In short
Internal communication is how an organisation informs, listens to and connects its employees so that they understand what is happening and act on it. You can sort it by direction (top-down, bottom-up, lateral) and by purpose, from informing to deciding together. It works when people understand and act, not when messages are sent, and only 16% of communicators measure that today.
Key takeaways
- Internal communication covers every message between an organisation and its employees, and between employees, aimed at shared understanding and action.
- Gallup groups internal communication into six purposes: define, inspire and align; inform; teach; drive action; make decisions; and collaborate. The last two are explicitly two-way.
- Only 20% of employees worldwide were engaged in 2025, and managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement, according to Gallup.
- In Gallagher’s 2026 Employee Communications Report, 70% of communicators track only outputs such as opens, clicks and views; only 16% measure outcomes.
- Change and crisis communication are special cases of the same discipline, yet 61% of teams have no change communication approach in their strategy.
What is internal communication?
Internal communication is the communication between an organisation and its employees, and among employees, that helps people understand what is happening, why it matters and what they should do. It includes leadership messages, intranet news, team briefings, newsletters, communities, town halls and the conversations that follow them.
The academic definition adds one important point. In their widely cited paper “Rethinking internal communication: a stakeholder approach”, Mary Welch and Paul Jackson position internal communication within corporate communication and argue against treating employees as a one-dimensional “single public”[1]. In practice, your workforce is many audiences: head office and frontline, managers and new joiners, different countries and languages. A message that works for one group can miss another entirely.
Three terms are often mixed up:
- Internal communication is the discipline: planning, creating and judging communication with employees.
- Internal communications (or internal comms) usually refers to the team that does it, or to the messages and channels themselves.
- Employee engagement is an outcome that internal communication contributes to, alongside management quality, pay, workload and culture. It is not the same thing as communication.
Internal communication is also different from external communication: it speaks to people who are inside the organisation, who often know more context than any external audience, and whose understanding shows up in what they do at work the next day.
Why does internal communication matter?
Because most organisations are not getting it right, and the cost shows up in engagement. Gallup reports that only 20% of employees worldwide were engaged in 2025 (31% in the US as of May 2026), and that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement[2]. Managers are therefore the most important internal communication channel most organisations have, and the one they support least.
Gallup also found that only 13% of employees strongly agree that their organisation’s leadership communicates effectively with the rest of the organisation[3]. Communicators see the same gap from the inside: in Gallagher’s 2026 Employee Communications Report, 87% of respondents said managers lacking skills and capacity is a moderate or significant risk, and only 21% reported actively using manager toolkits[4].
When internal communication works, employees know the strategy, hear about change before it affects them, find the information they need and can raise problems early. When it does not, they rely on rumour, miss safety and compliance updates, and stop reading official channels.
Which types of internal communication exist?
The most useful way to sort internal communication is on two axes: the direction a message travels, and the purpose it serves.
Types by direction
| Direction | What it is | Typical channels |
|---|---|---|
| Top-down | From leadership and the organisation to employees: strategy, results, decisions, policies | Intranet news, CEO posts, all-staff emails, town halls, the SharePoint app in Teams |
| Bottom-up | From employees to leaders: feedback, questions, ideas, concerns | Surveys, Q&A sessions, Viva Engage questions, manager one-to-ones |
| Lateral | Between peers, teams and departments: coordination and knowledge sharing | Teams channels, communities, project sites, informal conversations |
Most organisations over-invest in top-down and under-invest in the other two. A healthy mix needs all three, plus the cascade through line managers that connects them.
Types by purpose
Gallup proposes six reasons to communicate inside an organisation: to define, inspire and align; to inform; to teach; to drive action; to make decisions; and to collaborate. Gallup describes the last two as heavily two-way: decision-making communication is “designed to elicit the best decisions in any given situation”, and collaboration is “bidirectional communication to jointly execute work responsibilities”[3].
| Purpose | What it does | Main direction |
|---|---|---|
| Define, inspire and align | Explains purpose, strategy and priorities so people pull in the same direction | Top-down, with dialogue |
| Inform | Shares news, results, organisational changes and practical updates | Top-down |
| Teach | Builds the knowledge people need: new tools, processes, policies, safety | Top-down and lateral |
| Drive action | Asks people to do something specific by a date: enrol, complete, adopt, attend | Top-down, with follow-up |
| Make decisions | Gathers input from the people affected before a decision is taken | Two-way |
| Collaborate | Helps teams and peers work together across functions and locations | Two-way and lateral |
Change and crisis communication
Two situations deserve their own plan. Change communication supports restructures, new systems, mergers and new ways of working; it mixes all six purposes over weeks or months. Gallagher’s 2026 report found that change management communication was the top-ranked skill among communicators (57%), yet 61% of teams have no change communication approach in their strategy[4]. Crisis communication is the urgent, short version: safety incidents, outages, security events. Speed and reach to every affected person matter more than polish. For what to track in both, see crisis internal communications metrics and our merger and acquisition playbook.
What do good internal communication examples look like?
