Are the internal communication trends of 2024 coming true?

At the start of the year, we shared the trends that should be on every organisation’s radar this year. We had a section for communication, HR and CEOs and at our recent Comms Reboot event in London, we could see whether the internal communication trends were coming true.

In this issue of The Leadership Fix, we will share what’s made progress in the year for internal communication, the big focus areas that came through at Comms Reboot and the advice to move them forward as we head into 2025.

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What was on the list at the start of 2024?

For communication professionals, there were seven areas to look at for 2024:

• Connecting employees with each other in the human sense, not the tech sense
• AI
• Hyper-personalisation – tailoring content to employees
• Creating content that is actually engaging to the audience
• Focussing on the employee experience and making it as good as the customer one
• Building trust in the leaders and the organisation as a whole
• Using data, analytics and insights to drive decisions and activities

Throughout the year there have been lots of conversations at various events linked to these events, and at Comms Reboot, where attendees set the agenda, it was no exception.

From the list above, all were covered in the sessions, but the sessions looking at measurement and data were had the fewest people in them.

This was the full session list:

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What’s on our minds at the end of 2024?

Below are summaries of the four most popular sessions, which help to highlight the most pressing challenges for internal communicators at this point in 2024, and are likely to continue to drive the agenda for internal communicators well into 2025.

Leadership – exploring how to help leaders be better communicators:

This was a topic which appeared on the Post-it notes again and again. It’s a question I’ve been researching for the last five years, and the topic of my new book Nobody Believes You, Become a Leader People Will Follow so it’s no surprise to me that it’s something people are still grappling with. Top takeaways from the session were:

• The importance of authenticity in the sense that what works for some leaders isn’t necessarily what works for others, or for us as comms professionals
• The power of relationships, building the right ones and being OK with not necessarily having a seat at the table if you’re safe in the knowledge that you are influencing and supporting well
• Helping leaders to communicate with clarity (especially in tricky times)

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Strategic communication

Again, this was not a surprise to see on the agenda, as it underpins absolutely everything we do. There was a lot of talk about how to get people to buy in to strategy, how to create an effective one, and how to communicate it well. Top takeaways were:

• One size does not fit all, as every organisation and every team is different. Be prepared to take a different approach where needed.
• Think about how to build a team to be strategic, what works well – business partnering or specialisms?
• There were lots of different suggestions on how to connect people to the strategy, but the ultimate consensus was that it involves getting the people at business level involved in determining what it means to them by answering: Who am I? What do I do? What is the value I bring/ impact I make?

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Change communication Vs business as usual communication

Change was a huge topic throughout the day and something that cropped up in many of the sessions, with lots of organisations currently dealing with their own different versions of change, whether that was mergers, redundancies or changes in leadership. The top takeaways were: ?

• Empathy is key, and it’s crucial to help leaders realise that if they can capture this it will benefit the business?
• The need for clarity around expectations of change - is it information/consultation or negotiation? This is important in understanding whether you’re communicating a “doing things to” or “doing things with” message.
• Building change capability so that everyone understands the emotional change response and not just about equipping leaders and managers with this.

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Employee experience, internal communication, and employee engagement

The relationship between internal communications, employee engagement and employee experience – and how much of a crossover there should be – remains one of the key issues for those working in the sector. There was lots of discussion around the huge amount of areas IC already supports, and whether the boundaries with engagement and experience will blur further in the future.

Top takeaways from this session were: ?

• An effective employee engagement team needs to be cross-functional and operate across key areas.
• Clearly define internal communications’ role in engagement and define what engagement means for the organisation.
• Leadership need to be involved in defining internal communications, engagement and experience

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Comms Reboot will return to the UK in 2026 and we are exploring options for 2025!

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Thank you so much if you were part of this year’s event. I’d love to know your top takeaways from the day. And, if you weren’t there, but any of these themes strike a chord with you, please do share any top tips or learnings from your organisation in the comments below.