Internal Communications Audit: A Detailed Guide + Template

Effective internal communication is the foundation of a strong company culture, ensuring employees feel informed, connected, and engaged. But how do you know if your internal communications strategy is truly working? That’s where an internal communication audit comes in.

An internal communication audit helps you take a step back and assess how well information is flowing across your organization. Audits can highlight what's working, pinpoint areas that need improvement, and offer clear insights to make your communication strategy more effective. By identifying key communication challenges, you can ensure your employees receive timely, relevant, and engaging messages that align with business priorities.

The following guide will walk you through everything you need to know about conducting an internal communication audit –including when to do one, how to execute it, and a downloadable template to streamline the process.

What Is an Internal Communication Audit?

An internal communication audit is a structured process for assessing how well information is shared within an organization. It evaluates communication channels, messaging effectiveness, employee preferences, and overall engagement with internal content.

By conducting an audit, companies can determine whether their internal communications align with business goals, support employee needs, and contribute to a positive workplace culture.

Why Conduct an Internal Communications Audit?

Conducting an internal communication audit provides valuable insights that can strengthen engagement, alignment, and overall business performance. Yet, many organizations overlook this critical process, often limiting their assessment to a handful of questions in an annual engagement survey or simply anecdotal, ad hoc feedback. This limited approach fails to capture the full picture of how well communications are working.

A more thorough audit allows organizations to take a proactive approach, identifying gaps, optimizing communication strategies, and ensuring employees receive clear, consistent, and meaningful messaging. By diving deeper, companies can drive transparency, foster inclusion, and create a more connected workforce.

A comprehensive audit can help:

• Provide a clear picture of which communication platforms are performing well and which need improvement;
• If employees are receiving clear and consistent messaging;
• If communication efforts are fostering – or hindering – a culture of transparency, inclusion, and engagement;
• And where employees may feel disconnected or underinformed – just to name a few insights you can expect to glean.

Why do these insights matter? Strong internal communication ensures employees understand the company’s vision, feel connected to leadership, and are engaged in their work. Companies with effective internal communication experience higher productivity, better collaboration, and stronger employee satisfaction.

When Should You Conduct an Internal Communication Audit?

There are many key moments when an internal communication audit can provide invaluable insights and drive meaningful improvements. Whether you are navigating a major organizational shift, seeking to improve employee engagement, or simply ensuring your communication efforts remain effective, an audit can be a critical tool.

Below are a few common scenarios where conducting an audit is beneficial:

• You’re new to your role: If you’ve taken on a new position leading internal communications for an organization, an audit provides a clear picture of the current state and helps shape your strategy.
• Your company is undergoing a major change: Mergers, leadership transitions, or restructures require strategic communication. An audit ensures messaging aligns with company goals and reaches employees effectively.
• Your organization has adopted new communication tools or channels: If you’ve introduced a new intranet, collaboration platform, or messaging system, an audit can assess its effectiveness and adoption.
• It’s been a few years since your last audit: Internal communications evolve. If you haven’t audited your strategy recently, it’s time. Would you neglect a financial audit for years? Likely not – internal communication should be treated with the same level of importance.
• Employee engagement or feedback suggests communication gaps: If surveys or direct feedback indicate confusion, inconsistency, or a lack of transparency, an audit can help diagnose the root causes and guide improvements.

How to Conduct an Internal Communications Audit

The following steps outline a thorough approach to conducting an internal communications audit and ensuring it delivers meaningful results.

Step 1: Define Your Audit’s Scope

Before you begin, it’s important to establish clear objectives for your internal communication audit.

Defining the scope will help ensure that the audit is focused, actionable, and aligned with your organization’s specific needs. Some audits take a broad approach, evaluating the entire internal communication landscape, while others focus on specific aspects – such as leadership messaging, digital communication tools, or engagement with key business initiatives.

Here are some important factors to consider when defining your audit’s scope:

• Start by determining whether you’re refining an existing communication strategy or building one from the ground up.
• Consider whether the audit should assess organization-wide communication or hone in on a particular department, region, or employee segment.
• Additionally, if your organization is facing a timely challenge – such as restructuring, leadership changes, or declining employee engagement – your audit may need to prioritize certain areas over others.

A well-defined scope sets the stage for meaningful insights and actionable recommendations.

Step 2: Plan Your Approach

Before conducting an internal communication audit, you need to determine both who to audit and how to audit. Identifying the right mix of participants ensures you capture diverse perspectives while selecting the right methodologies allows for a thorough and meaningful assessment.

Who to audit: It’s critical that your audit ensures employee representation across business areas, levels, locations, and job types, including corporate and frontline roles (if your company has a mix of these employees).

