Over the last three years, internal comms has cemented its role as an essential business partner, helping executives navigate issues like pandemic response, internal leaks, and mounting pressure to speak up on a wide spectrum of social justice issues.
This glow up is much-deserved for a function that too often played second fiddle to flashier counterparts like media relations and public affairs. It has also raised the question of where internal comms should live within an organization.
As always, the question of org design is really a question of business priorities. But this question can be especially critical for for early- or growth-stage companies, where employees wear several hats — which means where internal comms sits will dictate how else the team spends their time.
In my opinion, there are a few intuitive places for an internal comms function to sit:
Communications
When you’re just starting out, it’s fine for internal comms to fall under the purview of the overall comms lead. That’s not to say there won’t be a learning curve for many startup comms pros, who often have 5-7 years of external comms experience at a larger brand or an agency. But it’s a muscle that any good full-stack comms strategist needs to build, even if they’ll eventually offload the day-to-day responsibilities onto a specialist when the company reaches a certain size.
When you have headcount for a second (or third or fourth) comms hire, it can be a good idea to pick someone with internal comms expertise — but don’t make it their whole portfolio. Growth-stage internal comms specialists should be multi-tool players; combine their internal comms mandate with employer brand (external comms to attract employees), financial comms, or rapid response so they can flex across your comms needs.
If your company brand is closely tied to that of your Founder, CEO, or another key company leader, you might want to consider combining executive and internal comms. This is a more appropriate role for a mid-sized company (1,000-5,000 employees); smaller companies often don’t need a comms person focused on a single individual.
HR
Placing internal comms within HR is a popular choice, but I’m not a huge fan of it; it can lead to internal comms focusing too narrowly on HR-flavored updates at the expense of overall business strategy. This approach will also result in more daylight between your external and internal comms strategies — meaning more time spent staying up-to-date with comms on upcoming beats and making it harder to react quickly in a crisis.
There is a benefit to sitting internal comms within HR, however — namely, that you can easily combine it with employee experience more broadly. Internal communicators within HR often moonlight as event planners, swag leads, and general culture bearers. Just be mindful to keep employee experience tied closely to business strategy; I’ve seen many an employee experience team focus too much on “fun” but non-strategic activities like food trucks, which makes them less valuable to the business overall — and more vulnerable to layoffs at lean startups.
Internal communicators sitting within HR should look instead for moments to bring people together around strategic moments, like providing snacks during an All Hands or providing a build-your-own-offsite kit for teams.
Chief of Staff / Business Operations
Business operations teams are quite close to the rhythms of the business and can help pinpoint which inflection points warrant an internal communication. It can also help make internal comms more rigorous and measurable. For Chiefs of Staff in particular, there’s also the benefit (as with an executive comms specialist) of being close to the way the leaders of the business think and what their priorities are.
Internal communicators who sit within a biz ops function will often find themselves operating as program or project managers for strategic projects within the organization. The risk here is that project management and communications are two different skillsets; biz ops teams folks may may not be as strong with words as they are with Excel or to-do lists, or vice-versa. But for small companies, that’s generally okay, and may even add a feeling of legitimacy or authenticity to the internal comms.