r/internalcomms

I’m an early career professional and have been told that friction between these two departments is often “par for the course,” which seems to be ringing true in my new role 😅

Hello! Does anyone have a good template to use for Smartsheet for upcoming communications to plan for? I'd like to see it all in one place so I know what's upcoming and what communications are needed for each department.

A few weeks ago I posted here asking how long it takes teams to create branded videos from events. I was not expecting much but the response was really eye opening. Almost everyone described the same pain. Hours of work, mismatched fonts and colors, people who are not designers being forced to do design work.
So I actually started building something to fix it. The idea is simple. You dump in your raw photos and video clips from an event and it automatically assembles a polished branded video for you. No templates to fill in. No editing. Just your real footage transformed automatically the same way your iPhone creates Memories from your camera roll.
I am genuinely curious whether people here think this is worth pursuing or whether I am solving a problem that is not actually that painful in practice.
Two honest questions:
Does this sound like something your team would actually use?
What would make you trust a tool like this enough to let it represent your brand automatically?

I feel like Im always running into different headaches. I swear people can’t read and don’t pay attention to things and I have no idea what to do about it. I almost wish I could run internal comms like a tv ad campaign lol. Waiting on a meeting host? Cool, then check out this announcement while you wait. I’m just curious what everyone else’s dream/magical/unicorn solution would be.

Please no software ads/plugs. I want this to be a fun conversation where we can all vent and get creative and even a bit silly.

I work in a combined recruiting/internal communications role at a 300ish person remote company and currently own coordination/facilitation of our monthly All-Hands (agenda planning, deck creation, presenter coordination, rehearsals, etc.). My role was newly created at the end of 2025, and I report to the head of HR.

The challenge I’m running into is that the person who previously owned the All-Hands function was the COO’s Chief of Staff, so they had deep visibility into executive conversations and organizational priorities. There is no longer a Chief of Staff or executive operations function, but the expectation around agenda curation seems to have remained the same.

I meet with the COO once a month to discuss comms, and I’m finding myself responsible for proposing strategic All-Hands agendas/topics without really having the organizational visibility or executive context that historically informed those decisions. After a few months in this seat, I am beginning to think the agenda curation and process needs to shift, as I am not being given the same level of context as those before me. Not sure what exactly to propose here as I don't want to come across as not wanting to do my job, I just don't feel I have been set up to succeed in this specific function.

I'm hoping for some insight on the following:

• Where does All-Hands agenda ownership typically sit?
• Is it normal for internal comms to independently drive agenda strategy without executive visibility?
• Have you seen successful operating models for this in orgs without a Chief of Staff function?

Would love any thoughts or examples of structures that have worked well. TIA.

We track time off in a Google Sheet and I'm the only one who updates it. My team just pings me on Slack or sends an email when they want days off and I do the data entry. I want a simple tool where they can request vacation themselves, connected to Slack or email. Anyone have recommendations?

Hi everyone! Really happy to have found this group. I am CCO of a small graduate research institute that punches way above its weight in visibility. Increasingly I am asked to work on internal comms, which I love, and honestly I would love to do more of it, both because to me it is so meaningful and because my institution would so clearly benefit.

What I am finding is that some people see a clear need, and some people view internal comms as a means to an end, but without any strategy underpinning it or real strategic merit to the work. In other words, getting the information out there *is* the strategy, as far as they are concerned.

Do any of you face that, and if so, are there ways that you counter it? Last week I spent a lot of time working on a plan to share some difficult news, including a memo to department heads, a plan for a meeting, etc. With everyone else on the cc line, the CFO said that he would send comments, and then he sent me (but no one else) a complete rewrite filled with flowery and complicated language that sounded like it was trying to obfuscate the issue -- although I actually don't think that was his intent. When I asked him to walk me through why he did it, he basically said, I think mine sounds better.

How do you help colleagues understand that we aren't writing for ourselves, we are writing for a specific audience that may sometimes be served by flowery language, but not always, and never just because it sounds prettier?

Thanks!