How to solve the most common internal comms problems cover
Last updated: January 30th, 2025
Tired of missed messages, endless email threads, and teams working like they’re on different planets? With a simple yet solid internal communication strategy, it doesn’t have to feel this messy.
Let’s tackle the most common challenges head-on and talk about a few best practices in internal communication that work.
Internal communication is how a company shares information with its employees to keep everyone informed, connected, and working together. This includes emails, HR documents, PDFs with different announcements and company changes, intranets, meetings, memos, bulletin boards, and even face-to-face conversations.
While these are all helpful on their own, they’re most effective when paired with a solid internal communication strategy.
With clear internal communication, you reduce delays, confusion, and frustration. Plus, your team won’t feel overwhelmed by irrelevant information and can collaborate and work without problems. This leads to increased productivity and profitability.
In simple terms, internal communication is the exchange of information within a company. This exchange happens in all directions—managers, employees, and stakeholders.
When a company faces many internal communication challenges, the effects ripple far beyond small daily hiccups. It can touch every corner of the organization and hurt both people and their performance.
Internal communication issues create problems that can undermine an organization’s success:
When employees feel out of the loop or unappreciated, their morale takes a hit. Disengaged employees are less likely to go the extra mile, which impacts productivity across the board.
A lack of clear communication often results in departments or individuals not working for the same goals. Misalignment delays progress and derails key projects.
Employees who feel ignored or undervalued are more likely to leave. In fact, 41% of leaders say poor communication is a major reason for high turnover rates.
However, with the right internal communications strategies, organizations can fix communication issues, rebuild trust, and create a more connected workplace.
Keep reading to find out how.
Now, let’s go over a few common internal communication challenges that can affect not only your day-to-day activities but also the big picture. We’ll also talk about how a company can improve its internal communication and some examples of internal communication problems.
We should start by saying that most of the following challenges stem from documents that are either too difficult to read or simply don’t capture attention. One way to address this is by creating interactive documents, and that’s where Flipsnack comes in.
Flipsnack helps you make engaging, easy-to-navigate materials that solve these issues by incorporating features like clickable links, embedded videos, and visually appealing layouts.
Internal comms are great for onboarding new employees. This helps them settle into their new role by introducing them to colleagues, the company culture, and important policies.
Proper onboarding helps employees understand company goals and values from day one, making them more likely to stay with the company. Unfortunately, only 12% of employees feel their organization does onboarding well.
If you don’t have time or a dedicated person for hands-on training, you can create interactive flipbooks using an intuitive platform such as Flipsnack and share them via email.
These can walk new hires through company processes, answer common questions, and help them get a better grasp of their role. You can also add video introductions from team members or leadership to give the process a more personal touch and help new employees feel connected.
Training and development keep employees engaged, sharp, and competitive, but poor internal communication can throw it all off track.
When updates about training sessions or resources aren’t clear or don’t reach employees, many miss out on valuable opportunities to grow.
This internal communication problem doesn’t just waste time; it also impacts morale. When training feels disorganized or like an afterthought, employees lose motivation and see it as a chore rather than a chance to improve.
In industries where constant learning is essential, outdated skills can quickly become a liability for both employees and the company.
To fix this, companies need to make internal communication a priority and keep employees up-to-date. Start by centralizing all training resources in one easy-to-access platform. Employees should always know where to find online course materials, schedules, and updates without sifting through endless emails or clunky systems.
Reminders about training opportunities can also make a big difference. When employees know what’s available and how it benefits them, they’re more likely to engage. Interactive tools like quizzes or live webinars can keep learning fun and impactful, while feedback channels ensure employees feel involved and supported.
With Flipsnack, you can add quizzes, questions, and forms directly into your flipbooks to enhance learning and view responses in real time: submissions, completion rates, and email addresses.
💡Tip: A WordPress quiz plugin can be a valuable tool for creating engaging and informative quizzes to help assess employee knowledge
When a company undergoes changes, like policy updates, new products, or leadership shifts, internal comms are the way to keep employees informed.
Reports, like performance reviews, visitor tracking, or progress updates, are another key piece. Whether annual, monthly, or weekly, they keep employees in the loop about their performance and the company’s goals. These reports help track progress, identify trends, and make better decisions.
For example, if a company sets quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and achieves them ahead of schedule, those reports can help adjust future goals.
When these are not communicated properly, employees can easily feel left out.
The key to addressing this internal communication challenge is timely and engaging communication. You should share regular updates through clear, well-structured emails that grab employees’ attention and keep them in the loop.
Using tools like email templates or interactive newsletters can make these updates more appealing and easier to digest.
