The beautiful chaos: a day in the life of an internal communicator

How do internal communications professionals prove that what we do matters? How do we create an authentic sense of belonging and connection? How can we really keep our people informed and involved? And how can we do it all without being constantly derailed by all of the unexpected asks and tasks? It’s a delicate balancing act at best and a never-ending game of whack-a-mole at worst.

Some days, we feel on top of the world — shaping strategy, influencing leaders, crafting messages, and orchestrating communication. Other days, we feel like we can’t keep our heads above water, drowning in last-minute requests, trying to accommodate stakeholders who don’t quite understand what we do, and struggling to prove the big-picture impact of our work.

But we love it. We learn to not just tolerate the chaos but thrive in it because it’s about the people. It’s about Mikaela in the front office, Scott in the field, and Francesca who manages the Finance team remotely. We help them feel informed and connected. We help them find purpose in their work. This is what gives us our sense of purpose in internal comms.

Welcome to the wild-but-worth-it world of internal communications. Let’s journey through a completely normal, totally predictable (ha) workday. Spoiler alert: Nothing goes as planned. Ever.

A day in the life of an internal communicator

9:00 a.m. Write a leadership announcement

You start your day with the best of intentions. You’ve got your coffee in your favorite affirmation quote mug, your inbox is only mildly terrifying, and you’re ready to draft that leadership announcement about company goals and strategy for the new fiscal year. When you asked for messaging context, you received a vague PowerPoint presentation with 56 slides previously presented to the board of directors. But it’s okay — you can do this. You begin crafting a message that’s clear, engaging and human but then…

9:30 a.m. Attend an emergency comms meeting that was NOT on your calendar

A Teams message pops up: “Hey, do you have a sec?” (You don’t, but you say you do.) Suddenly, you’re in an emergency comms meeting for an issue that probably could’ve been solved with a well-placed FAQ. But nope, we’re bringing in the big guns. You leave the meeting with three action items but zero context on how the business is going to solve the said issue beyond comms.

10:00 a.m. Try to finish leadership comm, plus one action item from meeting

After a quick coffee reheat, you sit back down to finish that strategy announcement before your next meeting. Maybe you can even tackle one of the three action items from the unscheduled brain dump that just went down.

You make some headway but get derailed again when someone asks if you could remind the California office about a policy update that will require training. They want to make sure people read the new policy, so the legal team suggests you write and send an email (which will require working with IT for a distribution list). Be sure to post the updated policy in the office Slack channel and also to SharePoint. You have no analytics, so who knows if anyone read it, but you cross your fingers and hope for the best.

11:00 a.m. Sit through HR team touch base

You spend 30 minutes nodding along as HR runs through every single thing happening this week — while patiently waiting for your two-minute (if you’re lucky) comms update. You multitask (read: frantically tweak tomorrow’s leadership message) because you know there won’t be another chance.

Just as you’re about to log off, the HR director casually asks, “Did you know open enrollment is coming? We’re ready to communicate.” You sure didn’t. You had it on the calendar for October, but turns out there’s a new provider and enrollment starts in two weeks. You smile, assure them a draft comms plan will be ready tomorrow, and add it to your growing pile of “urgent but should’ve been mentioned weeks ago” tasks.

11:30 a.m. Field last-minute content requests from Sales, IT and Marketing

You’d hoped to get to the tasks you’d outlined at the start of the day. It feels like eons since you wrote out that precious, well-intentioned to-do list. “8:30 a.m. you” was so hopeful, so optimistic. Present you? Fueled by chaos and caffeine. 

The red bubble hovering over your mail icon is now well into the double digits. You can’t ignore it any longer. You take a deep breath and click it.

Your inbox is now a choose-your-own-adventure through mayhem:

• Sales: We want to share this exciting customer win, but we can’t find a nice-looking image — help!
• IT: We need to notify employees about a system outage that happened … yesterday.
• Marketing: Can you promote this campaign? We want to share it with employees as soon as it goes live. No, the content isn’t final, but can you make it up if I give you a summary?
• CEO office: The CEO is visiting to [insert distant office] next week. Can you please coordinate with the team there and set up a coffee chat session? 
• VP team: Turnover is up 10% this year. Can you give us a report on employee engagement? Surely, you have stats across Teams, email and Sharepoint? We need to drill down into departments so we can see which managers need support.

12:00 p.m. Lunch? Ha, nice try.

Your calendar says you had a free hour. Your inbox says, “Absolutely not.” You scroll Microsoft Teams while you heat up your lunch. First, you answer DMs that all start with, “Quick question!” (It’s never quick.) Next, you sit at your desk, shoveling leftovers into your mouth between keystrokes as you finish that leadership message and send it off for approval. You crushed it, despite herding cats all day.

1:00 p.m. Manage the never-ending homepage debate

Ah, time to refresh the intranet homepage. This should be fun, right? It’s an opportunity to strategically elevate messages you think have the most impact. Wrong. You’re bracing yourself for the ever-familiar “Homepage Hunger Games,” where only the most persistent — or highest on the totem pole — contenders finally wear you down. 

You find in your inbox all the requests to feature everyone’s “urgent” and “high-priority” content:

• HR: We should highlight Mental Health Awareness Month.
• IT: We need everyone to know about our AI policy.
• Marketing: We want everyone to have all the resources for our new product launch this week.

Compromise is reached. No one is happy. The homepage now looks like a Times Square billboard of competing priorities *sigh.*

1:30 p.m. Block out 30 minutes to outline the upcoming newsletter

You finally sit down to map out the next employee newsletter. You pull up your last newsletter to see what worked. Truth be told, you have no metrics aside from Carly in Marketing saying, “Great job with the newsletter!” last week. Better than nothing, right? 

