Reframing Internal Communications as a strategic enabler

Despite playing a vital role in aligning culture, engaging employees, and driving business outcomes, Internal Communications (IC) is still seen in many organisations as a support service rather than a strategic lever.

We recently spoke with a focused group of Internal Communications professionals from a range of industry sectors, aiming to explore how Internal Comms is valued, funded, and measured. Whilst the sample size was modest, the findings revealed strong and consistent themes across participants – and uncovered a shared sense that the continued underestimation of IC is holding businesses back.

IC leaders describe their work as essential but underfunded. Their frustrations were pointed: “That it’s just a support function”, “They mistake us for marketing”, and “That we just hit send”. These perspectives expose how little organisations understand about what IC actually does and what it could do with the right support.

Measurement is a recurring issue. Most IC teams lack the tools to link activity to business performance. One respondent said, “My organisation doesn’t have any true data insights to support what we’re doing. So mostly we measure success through anecdotal feedback and annual surveys”. This lack of hard data makes it difficult to advocate for investment, creating a self-reinforcing loop of low resource and limited influence.

But perhaps the most striking insight was the potential locked inside the function. Asked what they’d do with more investment, one leader spoke of “a programme of engagement events to better connect our hybrid teams”. Another would create “a cohesive global community working toward the same goal”. These are not small ambitions – they are business-critical capabilities.

Internal Communications is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. It’s time for all businesses to wake up to that reality – not just for the sake of the comms team, but for the culture, clarity and cohesion of the entire organisation.