The Current | June 16-30, 2026: “I Sent an Email.” Is That Your Internal Communications Strategy?
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This issue: “I sent an email” is not an internal communications strategy. Here's what it takes to actually reach a stratified workforce — and what happens when you don't.
The Current | June 16–30, 2026 — Kwedar & Co.
The lead
“I don’t need an internal communications strategy. I have email.”
You’ve been deep in your business strategy for months. Goals, benchmarks, projections — you and your core team have worked through it all until you’ve got it down to a shorthand. You know where you’re headed and why, and it all makes perfect sense from where you’re sitting.
It’s easy, in that position, to assume everyone else is right there with you. Your employees are up to speed. The email covered it. They know what matters.
Here’s an eye-opening statistic: according to Gallup, only 13% of employees strongly agree that their organization’s leadership communicates effectively. Ask yourself: do your employees know your shorthand? Did your message land?
Did they even receive your email?
A separate Gallup survey says only 23% of frontline workers say they have the technology needed to do their jobs effectively — which means the channel you’re counting on to reach them may not exist for them at all.
Your front office team has company email, attends all-hands meetings, and sees the slide decks. But your line workers may not even have a company email address. Maybe they were on a shift when that town hall happened. Maybe they speak a different language than the memo was written in. In many manufacturing environments, company news travels through the break room long before it reaches a screen.
Here’s an even more telling statistic: a third Gallup survey found only 25% of manufacturing workers are actively engaged at work — the least engaged occupation in the U.S., a full eight points below the national average.
Those aren’t HR statistics. They're business outcomes — and communications is where they start.
What we’re seeing
Like you, the leaders we talk to aren’t indifferent to their workforces. Most of them care deeply. But caring isn’t the same as communicating — and good intentions don’t close the gap between the front office and the shop floor.
So what gets in the way? Usually one of two things:
The first is paralysis. The leaders know they should be communicating, but they’re worried about saying the wrong thing or reaching the wrong people. So instead they say nothing, and nothing becomes the default.
The second is false confidence. An email was sent! A post on the intranet announced the change! Managers were told to cascade the message! Because those things were done, the information must have landed.
Here’s an example of false confidence that went to expensive extremes and still failed: one company “solved” their internal communications problem by building a custom app. The budget was approved, the vendor selected, and the rollout planned — yet nobody stopped to ask what percentage of the workforce actually owned a smartphone. The answer, it turned out, was not many. The app launched, almost nobody used it, and the communications gap remained.
That’s false confidence with a painful price tag.
The cautionary tale
We’ve seen what happens more than once when a communications gap is allowed to fester.
Leadership knows some big news is coming: an ownership change, a lost contract, a restructuring. But nobody knows exactly how it will shake out yet, so leadership goes quiet — not out of malice, out of caution.
But silence doesn’t hold the line. Rumors start moving across the plant floor. Every break room conversation, every text between shift workers, every whispered question that goes unanswered becomes its own version of the story. By the time leadership is ready to say something official, they are no longer delivering news. They are doing damage control.
It’s hard for anyone to say, “I don’t know.” It’s especially hard for leaders who are expected to project steadiness and control. But sometimes, “We hear your concerns, we’re working through this, and we’ll share what we know as soon as we know it,” is the right answer — because it’s honest, present, and as much of the answer as you truly have in that moment.
Your people do not need you to have every answer in advance. They need to know that you are there, paying attention, and not leaving them alone with the rumor mill.
One thing worth your time
Map your workforce the way a communicator would, not the way an org chart does:
Who are your people? Where are they physically? Do they have company email addresses? What languages do they speak? What shift are they on when news typically breaks? Who are the informal leaders on the floor — the ones that information flows through whether you want it to or not?
You do not need a shiny new platform to answer those questions. You need an honest conversation with the people who know how your workforce operates: your plant manager, your HR lead, your frontline supervisors.
Once you have those answers, you can start building a communications approach that reaches the entire workforce — not just the people who happened to check their inbox.
A strategy built for your front office that never reaches the shop floor isn’t just incomplete. It could be the undoing of your business.
About The Author
Lauren Kwedar Cockerell is founder and president of Kwedar & Co, a Fort Worth-based PR, messaging, and strategic communications firm serving purpose-driven B2B companies. She is also the firm’s lead PR and marketing strategist, host of our podcast The Impatient Entrepreneur, as well as a frequent podcast guest.
Over the past 20+ years, she has worked with 100s of leaders and organizations to create PR and marketing strategies and tactics that support visions and reach goals.
To connect with Lauren, please send an email above, or book a consultation.