Besides emails, consider centralizing updates on a shared platform (or an internal communication blog) where employees can access them anytime. Whether it’s a new policy or a quarterly goal review, the information should be consistent and accessible. Periodical reports can also help businesses make decisions, adjust goals, and increase employee and leadership accountability and efficiency.
💡Tip: When creating your internal communication guidelines or documents, use your brand assets and make sure to maintain brand consistency. Employees will give more importance to official documents. With Flipsnack, you can easily create a professional brand book to ensure your team maintains a cohesive look and voice across all communications.
Employees who are constantly bombarded with emails, updates, and notifications will find it difficult to focus, prioritize, or retain important details. As a result, decision-making suffers, and employees feel burned out trying to keep up.
Information overload not only decreases productivity but can also lead to mistakes, as people can overlook important details.
To combat this, companies need to focus on quality over quantity. Start by filtering out non-essential messages and make sure that only relevant information reaches employees. Curated newsletters or summaries can deliver key updates without overwhelming employees.
Leaders should also set clear guidelines for communication, like limiting unnecessary emails or scheduling regular updates rather than constant interruptions.
Every organization needs a system for sharing information, but how you manage that flow can make or break communication.
Centralized communication means messages come from a single source, like senior management, and flow down to everyone else. This approach is great for consistency, and everyone gets the same message, but it can feel slow and rigid.
Decentralized communication, on the other hand, allows teams or departments to communicate and make decisions on their own. It’s faster and more flexible, but it often leads to mixed messages or confusion because not everyone is on the same page. Leaning too far in either direction can cause problems, leaving teams feeling disconnected or bogged down.
The best internal communication strategy blends centralized and decentralized methods. Use centralized communication for big-picture updates, like company-wide goals, leadership announcements, or major policy changes. This keeps everyone aligned and ensures consistency.
For day-to-day work, let teams manage their own decentralized communication. This allows them to move faster and make decisions without unnecessary bottlenecks. The key is to set clear boundaries. Decide which types of messages come from the top and which are handled by individual teams. With this balance, you’ll keep communication clear and efficient.
When teams don’t share information, they create silos, which are pockets of knowledge that stay isolated instead of being shared across the organization.
This leads to duplicated efforts, missed opportunities, and a lack of collaboration. Silos can make departments feel like they’re working for different companies rather than the same one, which slows progress and hurts productivity.
Breaking down silos starts with strategic internal communication. Encourage teams to share updates and insights by setting up regular cross-department meetings or collaborative projects.
Shared platforms, like an intranet or cloud-based tools, make it easier for everyone to access and contribute to the same information.
When teams work together and share ideas freely, you not only avoid inefficiencies but also open the door to fresh ideas and better results.
💡Tip: You don’t have to rely solely on SharePoint for your communication needs. There are great SharePoint alternatives out there that offer diverse features and functionalities.
Any information you send to your employees is useless if they can’t access it easily.
Unfortunately, this sometimes happens because of time constraints or the complicated information access process.
And the truth is that employees are not to blame for this.
They’re busy with their day-to-day tasks, so they might need more time to access the provided information on time.
If the details aren’t urgent, this might not be a big deal. But what if it’s time-sensitive and important for their job?
Think about a field agent who needs access to training documents, which he should then use to train other people directly in stores. In this case, having secure, on-the-go access is non-negotiable. A VPN can help protect sensitive files, but the content itself needs to be easy to find and simple to use.
Another issue? Documents often require updates, and constantly resending new versions can be a hassle for both the creator and the recipient.
Use tools that let you update and share documents in real time without creating version chaos. Avoid outdated formats like PDFs that aren’t responsive on mobile devices. Instead, opt for digital flipbooks that ensure consistent quality across all devices and allow for easy updates whenever you want to make changes to your internal comms strategy without sending new links every time.
Also, structure your content thoughtfully. Use features like tables of contents, bookmarks, or chapters so employees can jump straight to what they need. The easier the process, the more likely they’ll engage, and that can directly impact productivity.
Take Estée Lauder, for example. Although they had all their internal materials available, finding specific information was difficult for their employees.
Estée Lauder started using Flipsnack, and by doing so, the company perfected its employee training process. They created a digital training manual with all the essential information a training agent needed. Since digital flipbooks can be shared as links, all their field agents bookmarked the link on their devices and had access to the information even when remote.
Let’s be honest: no one likes reading walls of text on a plain white screen. That’s anything but effective internal communication.
Traditional communication methods like PDFs, memos, or email chains aren’t just dull, they’re forgettable.
The problem isn’t just that static content is uninspiring. It also fails to hold attention long enough for the information to stick. This often leads to employees either skimming the material or ignoring it entirely.
That’s wasted time, effort, and resources.