Each example below pairs a type of message with the signal that tells you it was understood, not just sent. These are illustrations, not case studies.
| Purpose | Example | Signal that it worked |
|---|---|---|
| Align | A state-of-the-company session from the CEO on next year’s three priorities, with a recording and a one-page summary on the intranet | Managers can name the three priorities in their next team meeting; questions in the follow-up Q&A refer to them |
| Inform | An intranet news post on a new travel policy, targeted to the people who travel | Most of the targeted group opened it within a week; fewer policy questions reach HR |
| Teach | A short how-to series for a new expenses tool, shared in Teams and the SharePoint app | Error rates and help-desk tickets on the tool fall after launch |
| Drive action | A benefits enrolment campaign by email, intranet and manager briefing, with a deadline | Enrolment rate by department, compared with the campaign’s reach in each department |
| Make decisions | A Viva Engage discussion inviting frontline staff to comment on a proposed shift-pattern change | Replies from the sites affected, and visible changes to the proposal |
| Collaborate | A community where engineers in different countries exchange project ideas and lessons learned | Active contributors from several countries, and questions answered by peers rather than the community manager |
The pattern holds across all six: decide what the reader should know or do, choose the channel that reaches that audience, and pick one signal you will check afterwards. Which channels to use is covered in our guide to internal communication tools, and how to turn this into a plan in improving your internal communication strategy.
Who is responsible for internal communication?
Internal communication is a shared job with one owner. The internal communication team owns the plan, the corporate channels and the standards. Leaders own the messages only they can give. Line managers carry most messages the last mile and translate them for their teams. HR owns people processes and much of the data about the workforce. IT or the digital workplace team owns the platforms, from SharePoint and Teams to Viva Engage and email. Most failures happen in the gaps between them, for example when a change is announced on the intranet but managers are not briefed first.
How do you know if internal communication works?
By separating outputs from outcomes. Outputs are what you produced and how far it travelled: posts published, emails sent, opens, clicks and views. Outcomes are what changed: people understood, believed, decided or acted. Gallagher’s 2026 report found that 70% of communicators are stuck tracking activity through basic outputs like opens, clicks and views, only 16% measure outcomes, and only 12% consider how communication drives business impact. Among teams whose data was siloed, 48% were likely to measure only basic outputs[4].
A practical way to move from outputs to outcomes is to check three things for every important message:
- Reach: did it reach the people it was meant for, counted once per person across channels, and broken down by department, country and role?
- Response: did those people react, ask questions, comment or reply, and which groups stayed silent?
- Action: did the behaviour or result you wanted follow, such as enrolment, adoption or fewer errors?
Reach is the foundation: if a message did not reach a group, nothing else can be measured there. Our articles on outputs, outcomes and impact and internal communication KPIs go further.
Where should you start if you have just taken over internal communication?
With an audit, not a strategy. A strategy written before you know who your channels reach describes an organisation you have imagined. A simple sequence for the first three months:
| Phase | What you produce | Typical trap |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 2 | A channel register: every surface that reaches employees, with owner, publishers and when anyone last looked at a number for it | Closing channels before you know who they reach |
| Weeks 3 to 4 | The workforce picture from HR and Entra ID: headcount by function, site, country, language and contract, and who has a work email and a device | Using channel membership as your audience |
| Weeks 5 to 7 | A baseline: export the history your tools hold before it rolls out of their reporting windows | Waiting until the data has gone |
| Weeks 8 to 10 | A dozen conversations with the parts of the organisation your data sees least, asking where they heard the last big announcement | Interviewing only head office |
| Weeks 11 to 13 | One baseline, one sized gap and one commitment with a number you control | Presenting a strategy instead of a finding |
Commit to reach and coverage in populations you can name, not to an engagement score you do not control. For the measurement side of this plan, see building your IC measurement plan in 90 days and audience segmentation for internal communications.
If your channels run on Microsoft 365, Communication Insights gives you that baseline in one place: it brings SharePoint, Viva Engage, the SharePoint app in Teams and email newsletters into a single dashboard and shows reach and response by department, country and role, so you can make data-driven decisions about where and how you communicate. To see how it measures internal communication across your channels, book a 15-minute call with Jérémy via his Calendly.
Frequently asked questions
What is internal communication in simple words?
It is how an organisation talks with its employees and how employees talk with each other about work, so that everyone understands what is happening, why it matters and what to do next.
What are the main types of internal communication?
By direction: top-down from leadership, bottom-up from employees, and lateral between peers. By purpose, Gallup lists six: define, inspire and align; inform; teach; drive action; make decisions; and collaborate. Change and crisis communication are special cases.
What are examples of internal communication?
A CEO town hall on strategy, an intranet news post on a policy change, a how-to series for a new tool, a benefits enrolment campaign, a Viva Engage discussion on a proposed change, and a community where peers share project ideas.
What is the difference between internal and external communication?
Internal communication addresses employees and aims at understanding and action at work. External communication addresses customers, investors, media and the public. The two must stay consistent, because employees see both.
Why is internal communication important?
It shapes whether employees understand the strategy, adopt change and find the information they need. Gallup reports only 20% of employees worldwide were engaged in 2025, with managers accounting for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement, so communication through managers matters most.
Who is responsible for internal communication?
The internal communication team owns the plan, corporate channels and standards, but leaders, line managers, HR and IT all play a part. Managers in particular carry most messages to their teams.
Sources
• ajg.com
Further reading
• How can data analysis be used to improve your internal communications strategy?
• Internal Communication Tools: Choose a Stack, Do Not Rank Tools
• Outputs vs outcomes vs impact: The 3-layer IC model
• Internal Communication KPIs 2026: The Five Indicators That Show Your IC Is Working
• Building your IC measurement plan: a 90-day rollout
If you want to see what cross-channel reporting looks like against your real data, Tryane runs a 15-minute walkthrough with no slides. Book a slot with Jérémy.