Tag: Ipsos

About the paper

The paper is an original quantitative research report on what drives strong internal communication experiences, with a particular focus on care, connection, leadership behaviour, listening, change communication and AI communication.

It is based on an online survey of a representative quota sample of 4,939 UK workers aged 18–64, fielded between 21 March and 4 April 2025, and covers the UK only; the report also incorporates commentary from IoIC Fellows, so it combines survey research with expert interpretation.

Length: 33 pages

More information / download:
https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource-report/ic-index-2025.html

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about what creates the best internal communication experiences?

The report’s core argument is that the best internal communication experiences are driven less by channels and message volume, and more by human connection between employees and leaders. The strongest communication experience is not primarily explained by intranets, emails or strategy decks, but by whether leaders are visible, approachable, authentic, empathetic and willing to listen.

That argument is visible most clearly in the section on what makes a “10/10” communication experience. Only 13% of employees give their organisation top marks for communication, which makes excellence rare rather than routine. Those employees are much more likely to say leaders understand the challenges employees face, that feedback is used to inform action, and that they hear regularly from senior leaders. They are also more likely to describe CEO communication as open, inspiring, clear, authentic and approachable.

The report is therefore making a practical point to internal communicators: excellent internal communication is achieved when communication feels real. Leaders need to do more than explain strategy; they need to create a sense that they know employees, care about their experience and are prepared to engage in genuine two-way communication. That is the report’s central thesis.

2. What evidence does the report provide that empathy, care and leader behaviour matter more than many organisations may assume?

The report repeatedly shows that employee perceptions of empathy and care are closely tied to trust, value and advocacy. Just 51% of employees agree that leaders understand the challenges employees face, which means almost half of the workforce does not positively experience leadership empathy. That matters because employees who rate communication at 10/10 are overwhelmingly more likely to feel understood by leaders.

The same pattern appears in relation to tone. Trust in the CEO or most senior leader is highest when communication is described as inspiring, authentic, caring, approachable and empathetic. It is far lower when leaders are seen as arrogant, unapproachable, boring, closed or indifferent. The report is effectively arguing that tone is not cosmetic; it is a trust-building variable.

Care also matters strongly in moments of organisational strain. Only 56% say difficult people-affecting changes such as restructures or redundancies are communicated with care. Yet where employees do feel that such change is handled carefully, the uplift is dramatic: they are far more likely to feel valued and to recommend their employer as a great place to work. This suggests that care is not a soft add-on but a determinant of important organisational outcomes.

The report also highlights a perception gap. Managers, especially senior leaders, are highly confident in their own communication skills, time and information, but employees are much less convinced on related measures such as openness, listening and follow-through. That implies many leaders may believe they are communicating effectively while employees experience something more distant or one-way.

3. How does the report explain the importance of listening and acting on feedback?

One of the report’s strongest conclusions is that listening only matters when employees can see evidence that their input changes something. The report distinguishes between organisations that merely invite feedback and those that “close the loop” by showing how feedback informs decisions and actions. This is one of the clearest findings in the whole study.

Overall, 60% of employees say their organisation welcomes open and honest feedback, while only 53% say it is good at showing how colleague feedback is used. That gap is significant. It suggests many organisations are better at asking than responding. The report treats this as a live weakness, not a solved problem.

The consequences are substantial. Among employees who say their organisation both welcomes feedback and shows how it is used, 90% would recommend their employer as a great place to work. By contrast, advocacy is far lower where organisations are seen as all talk and no action, selectively responsive, or completely disinterested. This is one of the most concrete business-case findings in the report: listening plus visible action strongly correlates with advocacy.

The report also adds nuance about how leaders should listen. Large online Q&A sessions are the most common listening mechanism, but smaller and more personal formats such as small-group sessions, one-to-ones, reverse mentoring and discussions on internal social media are associated with stronger advocacy and stronger perceptions that feedback is welcomed. The implication is that scale does not automatically equal quality; smaller, more direct interactions often work better.

4. What does the report reveal about organisational differences, especially the role of size, hierarchy and employee position?

A striking pattern across the report is that smaller organisations consistently perform better than larger ones on a wide range of communication measures. Employees in organisations with 500–999 people are more positive than those in the largest organisations on leadership empathy, change communication, listening, feedback follow-through and AI clarity. The report treats organisation size as one of the most important contextual variables shaping communication quality.

Large organisations appear to struggle particularly with emotional closeness and responsiveness. For example, perceptions that leaders understand employee challenges fall markedly as organisational size increases, and confidence that feedback informs decisions also drops sharply in the biggest organisations. Similarly, communication about difficult change is seen as less caring in larger organisations. This supports the report’s broader argument that scale makes human connection harder, though not impossible.

Hierarchy matters too. Managers are much more likely than non-managers to believe leaders understand employee challenges, and senior leaders are the most positive group of all. The report reads this as a sign of disconnect between leadership perception and employee experience. That same pattern shows up in work identity: managers, particularly senior leaders, are much more likely than non-managers to say their job is an important part of their identity. This matters because leaders may overestimate how central the organisation is in employees’ lives, and therefore misjudge what communication employees find meaningful.

