Reimagine Internal Comms in 2025: Drive Value or Lose Relevance

Internal Communications is at a turning point. The convergence of scattered attention spans, the profound AI revolution, and elevated leadership expectations are all challenging the status quo.

The path forward demands more than incremental improvement; it requires a reimagining of how internal communications delivers value.
The trends shaping 2025 offer both a warning and an opportunity. Communication leaders face a clear choice: become trusted strategic partners who enable organizational success, or risk becoming outdated message managers.

Here is what I believe will have a disproportionate impact on the Internal Communication profession in the year ahead:

Scaling Communication Excellence to Leaders 
When organizations help all their leaders become better communicators, they see dramatic improvements in employee trust and engagement. Research shows that a leader's daily communications—both verbal and behavioral—shape culture more effectively than formal corporate messaging.

Forward-thinking IC teams are leveraging this insight by evolving from content producers to strategic enablers, focusing on developing communication frameworks, development programs, and measurement systems that empower leaders to communicate authentically and effectively.

This shift positions IC as a valued strategic partner that builds a broad organizational communication muscle rather than simply managing focused message distribution.

Reframing AI: Catalyst, Not Threat 
It's no surprise that Generative AI continues to evolve rapidly. What is surprising is how many communication leaders are avoiding active learning, adoption, and stakeholder conversations about it.

The profound paradox of generative AI in internal communications is that while the technology demonstrably amplifies IC's strategic potential, many communication leaders are positioning themselves defensively rather than seizing the opportunity.

Progressive IC executives are reframing the narrative—positioning AI not as a threat to headcount, but as a catalyst for the function's strategic evolution. By demonstrating how AI automates routine tasks, these leaders are proactively engaging senior stakeholders in deeper conversations about elevated expectations for IC's strategic value.

This approach is shifting the dialogue from potential workforce reduction to strategic workforce transformation, creating new opportunities for IC to drive business impact through higher-order consulting and strategic advisory work that directly impact business outcomes.

Attention-Adapted Communication Strategies 

The intensifying state of continual partial attention among employees presents a critical inflection point for internal communication teams. Research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that this perpetual scanning behavior—once a choice, now a necessity—fundamentally alters how information is processed and retained.

Forward-thinking communication leaders are responding by architecting their content for fractured attention spans. This means moving beyond basic channel optimization to reimagining content architecture itself: implementing intelligent filtering systems, offering variable narrative depths, and strategically deploying "micro-content" formats that deliver high impact in low-attention windows.

The empirical evidence is clear: organizations that adapt their communications approach to balance the context of the situations with their audiences' cognitive reality see measurably higher message retention and engagement rates.

The hard truth is that internal communications teams who fail to evolve will find themselves increasingly irrelevant. Those who continue producing basic messages, avoid AI adoption, and maintain outdated approaches will see their function diminish.

By this time next year, the conversation may shift from "what's trending in internal communications" to "does internal communications still matter?"
 In summary—evolution isn't optional; it's essential for the future of this profession.

Read Lisa's contribution to Poppulo's Top Internal Communication Trends 2025: What the Experts Think here.