How to audit: A robust audit should leverage both qualitative and quantitative insights. By combining data-driven analysis with firsthand employee and leadership feedback, you gain a well-rounded understanding of what’s working, where gaps exist, and how communication impacts engagement and business outcomes.

The combination of qualitative and quantitative insights may stem from the following approaches:

Qualitative Data Collection

Leader listening sessions – Gain leadership insights on communication effectiveness, key messages, and areas for improvement. Topics to explore in these discussions may include:

• How leaders define excellent and poor communication
• The bottom-line impact of communication
• What internal communications currently offers that they value
• Key messages they believe all employees should know
• Whether they’re satisfied with the level of upward feedback

Employee focus groups – Gather employee perspectives on communication challenges and opportunities. Key areas to probe include:

• Business-related topics employees want to hear about
• Credibility and effectiveness of current communications
• Perceptions of the intranet and other communication tools
• Impact of communication on daily work
• Ideas for improving communication methods and channels

Interview internal communications team members – To understand workflows, priorities, and service-level agreements with stakeholders. This is a key step that can often uncover competing stakeholder priorities and the opportunity to further focus the communications team on the areas of the biggest impact.

Quantitative Data Collection

Employee surveys – Employee surveys are a powerful tool for gathering quantitative insights into internal communication effectiveness. A well-designed survey should be concise (under 15 minutes) to encourage participation while still capturing meaningful data. It should be easily accessible by your intended employee audiences (e.g., using familiar tools and offering multilingual options when necessary). Quantitative surveys provide valuable benchmarks that, when compared over time, reveal trends in communication effectiveness. Topics in your survey may include:

• Volume of communication (too much, too little, just right)
• Authenticity, timeliness, and consistency of messaging
• Information sufficiency on key topics
• Preferred sources for different types of information
• Access and usefulness of communication channels
• Impact of communication on employee engagement and company goals

Channel effectiveness assessment – Conduct a detailed probe into each of your dedicated internal communication platforms. This might include intranet, emails and newsletters, town halls, leadership messages, workplace social media, podcasts, and more. Analyze any key metrics available (such as open rates, click-through rates, participation rates, views, downloads, etc.) for insights and to understand where you may have gaps in reporting for each channel.

A note on sequencing: If you are building a new internal communication strategy, it may be beneficial to conduct a qualitative assessment first (e.g., focus groups and leadership listening sessions), allowing you to refine your approach before rolling out a quantitative survey.

A well-timed quantitative survey can serve as a benchmark to measure the impact of any refinements you’ve made. By conducting an initial qualitative assessment, implementing changes, and then using a quantitative survey to evaluate progress, you can track improvements and ensure your communication strategy remains effective over time.

Step 3: Secure Leadership Buy-In

Gaining leadership support is critical for a successful internal communication audit. Executives need to understand how the audit aligns with broader business objectives and the benefits of assessing internal communication effectiveness.

Present a clear plan that outlines why the audit is essential, how it will be conducted, and the role leadership plays in providing input. Reinforce how the findings will help them make informed decisions and improve engagement across the organization.

Securing leadership buy-in ensures that the audit receives the necessary resources and that its results are taken seriously.

Tip: At this stage, also consider who needs to be informed or consulted or what additional resources you may need. For example, you may require support from IT to generate an all-employee survey and HR to assemble focus groups. Or, you may need to enlist the support of an outside partner to manage this work so you and your team can focus on your day-to-day responsibilities. Bringing in a partner to conduct an internal communications audit has added benefits, too. They look at your channels and conduct listening sessions with an objective lens, bring specialized expertise, draw on trends seen in other organizations, and position your team for success by working fast to get you quick wins.

Step 4: Conduct the Internal Communication Audit

With leadership support in place, it’s time to execute the audit. Collect data through a mix of the methods outlined above. Remember to ensure a broad and diverse range of voices are included to get an accurate picture of how communication is functioning across different levels and locations within the organization.

Step 5: Analyze Findings & Develop an Action Plan

Once the data has been collected, the next step is to analyze the findings and translate them into actionable insights. Identify recurring themes, trends, and gaps in communication effectiveness. Determine which channels and messages are working well and which need improvement.

With this information, develop a prioritized action plan that outlines key areas for enhancement, recommended strategies, and measurable goals for tracking progress. The more clearly you define next steps, the easier it will be to implement meaningful improvements. Organize your action plan into a “now, next, later” roadmap to clarify what you’ll tackle immediately, and what requires more long-term planning and support.

Step 6: Share Findings with Leadership

Present key takeaways to leadership in a clear, concise, and strategic manner.

