Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Hi Devin,
I absolutely love this! It feels like an agony aunty column (yes, I’m that old lol).
My question is twofold: I started an internal podcast for our 13K employees after listening to your ‘How to start a podcast’ webinar. I’m proud to say I’ve published 6 already. How do I ensure our senior leaders stop seeing the podcast as a business communication tool and more as a culture engagement tool?
My next question is also podcast related. Where can I find benchmark data for internal podcasts or any data for internal podcasts? I’ve set my own KPI’s and measure against those, but it would be great to have internal podcast data to measure against. Can’t really use external podcast benchmarks as the audience is very different.
Ahh! I am absolutely floored by this question… and just so thrilled that you have an internal podcast now! And congrats on publishing six episodes already — I’m sure you’ve released even more since submitting this question, too. This is all seriously amazing! Woo!
I’d actually say an internal podcast can serve both purposes: it can share business-specific, actionable information and be a channel where culture is built and reinforced. My little “hack” for balancing this has been dedicating one episode per month to the more business-focused stuff. For us, this became Founder Chat, and it gives our three founders a platform to talk through goals, priorities, major changes, etc., without completely taking over Talkshop as a culture-first space. They still make an appearance every now and then, but the tone really changes based on where they show up.
I also think how you distribute the podcast matters a lot. For example, I always send an email announcing a new episode (and treat it very much like a marketing-style promotion), but I’ll also send an SMS to employees when it drops — usually timed around people’s commute into HQ. For us, that’s typically around 8:15am, depending on the length of the episode. It’s been a really fun “surprise-and-delight” moment that employees genuinely enjoy, and it helps the podcast feel like a cultural touchpoint because of how it’s shipped. I use Descript to pull out funny or memorable moments from the transcript and lean into those instead of summarizing what people are about to hear. Going beyond the obvious is really where I win with internal promotion.
On the benchmark side, I’ll be honest: I also haven’t found great standardized KPIs for internal podcasts, so I ended up setting my own (and they were pretty ambitious!). One of my goals was for 50% of the company to listen, and we’ve been able to maintain that since launch in 2024. Beyond listens, I also look at things like repeat listeners, how much of each episode people actually finish, and whether the podcast sparks conversation. We even have a Slack channel just for employees to talk about episodes — and it was actually started by an employee, not me! Such a good signal that the podcast is a real value-add to our company culture.
Thank you again for such a thoughtful question, and truly… happy podcasting. This is so cool.
