About the paper
The paper is a piece of original survey research about what employees in the UK want and need from internal communication, produced by Ipsos Karian and Box for the Institute of Internal Communication.
The methodology is clearly stated: a stratified survey of 3,000 UK workers, fielded from 6–20 March 2023, covering employees in organisations with more than 500 staff across the UK; the report also says the question set was developed with an expert working group of IC practitioners.
Length: 35 pages
More information / download:
https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource/ic-index-report-2023.html
Core Insights
1. What is the central argument of the report about the value of internal communication?
The report’s main argument is that internal communication is not a soft or secondary function but a business-critical one that materially improves the employee experience and broader organisational health. The report explicitly says that employees in organisations with a dedicated internal communication team are more likely to rate communication as excellent, more engaged, less likely to plan to leave, and more likely to trust CEO communications. In other words, the presence of an IC function is associated not just with better messaging, but with stronger trust, engagement and retention indicators.
That argument is strengthened by one of the report’s clearest contrasts: 69% of workers in organisations with an IC function rate communications as excellent, compared with 37% where there is no such team. Engagement is reported as 59% versus 43%, intention to leave within two years as 29% versus 42%, and trust in CEO communications as 60% versus 46%. These are not minor differences. The report uses them to make the case that IC teams “make a positive difference” and should be seen as a fundamental organisational requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
A second layer of the argument is that internal communication creates value when it helps employees feel informed, connected, respected and heard. The report links good communication to advocacy, belonging and belief in strategy. So the underlying claim is not merely that IC improves information flow, but that it shapes how people experience work itself.
2. What does the report show employees most want to hear about, and where are organisations under-communicating?
The strongest demand is for communication about pay and benefits, with 44% saying they receive too little information on this topic. But the report is especially insistent that strategy and career development matter because under-communication here has a particularly negative effect on engagement. Strategy and direction show a net demand score of 21, while career and personal development opportunities score 23. The report explicitly flags strategy and development as topics that need a lot more attention in communication planning.
This matters because the report finds that clarity on strategic issues is still weak for a sizeable minority. Only 57% say their employer has been clear on strategy and business priorities, while 63% say they believe the strategy is the right one for success. That gap is one of the report’s most interesting findings: belief slightly exceeds understanding. The authors treat that as a warning sign, suggesting some employees may support the strategy in general terms without truly understanding it in practical terms.
The report turns this into a segmentation model. It says 45% of UK workers are “ambassadors”, meaning they both understand and believe in the strategy, while 25% are “passengers”, meaning they neither understand nor believe in it. Another 17% are “loose cannons”, who believe but do not understand, and 12% are “bystanders”, who understand but do not believe. This is one of the report’s most useful conceptual contributions, because it shows that strategic communication is not simply about broadcasting more information; it is about moving people from confusion or detachment into informed belief.
3. What patterns does the report identify around channels, attention and communication preferences?
A major finding is that employee attention is scarce. Nearly seven in ten workers spend 15 minutes or less per day reading or viewing employer updates, and a quarter spend hardly any time at all. The report therefore argues that internal communication operates in a very constrained attention environment. Employees “snack rather than binge”, often consuming updates during or between meetings rather than in long, focused periods.
In terms of format, the report finds that written communication still dominates. More than half of respondents say they would prefer to read information about employer priorities and plans, compared with 20% who prefer to talk about it and only 12% each who prefer audio or visual formats. Email remains both the most relied-on and the most preferred channel overall. 59% rely on emails for general news and updates, and 57% say they prefer them. Team meetings, 1-to-1s with line managers, and newsletters also remain important.
At the same time, the report complicates any simple “email still wins” conclusion. It identifies two communication “tribes”: 82% are “traditionalists”, relying mainly on channels such as email, line-manager 1-to-1s and team meetings; 18% are “non-conformists”, who are more likely to rely on channels such as Instagram, LinkedIn and enterprise social media. These non-conformists are more common among younger workers, senior leaders and employees in somewhat smaller organisations. So the report’s broader message is that the default should still be clarity and utility through familiar channels, but channel strategy needs to evolve around audience differences rather than novelty for its own sake.
4. What does the report suggest about leadership and manager communication?
One of the clearest conclusions is that leadership visibility matters, but different leaders should communicate in different ways. Employees generally prefer to hear from CEOs by email, whereas they have stronger demand for face-to-face interaction with departmental leaders or senior managers. The report describes this as “horses for courses”: employees distinguish between CEOs and nearer leaders, and their channel preferences reflect that difference in proximity.
The report also shows that frequency matters. Engagement is highest when CEOs communicate every few days and falls steadily as communication becomes less frequent, dropping from 69% engagement at the highest frequency to 30% when CEOs communicate rarely, if at all. The authors are careful not to imply that CEOs should simply send more emails; rather, they argue for a consistent rhythm of meaningful leadership visibility across channels.
Direct managers emerge as the most trusted messengers. 65% trust communications from their direct manager, compared with 54% for CEO communications. That trust gap widens in larger organisations. Employees also say they want more from managers, especially updates on team priorities and goals, information on how the organisation is performing, and explanations of how team work supports wider priorities. But there is a constraint: one in three line managers do not feel equipped to lead conversations with their teams about what is happening across the organisation. Managers want more and clearer information on what to communicate, and around a quarter say they want more training. The report therefore makes a double argument: managers matter enormously, but they cannot be expected to carry the communication load without structured support.
5. What does the report conclude about listening, feedback and the overall implications for internal communication strategy?
The report is quite critical here. It says that around half of UK workers do not feel listened to by their employer. While 53% say their organisation welcomes open and honest feedback, only 45% say their organisation is good at showing how feedback is used to inform decisions and actions. These scores are even lower in the largest organisations. The implication is that many organisations may have listening mechanisms in place, but employees do not experience those mechanisms as meaningful.
Importantly, the report shows that listening is strongly associated with better outcomes. Where employees say their organisation both welcomes feedback and acts on it, advocacy and engagement rise sharply. The report also argues that annual staff surveys on their own are not enough. The best balance of effort and results comes from combining an annual survey with at least two other listening channels, especially pulse surveys and two-way manager conversations. That is a notable finding because it shifts the emphasis from periodic measurement to ongoing dialogue.
The broader implication is that effective internal communication strategy should rest on four pillars. First, clearer communication about strategy, priorities and performance. Second, stronger leadership visibility, with the right leaders using the right channels. Third, better-enabled line managers, since they are both trusted and central to sense-making. Fourth, a more credible listening system that closes the loop visibly. Taken together, the report’s perspective is practical rather than theoretical: internal communication works best when it helps people understand where the organisation is going, trust the people leading it, connect that direction to their own team reality, and see that their voice has consequences.