About the paper
The report presents Gallagher’s 2021/22 global survey of the internal communication and employee engagement landscape, based on a survey run from October to November 2021.
It is original survey research with comparative analysis across respondent segments; more than 1,300 organisations took part, spanning more than 33 industries, with a global footprint led by North America (46%) and Europe (35%).
The report clearly states the respondent volume and regional mix, but does not clearly specify the detailed sampling approach beyond survey participation.
Length: 56 pages
More information / download:
https://www.ajg.com/employeeexperience/state-of-the-sector/
Core Insights
1. What does the report say are the biggest strategic priorities for internal communication in 2022?
The report’s clearest message is that the profession’s core mission has remained stable, but the agenda around it has shifted. The number-one priority is still engaging employees around purpose, strategy and values, selected by 53% of respondents. That matters because it shows internal communication still sees its central role as creating clarity, alignment and meaning across the organisation.
What changed around that core is more revealing. Adapting channel strategy to hybrid working came in second at 39%, and enhancing people manager communication entered the top three for the first time at 31%. Building the internal communication function followed at 29%, while improving impact measurement and evaluation, enhancing leadership visibility, and developing communication strategy and tone of voice each stood at 26%.
This signals a profession moving from pure message distribution towards workforce experience, channel governance and managerial enablement. The report explicitly notes that leadership visibility dropped from its previously dominant position, suggesting that after the pandemic’s peak phase, the problem is less about simply seeing leaders and more about helping employees navigate hybrid structures, organisational change and overloaded communication environments.
So the strategic picture is not that internal communication has abandoned its traditional purpose. Rather, it has had to retool around new organisational realities: hybrid work, employee uncertainty, changing expectations of managers, and the need to prove impact more credibly.
2. What are the report’s main findings about the biggest challenges facing internal communication teams?
The most striking finding is that employee disengagement is now the leading challenge, cited by 37% of respondents. The report treats this as a major shift, noting that disengagement had risen from third place the year before. That suggests organisations were not simply managing communications complexity; they were confronting a deteriorating emotional and motivational climate among employees.
The second-biggest challenge is lack of capacity or human resource in the internal communication team, named by 32%. That is followed by lack of analytics and measurement and poor people manager communication skills, both at 27%. Internal technology not fit for purpose and volume of communication too high each register 22%.
Taken together, these findings point to a structural tension. Internal communication teams are being asked to take on broader responsibilities, yet many remain under-resourced, insufficiently supported by measurement capability, and dependent on people managers who are expected to communicate more without being developed enough to do so well. The report also points to “noisy organisations”, poor channel governance and confusion caused by expanding digital ecosystems, especially around Office 365 tools and social platforms.
What is especially important is that the report does not frame these challenges as purely technical. It links them to deeper organisational issues: uncertainty from the top, unclear strategic direction, weak feedback loops, and the difficulty of preserving belonging, wellbeing and attention in hybrid settings. In other words, the challenge is not just sending better messages. It is sustaining employee connection and meaning in a fragmented workplace.
3. How does the report assess organisations’ ability to create understanding around purpose, strategy and employee contribution?
This is one of the most revealing sections of the report. Although purpose and strategy remain the profession’s top priority, employee understanding appears uneven and weakens the closer one gets to practical relevance. Respondents say employees’ understanding is good or excellent for purpose and vision in 63% of organisations, but only 47% for business strategy, and just 41% for how employees themselves contribute to purpose and strategy.
That drop-off is crucial. It suggests many organisations are reasonably good at expressing an overarching idea of who they are and what they stand for, but much less effective at translating that into operational understanding and individual line of sight. The report explicitly identifies this as a core internal communication challenge.
There are also clear process weaknesses behind this. While 88% say their organisation values employee feedback, only 64% believe the organisation learns from and acts on it, and just 47% think there is a robust process for capturing employee insights and feedback. Qualitative listening methods such as focus groups and listening sessions are used by only 39%, while feedback from people managers is used by 49%, and social channels by just 25%, despite wider adoption of those channels.