The report also shows that clarity on strategy is strongest when it comes from the CEO or most senior leader. Employees who most commonly hear about business priorities from the CEO are the most likely to say strategy is clear. So while organisations often rely on multiple channels and local managers, the study suggests that senior leader communication remains uniquely important for strategic clarity.

5. What does the report conclude about AI communication, and what are the wider implications for internal communicators?

The report frames AI as a growing communication challenge defined by both opportunity and unease. Employees can see benefits in generative AI, especially for automating routine tasks, increasing productivity and saving time. But their worries are stronger and more emotionally charged: the biggest concern is loss of human jobs, followed by data privacy and security, lack of transparency, misinformation and unethical use.

Against that backdrop, organisational clarity is weak. Only 41% say their employer has clearly communicated how generative AI is used responsibly in the organisation, and only 36% say expectations are clear on how they themselves are expected to use AI as part of their job. Again, smaller organisations perform much better than larger ones.

The most important conclusion is that clarity changes comfort. Employees who say their organisation has clearly communicated responsible AI use are almost twice as likely to feel comfortable with AI being used to create written messages, images or video from their employer; in both cases, comfort rises to 70%. In other words, the discomfort is not only about the technology itself but also about organisational silence and ambiguity.

The wider implication is that internal communicators should not treat AI as a purely technical issue owned elsewhere. The report strongly suggests that IC teams need to press for clear principles, practical guidance, manager support and honest explanation about where AI is used, why it is used and what safeguards exist. In the report’s logic, this is an extension of the same broader principle seen throughout the study: uncertainty damages trust, while clarity plus human-centred communication improves acceptance.

About the paper

The report examines how internal communication shapes trust in UK workplaces, with a particular focus on leadership trust, strategy belief, change communication, AI, hybrid work and organisational stances on societal issues.

It is a mixed-methods report: the core evidence is a representative quota survey of 4,000 UK workers aged 18–64 in organisations with 500+ employees across the UK, fielded 6–20 March 2024, supplemented by a practitioner survey of 220 IoIC members and six senior-leader interviews; the report is UK-wide and the methodology is clearly stated.

Length: 29 pages

More information / download:
https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource/ic-index-2024-report-trust-issue.html

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about the relationship between internal communication and trust?

The central argument is that good internal communication is not a peripheral support function but a core condition for organisational trust. The report makes this case repeatedly: where employees rate internal communication as excellent, trust in leadership is far higher, engagement is stronger, and people are more likely to stay with their employer for longer. The report frames trust not as an abstract cultural nice-to-have, but as something communication actively builds, protects and, when mishandled, damages.

The report’s headline message is that “good IC is integral to trust” and that this matters especially in a context of uncertainty, continuous change and rising expectations around authenticity and empathy. It argues that communication is the basis of trust in workplace relationships and then tests that claim empirically through the Trust Index and associated measures. The data show a 74-point difference in trust in senior leaders between employees who rate communication as excellent and those who rate it as poor, which is an enormous gap and one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the report.

The report also suggests that communication matters most where personal contact is weaker. Trust in direct managers is higher than trust in senior leaders or the CEO, and the authors infer that communication becomes even more important as the distance between employees and leaders increases. In other words, for senior leadership, communication is not just a channel for trust; it is often the main mechanism through which trust is experienced at all.

So the report’s big idea is clear: internal communication is a strategic trust infrastructure. It influences whether employees think leaders are competent, honest, empathetic and acting in the right interests.

2. Which specific factors most strongly build trust in leaders and organisations?

The strongest trust-building factor across leadership levels is open and honest communication. On the report’s trust model, belief that employer communications are open and honest is the top driver of trust in both the CEO and the wider leadership team, and it also remains one of the top drivers for trust in direct managers. Alongside this, empathy matters greatly: employees need to feel that leaders understand the challenges they face.

For senior leaders and CEOs specifically, trust also depends heavily on strategic credibility. Employees must believe that the organisation’s strategy is the right one for success. The report goes further by identifying what most strengthens that belief: not just knowing what the strategy is, and not just hearing about progress, but understanding how one can personally contribute to achieving it. When employees know their own contribution, belief in the strategy jumps by 35 points compared with people who only know the strategy and its progress. That is one of the report’s most important causal clues.

For direct managers, slightly different drivers come to the fore. The most important is behavioural consistency: managers must act in line with the organisation’s values and behaviours. Frequency of communication also matters here; employees need to hear from their direct manager at least every few days to weekly. So trust in managers is built less by abstract strategy and more by visible, consistent, everyday conduct.

The report also shows that feeling valued and believing the organisation operates in employees’ best interests are powerful trust builders. In fact, employees who believe the organisation acts in employees’ best interests have the highest Trust Index scores. This means trust is not only about message quality. It is also about whether communication aligns with lived organisational reality. A polished message cannot compensate for a widespread belief that the organisation mainly serves profits, leadership interests or shareholder priorities.

