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’m on the job market looking for my next internal comms role. I’ve executed on big roll outs and key company moments, but feel weak on the strategy side. Specially, I’d like to know the steps to build a new internal comms function at a company. What are the considerations and what’s a bare bones approach that could be built out overtime?
I get some version of this question a lot from people on the job hunt, and love it, because it means you’re already thinking like the person in the seat vs. the person applying for it. Which is a major key!!
So, the first thing I’d do, before we even get to building anything: is go back and reflect on those big rollouts and company moments you’ve already run. Even if you weren’t the sole owner, there was strategy baked into every one of them — decisions about timing, audience, channel, sequencing. Document that! And not just for your own confidence, but because it’s genuinely useful material for interviews. You’ve probably got more strategic thinking under your belt than you’re giving yourself credit for; it just needs to be named and surfaced.
From there, I’d answer a few questions.. who needs to hear what, and how often? What’s actually broken right now? And what can you sustain with the resources you’ll actually have? That third one is the bare bones part of your question, and it’s the part that’s easy to skip (because we’re ambitious!) — a comms function of one person cannot run five channels well, so you’re picking the two or three moments that matter most (a leadership update, a company-wide announcement channel, some kind of feedback loop) and building those properly before adding anything else.
But I’m saying all this and still want to call out that there’s no single right answer here. Strategy looks completely different depending on company size, distributed vs. in-office, industry, culture. So this is genuinely a moment to get a little imaginative — if you were in the seat, knowing what you know, what would you build?
On the practical side, I’ll share what this looked like for me. When I started at Workshop as the first internal communicator, I spent a lot of time just listening before I built any kind of formal strategy — we didn’t really have one for the first six-plus months. I mention that because it can feel like you’re supposed to have a strategy on day one, and that pressure is mostly self-imposed… trust me! Give yourself real time to understand where things stand, what people actually need, and which channels are going to land, before you commit to a structure. The strategy that comes out of that patience is so much stronger than the one you’d have guessed at in week two.
And last thing, sorry, I know this is running long — find your people. Mentorship, or even just a loose community of internal comms folks in similar seats, makes a massive difference. This work can feel isolating, since so much of what we do is, by definition, internal and often invisible outside the company. But there are so many people out there in this field who are genuinely happy to bounce ideas around or think through a tricky strategy question with you. You don’t have to build this alone, and you shouldn’t. Best of luck in your search!!