The report’s interpretation is that many organisations talk about listening more than they practise it. That matters because understanding is not created by broadcasting a purpose statement. It is built when organisations actively connect narrative, behaviour, employee voice and managerial reinforcement. The report also shows that organisations with stronger talent attraction and retention are more positive about listening, more likely to act on feedback, and report much stronger employee understanding of strategy and personal contribution.
4. What does the report argue about employee experience, hybrid working and the role of people managers?
A major argument of the report is that internal communication can no longer be treated narrowly as message management. It increasingly sits inside the broader employee experience. The report says 82% agree that internal communication is seen as a key driver of employee experience, and 73% say employee experience is discussed at C-suite level. But there is a gap between executive discussion and organisational execution: only 31% report a clear top-level mandate, 19% say there is a cross-department working group in place, and 44% describe the approach as siloed.
On hybrid working, the report shows that organisations know change is needed. Adapting channel strategy to hybrid working is a major priority, and 19% say they have already conducted an in-depth review of channels and engagement strategy, while 34% are still in the process. Yet the report also notes that this review has not translated into radical channel change. Instead, many organisations seem to be adjusting how they use existing channels rather than replacing them.
The report’s channel findings underline the problem. While 80% say their current channels can reach employees wherever they are based, lower shares believe channels support opinion-sharing, collaboration or innovation. Only 25% say employees can choose how they receive communications to any real degree, and 47% say they have no plans to implement that.
People managers are central to this whole picture. Expectations of leaders and people managers as communicators have increased for 81% of respondents, yet support has not kept pace. Thirty-five per cent say people managers are the primary communication channel for many employees, and 54% say they are important in reinforcing messages. But only 63% say people managers are treated as a proper communication channel, 46% say it is easy for managers to share team feedback upward, and just 34% say people managers have access to communication training.
The report’s implication is sharp: organisations are leaning more heavily on managers in the hybrid era while underinvesting in their communication capability. That creates a bottleneck in the employee experience and weakens both listening and strategic alignment.
5. What does the report suggest distinguishes stronger organisations and ‘world-class’ communicators from the rest?
The report repeatedly compares higher-performing organisations and “world-class communicators” with the broader sample. Its core conclusion is that stronger organisations are more proactive, more strategic, and more disciplined in planning, listening, change and measurement.
For organisations that outperform peers on talent attraction and retention, several patterns stand out. They are more likely to value and act on employee feedback, more likely to discuss employee experience at C-suite level, more likely to have formal employee experience structures, and more likely to review and adapt their channel strategies in response to hybrid work. They also report stronger employee understanding of purpose, business strategy and individual contribution.
For “world-class communicators”, the report defines this group as the 11% who said their influence had increased and who strongly agreed they are viewed as trusted advisers. Compared with others, they are more likely to have formal planning documents such as annual master plans, longer-term internal communication strategies, channel frameworks and editorial calendars. They rate their organisations more positively on change communication, especially long-term vision, compelling change story, and leader consistency. They also measure more systematically, including understanding, satisfaction and behaviour change, and make better use of data to refine messaging and channels.
This points to the report’s underlying perspective: influence is not earned merely by producing more content or being visible in leadership meetings. It is earned by building strategic clarity, disciplined planning, strong change communication, active listening and credible evidence of impact. In that sense, the report is making a professional argument as much as an empirical one. It is saying the future of internal communication belongs to teams that can connect narrative, employee experience, managerial capability and measurement into a coherent operating model.
The report’s overall conclusion is that internal communication has gained status, but not yet full maturity. Its remit is expanding faster than many organisations’ structures, skills and resources. Those that turn listening, planning, employee experience and measurement into real operating disciplines appear better placed to retain talent, navigate hybrid work and strengthen organisational performance.