Most internal comms teams send too much, too often, through too many channels. The result: employees tune out, open rates drop below 30%, and leadership blames the comms function. The fix is not better writing. It is a structured cadence that respects how people actually consume information at work.
The Channel Hierarchy
Before setting frequency, assign each channel a job. Overlap is the enemy.
- Email (all-staff): Reserved for CEO/leadership updates and policy changes only. If it comes from the top, it goes here. Cap at 2 per month maximum.
- Intranet / SharePoint: The record of truth. Policies, org charts, benefits info. Not a news channel — a reference channel.
- Microsoft Teams / Slack channels: Real-time operational updates. Team-level, not org-wide. This is where day-to-day work chat lives.
- Digital signage / screensavers: Awareness-level messaging only. Think campaign themes, values reinforcement, event reminders. No detail.
- Town halls / all-hands (live or hybrid): Quarterly at minimum, monthly if the organisation is in change. Two-way format is non-negotiable.
The rule: if the same message appears in more than two channels simultaneously, you are overcommunicating. Employees start ignoring everything when they see duplication.
A Weekly Rhythm That Works
Based on benchmarks from UK organisations with 1,000-10,000 employees:
Monday
Short Teams/Slack post from the relevant business unit lead. Three bullet points: what happened last week, what is coming this week, one ask. Under 150 words. No attachments.
Wednesday
The weekly digest email. One per week, maximum. Structure it identically every time: lead story (3 sentences), 2-3 secondary items (1 sentence each with links), and a people spotlight. Total reading time under 90 seconds. Gallagher's State of the Sector report consistently shows that newsletters under 2 minutes get 40-50% open rates. Newsletters over 4 minutes drop to 15-20%.
Friday
Optional. A short social/culture post in Teams. Employee wins, birthday shoutouts, photos from events. Keep it human. This is the one channel where informality is the point.
What Not to Do
Do not send ad hoc emails on Tuesday and Thursday to fill the gaps. The white space is intentional. If nothing significant happened, sending nothing is the right call. A team at a FTSE 250 insurer tried daily emails for three months. Open rates fell from 52% to 11%. They reverted to the Wednesday-only digest and recovered to 44% within six weeks.
Leader Visibility Without the Cringe
Employees want to hear from leaders, but not in polished, ghostwritten corporate prose. The most effective formats in UK organisations right now:
- 60-second video from the CEO's phone. No script, no production. Record in the office or on site. Upload to Teams. This outperforms polished video by 3:1 on completion rate.
- Monthly "Ask Me Anything" thread. Post it in Teams, leave it open for 48 hours, then the CEO or relevant director answers the top 10 questions in writing. Published answers build a trust archive.
- Walking-the-floor updates. After site visits or client meetings, a 3-sentence post from the leader about what they saw and learned. Specificity is what makes this credible: "Visited the Manchester depot, spoke with the night shift team about the new scheduling system. Their main concern is X. We are looking at Y."
Common Mistake: The Ghost-Written LinkedIn Repost
A UK retail group's CEO started reposting their LinkedIn content to the intranet verbatim. Employees noticed the tone mismatch immediately. Internal trust scores dropped 8 points in the next pulse survey. The lesson: internal and external voice must be different. Internal should be more candid, less polished, and more specific.
Building Feedback Loops
Two-way communication is not a nice-to-have. It is the mechanism that tells you whether your cadence is working.
- Pulse surveys: Run a 3-question pulse every 6 weeks using tools like Culture Amp, Peakon (now Workday Peakon), or even Microsoft Forms. Questions: "Do you feel informed about company direction?" / "Is the volume of internal comms about right?" / "What is one thing you wish leadership would address?"
- Manager cascades with feedback capture: After major announcements, ask managers to run a 15-minute team discussion and submit a one-paragraph summary of questions raised. This surfaces concerns that surveys miss.
- Read receipts and analytics: Use your email platform's analytics (Poppulo, Staffbase, or even Outlook read receipts for smaller teams) to track opens and clicks. But do not optimise for opens alone. A message that 40% open and 80% act on is better than one that 70% open and ignore.
Measuring Whether Your Cadence Works
Track these four metrics quarterly:
| Metric | Target | Source | |---|---|---| | Weekly digest open rate | 40%+ | Email platform analytics | | Pulse survey "feel informed" score | 70%+ agree | Pulse survey tool | | Leader video completion rate | 50%+ | Teams/intranet analytics | | Manager cascade completion | 90%+ | Manual tracking or form submissions |
If your "feel informed" score is above 70% and your open rates are above 40%, your cadence is working. If open rates are high but the informed score is low, the content is being seen but not landing — that is a message quality problem, not a cadence problem.
When to Break the Cadence
Cadence is a baseline, not a straitjacket. Break it for:
- Redundancy announcements or restructures (immediate, from the CEO, with manager briefing 30 minutes before the all-staff)
- Regulatory actions or public incidents (same day, factual, with clear next steps)
- Acquisitions or mergers (coordinated with external comms, ideally within 60 minutes of public announcement)
For everything else, stick to the rhythm. The predictability is the point.