How to Structure an Internal Communications Team the Right Way

In a world where business priorities are rapidly shifting, internal communications teams are forced to consider whether their structure still meets today’s strategic communication needs.

The role of the internal communicator has also changed. Beyond partnering across the business, there’s a growing need to collaborate with counterparts across all aspects of corporate affairs and the corporate communications team, including media relations, external communications, employer branding, government relations, and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG).

Navigating a change in structure is a challenging task. Consider that 86% of chief communications officers (CCOs) do not control their operational budgets, and roughly half struggle to maintain the workload and staffing required. Even when COOs have the perfect structure in mind, they still have to lobby for budget and orchestrate with key business partners to gain buy-in. From there, it’s about determining which existing team members fit the new structure and which roles and capabilities should be brought in from the outside.

Just because its a daughting task doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. If you’re a COO and aspire to run a world-class internal communications function that effectively supports your organization’s biggest business priorities, having the right structure and talent in place is the only way to achieve your goal.

Why the Communications Team Structure Matters

Before we delve into how to structure an internal communications department, let’s first understand why the internal communications structure is so vital.

Having the right structure offers several key benefits, such as:

• Clear swim lanes of roles and responsibilities

• Ensures support for the biggest business priorities

• Enables more efficient and effective work processes

• Allows for greater connectivity with key business partners and corporate affairs counterparts

• And more

Getting your internal communications structure right is a foundational step to ensuring the day-to-day operations run smoothly.

Examples of How to Structure Internal Communications Functions

As we covered, there’s no one-size-fits-all way to structure your internal communications function. Each structure should be customized to the unique needs of the business.

Here are a few examples of different scenarios:

Creating One Team: In one organization, there were internal communicators that sat both within the internal communications function and reported directly to different business units and functions. The organization came together, with a solid-line reporting structure into internal communications.

The change helped create a more effective and efficient support model for the business by:

• Creating more connectivity to the broader business priorities: It ensured the work happening to support each business unit and function was better aligned to what the business needed. As a result, the work also supported what internal communications was trying to get done.

• Driving greater role clarity: Tasks that were non-value adds were removed, and roles were elevated to become better strategic advisors.

• Enhancing opportunities for career growth: Moving to one team enabled employees to have stretch assignment opportunities and make more lateral moves to enhance their capabilities and prepare for promotions and expanded responsibility.

• Building Relationships and Scaling Capabilities: Another large organization had a global internal communications function that supported the C-Suite, global communications, and channels. There were also nearly 30 other business units and functions, each with thousands of employees. Those groups had thei own unique needs but still needed connectivity to the core function to help drive an appropriate level of consistency in how communications were approached and distributed.

While there wasn’t a direct change in the reporting relationship, it was clear there needed to be structural changes in how global team and the business units and functions partnered together. The changes inluded

• Weekly meetings to share updates, learnings, and best practices: This allowed everyone to come together with one to two main agenda topics that everyone needed to know or take action on, with ample time to discuss any challenges or opportunities with the full group of communicators.

• Reimagining the function: A mid-size organization went through a lot of change and realied that it was no longer optimized to support the business as well as it could be. They made several changes.

• Adding critical communication leadership roles: There were three new communication leaders brought on, each of whom reported to the heat of internal communications. Those roles oversaw leadership communications, content and channels, and key initiatives.

In Closing

While taking a thorough approach to re-evaluate your interal communications function requires a balance of analysis and orchestration, it’s the right thing to do if you’re committing to building a world-class internal communications function that support an organization’s most important priorities.