The Future of Internal Communication in the Light of the Events Observed during the Covid-19 Crisis
The Future of Internal Communication in the Light of the Events Observed during the Covid-19 Crisis

Summary/Abstract: The recent crisis of Covid-19, including its long-term nature and the new working practices it has generated, has highlighted the importance of internal communication in line with the needs of the internal publics in organizations and thus prompted us to question the evolution of the role and practices of internal communication professionals. We propose to address these issues in the light of the events observed in our quantitative and qualitative surveys about the employees’ experiences of internal communication during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Belgium. The results of our survey led to a particular segmentation of internal publics in organizations based on their working reality and their perception of different risks. The issue of segmentation of internal publics has been little explored by researchers, yet it appears crucial in helping communication professionals understand the specificities of their publics and adapting their strategies to the needs of these publics. Another key finding of our research concerns the growing importance of managerial communication. In this respect, the role of communication professionals in supporting managers deserves to be questioned.

• Details
• Contents