention when many “urgent” communications are really just poor planning, last-minute decisions, or failure to anticipate predictable needs. 

And then there’s control anxiety that drives managers who feel powerless over business outcomes to try controlling communication outcomes instead. Making everything urgent feels like taking action, even when it's counterproductive.

The cost of urgency inflation

Comms teams are burning out because they’re living in permanent crisis mode. Spoiler alert: most of it isn’t actually a crisis. 

More than annoying everyone, they’re also undermining their function credibility. Employees start ignoring communications entirely rather than trying to sort important from unimportant, urgent from whatever.

Breaking the urgency cycle and reclaiming prioritization require boundaries, education, and the courage to push back on false urgency claims.

To do so, you need to create urgency criteria that are specific and objective. Educate your stakeholders, share these criteria with them, explain how urgency inflation affects employee engagement and crisis response, and use your criteria to evaluate requests. 

When someone insists their mundane message needs urgent treatment, offer alternatives: “This doesn't meet our urgency criteria, but we could include it in the Tuesday digest,” or focus them by saying “This would be perfect for your department channel.”

Gamify it by announcing a virtual urgency budget, limiting your loudest stakeholders to one “urgent” message a month.

You have the keys, so control your channels by reserving certain communication methods for truly urgent information only. This creates a hierarchy of urgency that employees can trust and understand.

How to ditch the drama

If “urgent” is off the table most of the time, what do we do instead? A few practical approaches:

• Batch, don’t blast: Bundle updates into one digest to save employees from notification overload.
• Tier your channels: Reserve SMS or push notifications for true emergencies. Everything else can chill in Workvivo, digital signage, team chats, or email.
• Plan like a pro: Push stakeholders to plan ahead. No more last-minute “urgent” requests!
• Own the oops: If it’s last-minute, admit it. Honesty beats fake urgency every time.

The urgency test

True urgency is a powerful tool when used correctly. It cuts through noise, demands attention, and drives immediate action. But it only works when employees trust that “urgent” actually means urgent. So run every “urgent” request through this test: 

• What happens if employees don't see this information for 24 hours?
• Are there immediate consequences for delayed action?
• Does this require employees to change their behavior right now?
• Would a reasonable person consider this a genuine emergency?

If your answer doesn’t pass the test, redirect that message to a digest or channel.

Your role isn’t just to distribute every message to everyone, it’s to protect employees’ attention. You are the filter, the editor, the one who decides what cuts through and what doesn’t.

If we keep inflating urgency, we burn trust. If we reclaim it, employees know that when we say something is “urgent”, it really is. That’s how you turn internal comms from a frantic service desk into a strategic superpower that employees actually trust.