Your Internal Comms Problem Is Not a Tools Problem
Your organization just bought a new internal communications platform. Slack. Teams. Workplace. Intranet 3.0. Whatever the latest tool is that promises to fix everything. Leadership is excited. IT is rolling it out. Change management is planning the adoption campaign. And six months from now, engagement will still be flat. Because the problem was never the tool.
When your internal content lacks alignment, your team notices.
It signals a lack of clarity. If your organization cannot speak with one voice, it suggests the strategy itself might be unclear. Teams may start to wonder if leadership knows where things are headed or if they even believe in it themselves.
It creates friction. Inconsistent content means every team is starting from scratch. No shared templates. No unified messaging. No clear standards. That inefficiency can compound quickly across any organization or team.
It weakens your internal brand. Your employees are your first audience. If the content they see every day feels disjointed or generic, it undermines the culture you are trying to build. In otherwords, your customers are downstream from your employees –– and if your employees are confused on the messaging, they’ll only amplify that dissonance. People disengage when they do not see intention behind the communication, so think about how that ripples to your customers/clients.
The Tool Trap
Every few years, organizations convince themselves that the reason internal communications are not working is because they are using the wrong platform.
If we just had better technology. If we just had more features. If we just had a more modern interface.
So they buy a new tool. They migrate everything over. They train people on how to use it.
And for a few weeks, it feels like progress. People are exploring the new features. Engagement ticks up slightly.
Then it fades. The new tool becomes just as cluttered and ignored as the old one.
Because the tool was never the issue.
What Actually Breaks Internal Communications
Internal communications fail for a few predictable reasons, and none of them are about the platform:
- There is no strategy. Organizations treat internal comms as a broadcast function. Leadership wants to send updates, so they send updates. But there is no larger plan for what those updates are building toward or how they connect.
- The content is bad. Too much. Too vague. Too corporate. Employees stop paying attention because the communications do not give them anything useful.
- There is no prioritization. Everything gets communicated with the same weight. Employees cannot tell what actually matters, so they tune it all out. (This is why employee engagement communications require clear prioritization, not just more messages.)
- Leadership does not engage. If executives are not actively participating in internal communications, employees notice. The platform might be great, but if leadership treats it as optional, so will everyone else.
- There is no feedback loop. Internal communications are one way. Leadership talks. Employees listen, or do not. There is no mechanism for dialogue, so people disengage.
A new tool does not fix any of that.
Why Organizations Keep Buying Tools Anyway
So why do organizations keep falling into this trap?
Because buying a tool feels like action. It is tangible. You can point to it and say we are fixing the problem.
Strategy is harder. It requires honest assessment of what is broken, hard conversations about priorities, and sustained effort to change how the organization communicates.
A tool is easier to justify. Easier to implement. Easier to measure.
But it does not work.
What Actually Works
If your internal communications are not working, the fix is not a new platform. It is a better strategy.
That means:
- Defining what internal communications are supposed to achieve. Not just inform people, but what outcomes you need. Alignment? Engagement? Culture reinforcement?
- Creating a content strategy. What are the core messages that need to run through all internal communications? How do you prioritize what gets communicated and when?
- Building in two way dialogue. How do employees ask questions, share feedback, and feel heard? If it is all one way, engagement will always be weak.
- Making leadership participation non negotiable. If executives do not engage, employees will not either. Leadership has to model the behavior they want to see.
- Measuring the right things. Not just open rates or participation numbers, but whether people understand what matters, feel aligned with the strategy, and trust leadership.
When those things are in place, the tool becomes useful. It supports the strategy instead of being a substitute for one.
A Better Way Forward
If your organization is considering a new internal communications platform, ask these questions first:
- Do we have a clear strategy for what internal communications should achieve?
- Is our content good, or are we just sending more of it?
- Do employees feel heard, or is this all one way?
- Is leadership actively participating, or are they delegating it?
If the answers to those questions are no, a new tool will not help.
Fix the strategy first. Then the tool becomes a way to execute it, not a distraction from the real work.
At Rocket Farm, we help organizations build internal communications strategies that actually work. We do not start with tools. We start with clarity on what you are trying to achieve, who you are talking to, and how to structure communications so they create alignment and engagement. (Read about internal communications strategy that fixes the root causes.)
If your internal comms are not working, we should talk. Book a discovery call, and we can help you figure out what is actually broken.
