Ask Devin

You know, I get this question all the time — and there really isn’t a perfect answer, so apologies in advance! Haha. The truth is, what works for one company very rarely works for another. More often than not, you have to figure out what works best for your team and be able to pinpoint why so you can bubble that up to your leadership team.

That’s why the best place to start is by listening to your employees. If you haven’t run an IC survey yet, this is a great opportunity to start incorporating one into your comms strategy. And if you have, go a step further with listening tours — pulling one or two people from each department at different seniority levels to really understand how comms is landing for them.

Once you have that input, you can start to set a calendar and think about what you’re actually trying to solve with internal comms. For example, my company holds All Hands on a weekly basis, and we send one recap email each week. That works for us because All Hands happens at that cadence. But maybe your company meets far more often — or far less often. Aligning your comms rhythm to what makes sense for your business is a huge part of avoiding message overload.

Another big reason employees feel over-communicated with is that they’re receiving information that isn’t relevant to their role. That’s where segmentation really matters. If you’re sending an all-company message that includes information only relevant to, say, a specific department or region, consider breaking that audience out and sending it only to the people who actually need it.

When messages are more tailored and personalized, they tend to feel more intentional (and less like noise) even if the overall volume of comms stays the same on your end.

TL;DR: it’s not really about how often other companies send messages. It’s about finding the right cadence for your company and making sure what you send actually matters. Listening, personalization, and segmentation are the best ways to avoid “sending too many messages” internally.