You look to see who has responded to your request for content. But your inbox reveals:

• None of your stakeholders have sent what they promised.
• Half of them are “still working on it.”
• One of them sent an email last week but forgot to attach the actual content.

Instead of outlining the newsletter, you spend 30 minutes chasing people down like a corporate detective. You remember next week’s Town Hall, which you also need content for, so you slip that into your request and pray to the content gods you’ll get a response.

2:00 p.m. Prep ROI report for intranet renewal conversation

You block time to craft a compelling, data-driven business case for renewing the intranet. You’re even excited to talk with HR about the possibility of a broader EX unification platform. This is your moment to prove it’s a business necessity, not a nice-to-have. You’re presenting to the C-suite tomorrow, which is well-timed because they just asked about engagement data. 

You start strong, rounding up engagement numbers and productivity stats based on clicks or page views because you don’t have more robust analytics. But that’s not what leadership cares about — they want to know if this technology saved time, reduced turnover, or made the company money.

Just as you’re putting a bow on your dynamic one-pager, someone asks if you can “help them find something on the intranet.” There is literally a search bar. You wrap up the one-pager, and send it to your manager, who says it should more clearly outline internal comms as a strategic business advantage.  

You’re not mad, just disappointed. You make a few more tweaks, add in stats you found online about how employee engagement and trust in leadership are at an all-time low, as well as a LinkedIn post about how much time is saved by a top-notch intranet. You finally get the thumbs up — even though it’s now a two-pager.

3:00 p.m. Review an exec’s email rewrite (and bite your tongue)

An email notification catches your eye, a response to your request for approval for the CEO message slotted for tomorrow. You momentarily wonder if you’re dreaming because you NEVER get a response from a leader without having to send at least two more desperate emails, kindly requesting they get back to you at their “earliest convenience” (aka six hours ago). 

You expect the worst. You know the CEO has been all about “synergy” and “empowering employees” so you brace yourself for a total rewrite packed with cringy buzzwords. But instead, you see it: “Looks great. Approved.” 

You blink. You reread it. No feedback? No existential word salad about “maximizing efficiencies in our scalable ecosystem”? For once, the CEO approved it right away. Shocking. You do a little happy dance and relish the win by sending your manager a celebratory “Schitt’s Creek” GIF. You’re crushing it!

3:45 p.m. Get a surprise 15-minute video call about a new ERG

The happy dance is short-lived. You accept an invite labeled “Quick sync” (uh, oh). Turns out, it’s a brainstorming session for a brand-new employee resource group (ERG). While it’s a great idea, they’ve tasked you with writing the charter, launching a SharePoint site, and communicating it to the company. You take a deep breath, smile, nod, and pretend you totally have capacity for this.

4:30 p.m. You realize you’ve hardly done anything you planned to do

You check your morning to-do list. You laugh. You cry. You move five items from today to tomorrow and add a handful of new asks from today.

5:00 p.m. Time to wrap up (but not really)

Your calendar says your day is over, but your inbox and message notifications say otherwise. You log off but occasionally check in just in case something unpredictable and crazy happens that you will no doubt be asked to fix at the eleventh hour.

9:00 p.m. Fall prey to the “let me just check my computer real quick” trap

You’ve finally mellowed out after unplugging — that is, if checking messages every 30 minutes instead of every three counts as “unplugging.” You binged a couple episodes of “Severance” while imagining what it would be like to manage internal comms for Lumon (hard pass). You’re about to hunker down in bed to read, but your laptop calls to you through the darkness.  

You tell yourself: I’ll just take a peek at my inbox. Next thing you know:

• You’ve responded to seven “urgent” emails.
• You’re halfway through building a PowerPoint for the next Town Hall, which lets you combine your love for words with your eye for design.
• You’ve agreed to manage a new newsletter for training and development to be sent next week.

9:45 p.m. You close your laptop thinking, Tomorrow, I will be more in control. 

You laugh because — who are you kidding? But one unread message catches your eye. Someone sent you a note about an article for International Women’s Day you wrote and featured in last week’s newsletter. Your heart soars. It’s a small but impactful moment that reminds you that the work you do matters, and that somewhere in the chaos, an employee felt more connected, a leader communicated with clarity, and a team found the information they needed because of YOU.

Simpplr simplifies internal comms

The truth is, life in internal comms can feel overwhelming. But it’s also meaningful, human — and worth it. Most of us fall into this career somewhat unintentionally, but once we’re here, we can’t imagine being anywhere else.

The challenges don’t get any easier, but the right tools can make a world of difference. I’ve seen the full gamut of intranet platforms — from archaic CMS platforms with zero flexibility to intranets promising customization and ease of use that end up requiring a small army of IT professionals to manage. Before I used Simpplr as a customer, I was like many of you at organizations in need of a centralized, engaging, modern employee experience platform to inform, connect, align and inspire employees.

I did the research and built the comparative spreadsheets (ick). I sat through countless (mostly painful) demos and sales pitches to find a platform that would serve employees while also allowing me to focus on being more strategic and intentional. Simpplr was and is the real deal. 

Internal communications is too important to be bogged down by clunky tools, endless workarounds and reactive chaos. You deserve a platform that simplifies governance and empowers stakeholders, giving you bandwidth to focus on what matters most — creating connection, driving engagement and making communications a strategic tool.

If you’re ready to stop running behind and start leading the charge in your organization, request a demo today. Because internal communications should be a force — not just a function.