The best (free) internal comms resources
- Cosmic Centaurs
- May 23, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 17, 2023
With more and more of the workforce being remote, there has never been a more important time to focus on Internal comms than now.
We’ve put together a round-up of useful resources to help you go from measuring to strategizing, to executing.
Goal 1: Measuring the impact of your internal comms
Cosmic Centaurs has developed an internal comms survey to help you assess the effectiveness of your current communication and identify insights and opportunities for improvement.
This is a quick test that anyone on the leadership team can complete to get a sense of the maturity of your internal comms function, and how enabled it is to contribute to your company’s overall strategy.
Use this excel sheet to understand how your internal newsletters are performing over time and in comparison to others in your industry.
This guide will provide you with insights, tips, and recommendations on what to measure to improve your internal communications, from observational metrics to employee expectations to communication effectiveness.
You might also want to check out this very practical guide for linking your communication goals to your internal communications metrics and KPIs.
Goal 2: Creating an internal comms strategy and plan
An organized and easy-to-use canvas (adapted from the infamous Business model canvas) that helps you prepare your internal comms plan. This canvas will help you identify and understand your target audience and stakeholders, lay out the fundamentals of your communication goals, and clarify the channels and resources at your disposal to bring it all to life.
This template by Hubspot is a great way to represent your employee population and help you document their major pain points and needs.
This ebook walks you through a step-by-step approach to creating your internal comms strategy and includes a useful channel matrix to help you choose communication channels that are fit to your purpose.
We created this simple worksheet to help you list out all of your internal comms needs and relevant channels, as well as the ownership and cadence for each.
Goal 3: Executing your internal comms plan
Internal comms calendar
Nothing is better than a clear calendar to keep you on track with your internal communications plan. There are quite a few out there, including this airtable template, and this downloadable excel sheet by Contact monkey.
A list of the best tools to help you create high-impact content
Check out parts 5 and 6 of this list for some of the best content and video creation tools from Canva to Grammarly, to Loom.
Bonus: Continuous learning
Subscribe to these podcast to get your regular fix of internal comms:
The podcast is presented by Katie Macaulay who meets with internal comms thought leaders every week to discuss ways to improve communication in the workplace.
A podcast that inspires and teaches listeners how to take internal comms to the next level.
Every month, we send out a newsletter to our subscribers, with our resources that help leaders and teams build happier workplaces.
P.S.: For more insights on internal comms, watch our #FutureofTeams internal comms panel with Isaac Banks, Director of Corporate Comms at talabat, and Noor Al Khatib, Director of Internal Comms at Careem.
The #FutureOfTeams Conference was held in July 2021, and gathered more than 13 speakers on topics ranging from internal comms to workspace design. You can rewatch all of the sessions on our website.