Internal communications is not a support function. It is the operating system of culture.

Culture isn’t static. Nor is it a set of values on a wall, reinforced annually through engagement surveys and leadership offsites. The reality is that culture is dynamic. It shifts daily through behaviour, decision-making, and critically, through communication.

Culture is not what leadership or the company website says it is. It is what employees hear, interpret, feel and repeat.

Culture is a moving system, not a fixed asset

A growing body of research from MIT Sloan Management Review and McKinsey & Company points to a consistent pattern: organisations with strong, aligned cultures do not rely on slogans. They rely on the three c’s: clarity, consistency, and credibility and also on how information flows internally.

It is the micro-moments that move the needle on culture. By this I mean how leaders behave, dress, interact and importantly how they explain decisions, how transparent they are and how frequently employees are updated and how honestly.  

When communication is fragmented, delayed, or overly sanitised, employees fill the gaps themselves. That is where misalignment begins.

In this sense, culture behaves less like a brand asset and more like a live market, constantly reacting to signals. Internal communications is the primary signal system.

Internal communications is the precursor to reputation

There is a persistent misconception that reputation is built externally and protected internally. In practice, the direction of influence is the reverse.

Employees are the first audience. They are also the most credible distribution channel a company has. They reflect who you are.

Research highlighted in the Harvard Business Review shows that employees who understand the company’s strategy and feel informed are significantly more likely to act as advocates. Conversely, when employees feel excluded or confused, external messaging becomes less coherent.

Whether an employee feels included or excluded has a significant impact on brand perception, confidence when speaking to clients and investors, and media narratives. You won’t get the best out of a person who doesn’t believe in what they are working on, and that will reflect externally.

External perception is internal reality, but amplified.

If internal communications lack clarity, alignment, or trust, that will surface externally, whether through inconsistent messaging, a disengaged workplace, or reputational risk.

When there is no defined internal voice or narrative, organisations do not remain neutral; they become fragmented.

The risk of unmanaged internal narratives

Unmanaged internal communications typically manifest in three ways:

1. Strategic drift

Teams interpret priorities differently, leading to inconsistent execution. It doesn’t matter if the team is big or small; if they are not all aligned on the core goal, they will compete against each other.

2. Informal narratives

Employees create their own versions of “what’s really going on,” often driven by incomplete information. Gossip usually isn’t caused by ill intent; people want to feel included.  

3. Cultural erosion

Trust declines when communication feels reactive, vague or not clear, or disconnected from reality. Trust, as they say, is hard won and easily lost. Losing trust is culturally devastating.

To compound the issue, these problems rarely stay contained. They surface in performance and retention, and increasingly in public, particularly in an environment where employees are active on platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor.

Leadership visibility is a communications strategy

One of the most consistent findings across McKinsey & Company and Gallup research is that employees do not expect perfection from leadership, but they do expect visibility and honesty.

Effective internal communication is not about volume; rather, it comes down to context, consistency, and credibility. By this, I mean aligning words with action.

Leaders who communicate proactively reduce uncertainty. Leaders who communicate selectively create it.

I see many organisations falling short when they treat internal communications as a downstream function. A message will go out after a key decision is made and sometimes already implemented. A comms person will be asked to ‘announce it to all staff’ with little control or influence into how that message will be received.

A better approach is to treat it as a strategic opportunity and before the decision is finalised, to include communications representatives to pressure test the narrative and design a roll-out that anticipates employee reaction. Taking a strategic approach will ensure the message is correctly framed and understood.

Internal communications as narrative architecture

At a strategic level, leaders should approach internal communications in the same way they approach external communications: as narrative design. If you frame internal communications the same way you would an external campaign, it becomes easier to scope.

An effective brief can look like:

• Defining a clear, organisation-wide storyline
• Aligning leadership messaging to that narrative
• Creating repeatable communication rhythms (town halls, updates, leadership notes, video comms)
• Ensuring consistency across business units and locations

When done well, there will be narrative cohesion. Employees understand not just what is happening, but how it fits into a broader direction.

Without this, organisations default to episodic communication – reactive, fragmented, and often without meaning, and this will leak into how you are perceived externally.

Why this matters now

How and where we work has undoubtedly changed. Hybrid work, distributed teams, and increased expectations of transparency have elevated the role of internal communications from a functional to a strategic one.

Employees no longer rely solely on formal channels. They cross-reference, interpret, and share information in real time. Or they switch off entirely.

From a leadership standpoint, employees interpret silence as uncertainty, delays as avoidance, and inconsistency as distrust. In an age when ‘silent quitting’ can go unnoticed due to a lack of physical presence, organisations should treat internal communications as a leadership discipline rather than just an administrative task.

The role of an external partner

It seems strange for an external communications agency to be employed to build strategic internal communications plans, but most organisations are too close to their own internal dynamics to assess them objectively.

An effective internal communications audit does not just review channels or flow. It interrogates narrative clarity, message alignment, information flow and importantly, cultural signals.

When assessing, I always ask the following questions:

1. Is there a coherent story?
2. Are the leaders aligned, and are they saying the same thing?
3. How is the message being delivered? Where are the gaps and delays?
4. What is the message received? Are employees actually hearing, and are they repeating it? I have said before, you know the message is received when eyeballs start rolling.

From there, the role shifts to designing a communications framework that aligns leadership, clarifies messaging, and creates consistency across the organisation.

The goal is not to increase communication frequency. It is about increasing delivery and precision.

The bottom line

Culture is a moving feast. It is not built in workshops or values statements; it is more nuanced. Culture develops and evolves during the day-to-day flow of an organisation and information.

Internal communications determine how that information is understood.

And how it is understood determines how your organisation behaves, internally and externally.

For companies serious about reputation, growth, and resilience, internal communications is not a secondary consideration. It is the anchor that holds everything together.

Author:

Amanda Lacey, Founder and Director