What exactly is an Internal Comms Health Check?
First up, HAPPY NEW YEAR to you! This is our first blog of 2025, so thanks for dropping in and we hope you had a fab festive break! Here’s hoping 2025 is kind to us all!
Right, and so to business… We ended last year by suggesting that you start this year with an Internal Comms Health Check. But not everyone will be completely familiar with the concept, or confident about what it might entail. Many companies (too many, if we’re honest) have never carried one out. And so, for our first blog of the year, we’re going to run through what a typical Internal Comms Health Check might look like if carried out by us.
I should start by saying that each health check is as unique as the business it’s helping, and there will be bespoke elements for most companies. These depend on what systems and platforms are in place, what human resource the company has for comms, the size, shape and makeup of the workforce, and so on… But there are some common themes and usual components. Enough to write this piece and give you an overview, anyway.
This, therefore, is a fairly typical five-step outline of a Comms Guru health check.
The triage chat
The first step is usually a friendly and informal meeting between one of us and a couple of your leaders, comms people, HR team, or whoever is best suited to give us the overview we need. What’s the goal? We want to hear about what you think are your wins, your woes, and everything in between.
There’s a tiny bit of homework for you here: we will ask you to complete an RFI (Request For Information). It’s not as scary as it sounds — just some details about your team structure, communication channels, feedback you’ve already gathered, and anything else that helps us get a head start.
Our survey says…
Next up: the numbers game. Armed with what we’ve learned, we’ll whip up a short, snazzy survey for your workforce. This isn’t your average pointless poll — it’s carefully designed to capture real, actionable insights from all levels of your organisation.
This survey usually runs for about 2-3 weeks to ensure we get enough feedback.
121 sessions
Whilst the survey is underway, we will hold some meaningful one-to-one sessions with some of your key senior leaders, SMEs and IT people. We need to understand their thoughts about communications and where their key challenges lie.
Why IT? Because your communication infrastructure needs to work with your tech setup, not against it. No one wants a brilliant comms plan that crashes your system or blows up your budget. We also need to ensure anything we recommend complies with legal, regulatory, and data protection requirements.
Focusing in
We then hold some fun and friendly (but carefully structured) focus groups with your wider workforce to dig into how your messages are landing and what could be better. These are usually carried out remotely to keep cost and impact down.
More often than not, we will speak to leaders and colleagues separately to enable open and honest conversations, and we explore the role of the leader in communication to identify any skill gaps or potential for development.
At the same time, we will ask to review whatever current or recent internal comms materials and documents you are happy to share. This might include emails, newsletters, intranet content etc. We want to assess these for clarity, relevance, and alignment with your organisational tone of voice and values.
If you have any engagement metrics (such as email open rates, intranet page hit counts, meeting attendance records etc.), we’ll factor these in to our analysis too.
The big reveal
We take everything we have heard and learnt from our investigations to produce for you a Health Check Report. This is where we pull together all the insights, trends, and recommendations into one tidy document.
What’s in it? Expect a channel matrix, survey highlights, juicy quotes from the focus groups, a gap analysis to identify where comms is falling short, and a roadmap of actionable steps and our recommendations to take your communications to the next level.
Of course, we won’t just send you a PDF and call it a day. We’ll arrange a playback session to walk you through the findings, answer your burning questions, and chat about the next steps.
Conclusion: Let’s get (comms) fit!
We’re going to be looking at the reasons for carrying out an internal comms health check in some detail in our next blog – the “why” to go with this “what”, if you like!
But think of an internal comms health check as a trip to the gym for your organisation’s messaging muscles. Sure, there might be a few areas that need a little more stretching or some weight to shed (we’re looking at you, endless email chains), but it’s all about progress, not perfection.
By taking the time to tune up your tools, polish your processes, and actually listen to what your team has to say, you’re setting the stage for better collaboration, stronger engagement, and maybe even fewer "can you clarify…?" emails.
And there are two great reasons for getting someone external to carry it out. Firstly, you’ll likely get a more honest response from your people about what is (and isn’t) working for them, and secondly, someone else does all the heavy lifting for you. (And that’s my kind of gym session!)
A healthy workplace starts with healthy communication – and who doesn’t want that?
If you'd like to discuss the health of your internal comms with us, why not drop us a hello!
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