Focus on high-level insights that demonstrate how communication impacts engagement, productivity, and business outcomes. Provide concrete recommendations and highlight areas where immediate action can drive quick wins, and where more long-term change management efforts are needed.

Be prepared to answer questions and provide supporting data that reinforces the need for improvements.

Step 7: Implement Changes & Communicate Updates

Now you are ready to turn insights into action. Begin implementing the recommended changes, ensuring that employees understand what adjustments are being made and why.

Communication about the improvements should be clear, transparent, and ongoing – closing the feedback loop by demonstrating how employee input has informed changes.

Step 8: Continue to Audit & Refine

The final step is to establish a structured approach for ongoing assessment and improvement. Internal communication should not be a one-time initiative but a continuously evolving strategy that adapts to employee needs, business changes, and emerging best practices. Setting up regular checkpoints helps track progress, measure effectiveness, and ensure communication efforts remain relevant and impactful.

Consider a variety of methods to maintain a continuous feedback loop. These may include:

• Pulse surveys after key company events, such as town halls, leadership updates, or major announcements, to gauge understanding and sentiment.
• Leveraging real-time analytics from communication platforms, such as email open rates, intranet usage, and collaboration tool participation, to assess reach and engagement.
• Creating a communication advisory group or ambassador network to serve as an ongoing feedback channel, ensuring representation from different departments, levels, and geographies.
• Augmenting internal communications questions in your annual employee engagement survey to track long-term trends and identify emerging needs.

By embedding continuous auditing into your internal communication strategy, you create an adaptable and responsive system that evolves with your workforce and business priorities.

Internal Communications Audit Template

Planning an internal communication audit doesn’t have to be overwhelming. To help you get started, we’ve created a step-by-step Internal Communication Audit Planning Template that simplifies the process and ensures you capture meaningful insights. Download the template now to streamline your audit and enhance the impact of your internal communications.

Internal Communication Audit Tips & Best Practices

Over the years of partnering with clients to help plan and conduct internal communication audits, we’ve learned some key lessons that can make the audit process more impactful. Below are some best practices to ensure a successful and actionable audit outcome:

• Always include an executive summary: Leadership needs a high-level overview of key takeaways and strategic recommendations. Summarize key insights concisely, highlighting the most critical areas that need attention and the potential impact of improvements. Said another way: this is your elevator speech on what you found and the changes you recommend to drive impact.
• Quick wins matter: Address low-hanging fruit early to show progress and build momentum. Small but impactful changes demonstrate responsiveness and help gain further buy-in for long-term initiatives.
• Keep employees in the loop: Share findings and communicate how their feedback is shaping changes. Transparency builds trust and encourages continued participation in communication initiatives.
• Make audits an ongoing practice: Conduct regular pulse surveys and establish feedback loops to continuously refine internal communication strategies. A single audit is useful, but continuous evaluation ensures sustained improvement.
• Speak leadership’s language: Use data and metrics to tie communication improvements to business outcomes. Framing findings in terms of business impact increases leadership engagement and support.
• Balance qualitative and quantitative insights: While surveys provide measurable data, employee focus groups and leadership listening sessions add depth and context to the findings.
• Ensure broad representation: Engage employees across different functions, levels, and locations to capture diverse perspectives and avoid communication blind spots.
• No budget for an audit this year? Ensure you have it earmarked for next year’s budget. Use our internal communications business case template to help make your case.

By following these best practices, you can ensure your internal communication audit delivers meaningful insights and leads to lasting improvements in communication effectiveness.

How We Can Help

At The Grossman Group, we specialize in internal communications and can partner with you throughout the entire audit process. Whether you need support gaining leadership buy-in, planning the audit, executing employee surveys or focus groups, analyzing data, or developing a clear action plan, we are here to help.

Our expertise ensures that you gather meaningful insights, align communication strategies with business goals, and implement lasting improvements that drive engagement and results.

No matter where you are in the process – whether you’re just starting or refining an existing strategy – we provide the tools, resources, and strategic guidance to make your internal communication audit a success, getting you quick wins and adapting internal communications for long-term success.

If you’d like to discuss ways we can help, contact us today.

The Bottom Line

An internal communication audit is a powerful tool for strengthening workplace culture, improving engagement, and ensuring employees receive the information they need. By regularly assessing and refining your strategy, you can create a more connected and informed workforce.

What type of insights from an internal communications audit would be most valuable in enhancing your organization's internal communications impact? Share your thoughts in the comments!

—Jennifer Hirsch

This step-by-step, 8-page, editable guide is designed to help you assess, improve, and align your internal communications with your business goals. Download the free Internal Communications Audit Planning Template today!