Published on: July 1, 2024
Last updated: October 2, 2026
Running internal communications means competing for attention you can’t buy. Employees already get the weekly newsletter, the intranet feed and a steady stream of chat messages. A digital employee magazine earns its place by doing something none of those channels do: it gathers the month’s most important stories into one curated issue that people choose to read.
The hard part is rarely the stories. It’s everything around them: a production schedule that survives busy months, a way to reach crews who never open their inbox and proof for leadership that anyone read the CEO letter.
This guide shows you how to:
When you’re ready to create a digital magazine, you can bring the design, sharing and readership data into one workflow.
A digital employee magazine is a recurring internal publication that combines company news, employee stories and leadership updates in one issue for online reading.
It’s also called a staff magazine, an in-house magazine or an internal publication. Unlike a feed of posts, each issue has a beginning and an end, so it’s easier to read in one sitting and easier to measure.
HR teams already run most of their work digitally, from payroll to onboarding. The employee magazine is often the last channel still stuck in print or email attachments.
A newsletter and a magazine solve different problems, so most internal comms teams need both. A newsletter tells employees what happened this week. A magazine tells them why it matters.
Use a newsletter for short, frequent updates and a magazine for the monthly or quarterly stories that deserve more space.
| Capability | Digital employee magazine | Internal newsletter | Print staff magazine |
| Typical rhythm | Monthly or quarterly | Weekly or every two weeks | Quarterly or less often |
| Content depth | Features, interviews and visuals | Short updates and links | Features and photos |
| Reaches deskless staff | Through a browser link or QR code | Through email, if staff have access | Where printed copies are distributed |
| Fixing a mistake | Update the live issue under the same link | Send a correction | Reprint |
| Readership data | Page-level views, time and clicks | Opens and clicks | Hard to measure |
| Access control | Password, one-time code or SSO | Recipient list and email access | Physical distribution only |
The pattern is clear: the digital magazine leads on reach, corrections and data, while the newsletter leads on speed. Keep your employee newsletter templates for the weekly rhythm and give the magazine the stories that need room.
Print still earns its place in some organizations. Employee magazines are one of the few print formats holding their ground, because deskless staff can pick one up on a break or take it home.
The tradeoff is data. Print ROI is harder to measure than digital. If your crews rely on paper, publish the issue digitally and print copies for the break room from the same file.
Strong issues repeat the same five or six sections every month, so readers know where to look and contributors know what to send. Start with these.
A short letter from the CEO or a senior leader sets the theme and explains one decision. Keep it to a page and add a two-minute video message for teams that would rather watch than read.
Wins give employees a reason to open the issue. Feature a closed deal, a safety milestone, a product launch or a customer compliment. Name the people behind each one.
Employee recognition programs also get a visible home. A monthly page that celebrates work anniversaries, promotions, and other milestones shows every team that its work reaches leadership.
Profiles of one person or one department turn a company of strangers into colleagues. Rotate across sites and functions so frontline and remote teams see themselves, not only head office.
Regular profiles help foster a positive work environment and give distributed teams a shared reference point. This makes the magazine a quiet part of remote workforce management.
If you create a public culture edition, recruiting teams can link to it from career pages or free hiring software, so candidates meet the team before the interview.
HR content lands best when it’s practical: an open enrollment deadline, a new wellbeing program or a policy change explained in plain language. The interactive employee benefits magazine template gives these topics their own layout.
Learning content belongs here too. A monthly training spotlight supports a culture of continuous learning. For complex topics such as remote-work policies, summarize the main points and direct employees to specialist guidance.
End with what’s coming: town halls, training sessions, local events and holidays. A dated calendar page gives readers a reason to return to the issue later in the month.
A monthly magazine stays on schedule when every week has one job. Here’s a four-week rhythm that suits a small internal comms team.
| Week | What happens | Who owns it |
| Week 1 | Collect stories and wins from teams, confirm the leadership topic | Editor and team contacts |
| Week 2 | Write, edit and get approvals | Editor, subject owners, legal when needed |
| Week 3 | Build or update the layout, add video, links and images | Designer or editor |
| Week 4 | Accessibility check, final review, publish and share | Editor |
Fixed deadlines matter more than the exact days. Contributors learn when stories are due, and leadership learns when to expect the next issue.
Treat contributors as a network, not a favor. Name one contact per site or department and send the same short brief each month: one win, one person worth featuring and one date.
Then assign roles so editors can build pages while one owner approves and publishes. Pandora’s communications team works this way, with the Communications Manager overseeing the account and designers acting as editors.
If your team already builds the employee magazine in InDesign or Canva, export the finished issue as a PDF and upload the magazine PDF. The layout stays intact, and you can add links or videos before publishing.
Late corrections, such as a wrong date or an outdated photo, can be fixed with Edit PDF, currently in Beta, without exporting a new file.
