It truly feels like the line between informed and overwhelmed is incredibly thin right now — and it’s not just because of work comms. Employees are getting hit from all directions: Slack/Teams, email, personal notifications, social media, and more. So when they say they’re overwhelmed, they’re probably not wrong.
With that in mind, this is a great opportunity to elevate the conversation around engagement with your content owners. It’s one thing to send a message… it’s another for it to land. Open rates, read times, and click-through rates can be powerful tools here. They give you data to bring back to the folks sending messages and say, “Here’s how this is performing, and here’s where/why we might want to adjust.”
If you haven’t already, try benchmarking current performance over a set period (maybe 30 or 60 days, depending on your send frequency) and share your findings. If engagement is low, it might be time to talk about segmenting. Does this need to go to everyone? Or just a specific region or department?
You can also introduce a few lightweight processes to help with coordination. A shared comms or editorial calendar (here’s a free template to get you started!) gives teams visibility into what’s going out and when. And a simple intake form or request process gives you more control over timing, prioritization, and potential overlap.
It may also help to offer light coaching or templates! A lot of content owners default to really long or frequent messages (more is not always better!) because they don’t know how to edit down. Quick formatting tips, plug-and-play templates, or even a lunch and learn where you walk through internal comms best practices can help make their updates shorter and more effective.
And finally, don’t be afraid to get creative with how you deliver updates! Not everything needs to be a standalone email. Could it be part of a weekly TL;DR roundup with bold headlines and quick links? A Slack/Teams thread that pins the week’s top need-to-knows? A short video or audio clip for folks who’d rather listen than scroll? Think about how your employees already consume info and then design around that. The goal isn’t to say less, it’s to help people absorb what matters without getting buried.