Make your internal documents dynamic and engaging using a platform like Flipsnack. Think beyond plain text and use videos, audio, slideshows, and links to bring your content to life. Interactive elements help employees process and retain information more effectively.
For example, include short instructional videos to explain complex ideas or interactive charts to make stats easier to digest. Even something as simple as a clickable table of contents can improve usability.
Flipsnack is built for interaction. It can easily deal with external videos, iFrames, mp3s, and more. It’s just brilliant. I love using it, and our teams are amazed by the level of interaction.
– Korben Niblett, Director, Education & Content Development for Retail Engagement at Estée Lauder
Interactivity has many uses beyond education, including motivation and communication. For example, to add interest to your monthly presentation, you could include a brief video from one of the executives or present the objectives in a similar format.
Sharing information is one thing, but how do you know if employees actually understand it? Too often, training and internal communication are one-sided: you give employees the material and hope they absorb it.
That’s not enough.
Without feedback or retention testing, you’re left guessing whether your efforts are working. And this isn’t just about holding employees accountable. It’s about creating a collaborative process that ensures everyone is on the same page and equipped to do their best work.
Use interactive flipbooks to incorporate tools that allow for two-way communication. Quizzes, polls, and open feedback forms can help you gauge how well employees understand the material while giving them a voice in the process.
The benefit of using animated flipbooks is that you can gather real-time feedback, parse the gathered info using data annotation software, and easily keep your readers engaged through polls or quizzes.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, you can create a quiz using Flipsnack. This will come in handy after training to confirm what employees have learned and highlight areas that need more clarity. Open-ended feedback can reveal whether your materials are helpful or need improvement.
You can easily create a quiz or poll in Typeform or other similar platforms and then embed it in your publication. There are different types of iframe widgets you can embed in your flipbooks.
The goal is to make learning interactive and ongoing, not a one-time task. When employees actively engage with the material, they retain more, and you gain insights to improve your training.
And that’s how you become a better internal communications strategist.
How do you know if your internal communication is effective? Many companies rely on guesswork because they don’t have the tools to track engagement or gather meaningful statistics.
Without analytics, it’s impossible to tell whether employees are interacting with the materials you share. Are they reading them? Do they spend enough time to absorb the content? What parts of the document are they engaging with most? These unanswered questions mean missed opportunities to improve.
Use analytics tools to track employee engagement with your documents. Metrics like impressions, views, and time spent reading can give you a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not.
For example, you might notice employees spending very little time on certain sections. This could indicate either a lack of interest or that the content isn’t clear enough. With this data, you can refine your approach to make future documents more effective.
Having concrete insights allows you to make data-driven decisions and ensure your communication strategy constantly evolves for the better.
💡Tip: With Flipsnack, you can look at individual flipbooks or page-level statistics for more in-depth analysis. For additional information, you can include Google Analytics in your Flipsnack account. Keyword Studios used Flipsnack for their internal communication needs, and they received 4500 visits and 10000 impressions on their documents.
Sharing internal documents comes with risks. If sensitive information gets into the wrong hands, it can lead to serious internal communication challenges, from data leaks to unauthorized access.
This often happens because of weak security measures like sending unprotected PDFs via email or failing to control who can access your documents.
When employees don’t have the proper tools to keep documents secure, the risk only increases. Cyber threats, accidental sharing, or simple negligence can all compromise your company’s data. It’s safer when they have a VPN for extra encryption and use an ad blocker to minimize potential vulnerabilities posed by malicious ads and scripts.
It’s also a risk when documents are sent via traditional means, which do not enforce security measures. Think of a PDF shared through email. It can be forwarded to anyone who can access it without a password.
Prioritize security when sharing internal documents. Use a platform like Flipsnack that lets you control who can access your files and how they’re shared. For instance, you can share password-protect sensitive materials, limit access to specific users, or use secure systems like SSO (Single Sign-On).
Avoid traditional sharing methods that don’t offer any built-in security. Instead, choose platforms with advanced privacy options, like restricting downloads or preventing links from being indexed online.
By taking these steps, you’ll reduce risks and ensure that sensitive information stays within your organization, where it belongs.
Keywords Studios relied on the password-protect option to protect its documents.
Flipsnack has been a great tool for our HR Team’s communication needs. Their range of wonderful security options for our documents was the #1 selling point!
Alisha VanTiem, Sr. Benefits Administrator
Internal communication challenges, like information silos or poor onboarding, don’t have to derail your organization. Identify these issues, then apply targeted solutions to build a stronger, more connected workplace.
The right tools and a clear internal communication strategy can keep your team informed, aligned, and productive. Start with small changes, improve as you go, and watch how internal communication solutions drive better collaboration and results.
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