3. What does the report reveal about the main trust weaknesses inside organisations today?

The report’s most striking weakness is that trust becomes more fragile the higher up the hierarchy you go. Overall trust is fairly positive, with a combined Trust Index of 63%, but this masks a steep gradient: 75% trust their direct manager, 58% trust the leadership team, and only 55% trust the CEO or most senior leader. Many employees are not openly negative so much as uncertain, especially about senior leaders. That suggests distance, inconsistency and lack of direct connection are key problems.

A second major weakness is perceived organisational self-interest. Only 43% believe their organisation operates in employees’ best interests, while larger proportions think organisations prioritise shareholders, profits and customers. This matters because belief that the organisation acts in employees’ interests is tightly linked to trust. The report also shows that this belief declines as organisation size increases, suggesting scale makes it harder to sustain a credible sense of mutuality between employer and employee.

A third weakness is the existence of distinct trust segments, including a sizeable cynical bloc. The report identifies four broad trust types: Total Trusters, Proof Seekers, Senior Sceptics and All-round Cynics. The last group makes up 22% of employees and is characterised by very low trust in managers, leaders and the organisation as a whole. This is important because it shows that mistrust is not evenly distributed. Some employees need more evidence, some mainly distrust senior leadership, and some are alienated across the board. That means communicators cannot assume a single audience psychology.

The report also points to a persistent communication inequality between digitally connected and non-connected workers. Employees who spend most of their time away from computers report lower satisfaction with communication and lower trust, especially in the CEO. This suggests that organisations still struggle to create equitable communication environments across frontline, operational and desk-based roles.

4. How does communication affect employees’ experience of change, AI and hybrid working?

The report treats these as live stress-tests of trust, and in each case communication emerges as decisive.

On change, the findings are particularly strong. Four in ten employees say their organisation has restructured in the last year, and many have experienced redundancies, negative headlines, business transformation or leadership change. Yet the report argues that low trust is not an inevitable consequence of change itself. Rather, it is a consequence of change in organisations where communication is poor. Among employees who have been through a restructure, those who rate communication as excellent are dramatically more likely to believe communications are open and honest and to trust senior leaders and the CEO. The gaps between excellent and poor communication are above 50 points on these measures.

Employees are also very clear on what better change communication looks like. They want clarity on the reasons behind change, honesty about the impact, and more listening. They also want earlier communication and more detail on the plan. The report’s underlying point is that people do not necessarily reject change itself; they reject opacity, spin and one-way communication.

On AI, the report finds a trust deficit, especially for communications that are supposed to feel human. Around one third would not trust at all a CEO message developed with AI, and similarly high scepticism exists for manager messages and AI-created visual content featuring people. Trust is somewhat higher for impersonal content such as newsletters, intranet articles or policy documents. The report’s interpretation is that AI is less acceptable when it appears to simulate human presence or voice. It also notes that employees with higher overall trust in their organisation are more comfortable with AI use, implying that AI adoption depends on prior trust, not just technical capability.

On hybrid work and return-to-office mandates, the findings are especially damaging. More than two in three employees do not believe the reason their employer gave for requiring office attendance. Employers most often cited collaboration, but many employees believe the real motive was oversight of working hours. The report presents this as a credibility gap: it is not simply that employees dislike the policy, but that they distrust the communicated rationale. That makes return-to-office communication a textbook example of how message–motive misalignment corrodes trust.

5. What are the practical implications for internal communicators and organisational leaders?

The report’s practical implication is that internal communication should be treated as a strategic lever for trust, retention and organisational performance, not as a downstream distribution function. The evidence gives communicators a stronger business case: excellent communication correlates with higher engagement, lower turnover intentions, stronger trust and greater belief in strategy. That means communication teams can argue for investment not only on cultural grounds, but on operational and performance grounds too.

For communicators, one implication is to focus less on message volume and more on message credibility. The report repeatedly rewards openness, honesty, empathy, clarity and visible listening. It suggests that communication works best when it helps employees understand not only what is happening, but why, what it means for them, and how their voice is being heard. This is especially important during change, where candour matters more than polish.

A second implication is that managers matter enormously as communication intermediaries. Employees value managers who listen, set clear objectives and offer personal support, yet only a minority of managers have been trained in key communication capabilities, especially change communication and support during personal issues. The report therefore points towards a practical priority: equip managers better, because they are central to trust formation, especially for less digitally connected workers.

A third implication is that leaders must communicate strategy in a participatory rather than merely explanatory way. Employees need to know how they personally contribute. This moves communication beyond broadcasting strategy slides and into helping people connect their work to organisational direction. That is where belief in strategy becomes materially stronger.

A fourth implication is that communicators and leaders need tighter alignment with HR and external communication. The report says this explicitly in relation to change and societal issues. Questions about layoffs, hybrid work, climate stance or public values cannot be handled well in silos. Employees interpret silence, inconsistency and vague positioning as signals in themselves.

Finally, the report implies a more sober lesson: trust cannot be built by communication alone if the organisation’s conduct contradicts the message. Since trust is strongly tied to whether employees think the organisation acts in their interests, lives its values and genuinely listens, communication succeeds best when it reflects reality rather than attempts to mask it. In that sense, the report is not just a defence of internal communication. It is also a challenge to leadership behaviour.

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.