Internal communication has undergone tremendous development in recent years. Organizations have an ever-increasing number of channels at their disposal to keep employees informed, ranging from intranets and Teams to newsletters, apps, and digital workspaces. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually reach employees.
A while back, David Bowman from Fresh Intranet about a striking study among employees and communications professionals in the United Kingdom and the United States. The results show that organizations are facing a new problem: employees are receiving more information than ever, while their available attention span is actually decreasing. The question, therefore, is no longer simply whether a message is sent, but rather whether the message is actually seen, understood, and remembered.
The study shows that only a small percentage of employees still read internal communications in their entirety. Not because the information isn’t relevant, but because the volume of messages has simply become too great. At the same time, the majority of employees indicate that internal communications are, in fact, relevant to their work. The challenge, therefore, lies not in the content, but in the volume of information that employees are bombarded with every day.
This is an important observation for organizations. Many communication problems are solved by sending more messages, launching additional campaigns, or introducing new channels. In practice, however, this often leads to even more competition for the same limited attention.
One of the most striking conclusions from the study is the role that AI now plays in internal communication. More and more employees are using AI to summarize long messages, news articles, policy documents, and updates. In many cases, they no longer read the original message, but only the summary that AI generates for them.
This offers advantages. Employees can process information more quickly and save time. At the same time, however, this creates a new challenge: the message an organization sends out is not always the same message that ultimately reaches employees.
This is because AI determines which information is important enough to include in a summary. As a result, details, nuances, and context can be lost. This can certainly impact how employees interpret the message, especially when it comes to complex topics such as change initiatives, policy, compliance, or strategic communication.
When organizations consider AI within Microsoft 365, the focus is often on the capabilities of tools like Copilot. But AI is only as good as the information available to it. When documents are outdated, information is scattered across different locations, or ownership is unclear, the quality of AI responses and summaries also declines. Employees are then more likely to be presented with incomplete or less relevant information. That is precisely why governance is becoming increasingly important.
A well-designed SharePoint intranet ensures that information remains up to date, ownership is clear, and content is stored in a logically structured manner. This not only improves discoverability for employees but also enhances the quality of AI-driven search results and summaries.
The results of the study show that successful internal communication is less and less about more content and more and more about better content.
That means:
This presents a significant opportunity for many organizations—not by adding even more communication channels, but by designing the existing digital workplace more intelligently.
Now that AI is playing an increasingly important role within Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and intranets, it’s more important than ever to have control over information. Not only because employees need to be able to find information, but also because AI uses that information to generate answers, search results, and summaries.
A modern intranet, therefore, isn’t just about communication. It’s about structure, governance, discoverability, and providing reliable information. After all, a message is only successful when it’s actually understood.
Is information within your organization still being found, understood, and used as intended? Or are an abundance of content, fragmented information, and AI summaries causing important messages to lose their impact? We help organizations set up a smart and future-proof digital workplace using SharePoint, an intranet, governance, and AI. This ensures that employees not only receive information but also truly understand it and can put it to use.
Curious about how your intranet and information systems can contribute to better internal communication? Feel free to contact us for a no-obligation consultation. You can read the full report via the link below.