Before each issue goes live, turn on accessibility and add page titles, descriptions, extracted text and image alt text. Uploading a PDF doesn’t make its content accessible on its own.
Flipsnack helps you improve the accessibility of your digital employee magazine through a player aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA and tools that support screen readers and keyboard navigation.
An internal magazine often carries information that shouldn’t leave the company, from quarterly results to restructuring news. The right setting depends on who needs to read the issue and for how long.
For a results issue only managers should see, use SSO sharing if it is enabled for your workspace. Employees sign in through your company’s identity provider, with no extra account needed. You can also limit access to groups such as people managers.
If one-time codes are enabled for your workspace, send one to each reader’s email address. You can also use a shared password for staff with no email. A password is simpler but easier to pass around, so keep it for issues with low sensitivity. Construction group Aecon needed a secure, mobile-friendly way for crews to read internal documents on the job.
Choose between the available private sharing options based on the audience and sensitivity of each issue. If the content is time-sensitive, schedule an inactive date. The link and every embed stop opening on the date you choose, while the flipbook and its statistics stay in your account, ready to republish on the same URL.
Download and print are off by default. For an issue meant for notice boards, download a printable PDF or enable printing for readers. Keep downloads off for anything confidential. Hiding the buttons can’t stop screenshots, so leave truly sensitive details out of any issue.
Leadership will ask whether anyone read the magazine. A newsletter open rate says the email arrived. Page-level data says the story landed.
Measure page-level engagement
Flipsnack statistics show impressions, views, clicks, time spent and downloads for each issue, down to individual pages. Use that data to keep the sections that hold attention and rethink the ones readers skip.
An impression means the magazine loaded through its link or embed, while a view means a reader interacted with it or stayed longer than five seconds.
Treat readership data as a complement to broader employee engagement measurement, not a replacement for employee surveys.
Track channels and individual readers
Trackable links compare activity across distribution channels. Create one link for the intranet, one for the email and one behind the break-room QR code, then check them side by side. Each link measures activity on that link rather than a verified person, since links can be forwarded.
If individual reader tracking is enabled for your workspace, you can see who read a private issue, how long they spent on each page and which links, videos and buttons they clicked.
Once your content plan is ready, build and publish the issue in five steps.
Pick a magazine template in Design Studio or upload the PDF your designer already made. Either way, you can add interactive elements on top.
Fill the pages with this month’s stories, then add interactive content such as video messages, links, slideshows and pop-ups where they help the story.
Use your workspace’s brand settings so fonts, colors and logos stay consistent, whoever edits the issue.
Pick public, unlisted, password protected or private access, depending on how sensitive the issue is.
Post the link on the intranet, send it by email or print a QR code for sites without desks. Every channel points to the same issue, so later updates appear wherever the link is used.
The same workspace can also hold your digital employee handbook, so new hires find both in one place.
The video below brings the five steps together and walks through the complete process of creating a digital employee magazine.
Keywords Studios is an international technical and creative services provider to the video games industry. Its US Human Resources team had long relied on PDFs and PowerPoint presentations for internal communications and wanted more engagement with the material.
The team moved to interactive flipbooks with video, audio and pop-ups, shared through password-protected links in the body of emails instead of bulky attachments. After the US rollout, the company extended Flipsnack to global partners.
“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, Keywords Studios US Human Resources
Within a year, the team saw:
Read the full Keywords Studios story to see how the company uses digital publications to communicate with teams across its global organization.
Use this template to bring leadership updates, business results, employee stories and company events into one consistent issue.
Use this template to explain employee benefits, enrollment deadlines and wellbeing programs in a clear, approachable issue.
Use this template to present leadership updates, industry insights and company news in a polished corporate format.
Need a different style? Browse all magazine templates and use the same five sections in any layout.
A digital employee magazine works best when it supports wider HR strategies without becoming a catch-all channel. It needs a fixed rhythm, a clear place in your channel mix and data that shows people read it. Start small: one issue, five sections and one secure link. Then let the page statistics shape the next one.
Create your first issue with Flipsnack and give your stories the space a newsletter can’t.
Your best stories deserve more than a subject line.
Not always. Readers who open an issue through SSO, a one-time code or a password don’t need a Flipsnack account. Readers invited by email or added as workspace readers do, which suits small groups such as a leadership team.
Yes. Turn on the print button for readers or download the PDF and print copies for sites where staff rarely use screens. Keep the digital issue as the version you update, and print only once the content is final.
Yes. A Flipsnack flipbook opens in the phone’s browser without an app, so frontline staff can start reading from a QR code on a poster. Short pages and large headlines make mobile reading easier.
Yes. Publish each language as its own issue and share it through its own link, so you can compare readership by region. For uploaded PDFs, Edit PDF, currently in Beta, lets you translate the text directly in Flipsnack.
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