Editorial
Our 11th Viva Engage Benchmarking study analyzed the interaction behaviors of some 3 million employees and nearly 6,000 communities across 73 organizations over an extended six-month period. An uptick in the innovation markers for Viva Engage from the previous year provided some welcome positive news.
However, the longer-term six-year trend indicates that while participation has continued to grow, two-way engagement conversations have shown a consistent decline, with engagement metrics dropping between 25% to 40% over this period. The trend corresponds with Internal Communications taking greater ownership of Viva Engage, a shift which accelerated during the enforced remote working period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What effects have the higher levels of broadcast style messaging and fewer conversations had? Information overload appears to be one. In the words of one of our benchmarking partners: "If there’s just so much going on and much of it is not relevant, then you are struggling to find the things that were important. We’re trying to focus on upping the quality, squashing some of the quantity that’s not value added and trying to get to a better balance.”
More Communication, Less Conversations
As part of our study we asked our benchmarking partners about the issues they were struggling with the most. The overwhelming response was dealing with information overload.
A quick exploration of the issue made it immediately apparent that the amount of information shared digitally is virtually uncapped, while an employee’s attention span is clearly not:
The larger the organization, the more sources are generating information for employees to consume, effectively growing levels of information overload without limit. The loss of two-way engagement in conversations is further exacerbating the overload effect. Our prior studies have shown that when individuals ‘engage’ with information in two-way conversations, it enhances their capacity to consume information without feeling overloaded.
Each information generation source likely exists for good reason. The challenge for internal communications is to help regulate the nature and flow of information to minimize the damaging effects of information overload.
Shift the Emphasis From Cost of Sending to Cost of Reading
Generative AI is lowering the cost (and likely increasing the volume) of sharing information with employees, which is good news for internal communicators. But what about the cost to the employee? What costs are communicators imposing on the employees being asked to consume this information? This is a hidden cost of communication, a cost that is largely hidden to communicators.
If you knew that cost before you sent out information, how would it affect your own messaging content and frequency?
We built an experimental Information Overload Calculator to help bring such transparency. The calculator is designed to help internal communicators model their organization’s message flow and see whether it matches their audience’s capacity. By entering some simple information such as headcount, number of managers, main sender groups and update frequency, you can quickly estimate:
- How many updates employees are exposed to each week.
- The amount of time they’d need to read and process them.
- The additional burden managers face when cascading updates to their teams.
- Whether the overall load sits within a healthy “attention budget” or well beyond it.
As an example, even a conservative reading time budget estimate of 15 minutes per week per employee, for an organization with 10,000 employees, is $6 million annually. Suffice it to say that the results can be confronting!
Managing Information Overload and Boosting Engagement
Our most recent Microsoft Microsoft 365 benchmarking identified Email and Teams chat as being responsible for over 80% of the information interactions and likely the majority of the information noise. Viva Engage, while growing as an information channel, is still modest by comparison.
The Problems With Noise Reduction
A common response to reports of information overload is to try to attack the noisy channels. While Internal Communications (IC) shouldn't receive the blame for information noise, as stewards for noise-minimized communication, IC can contribute a great deal. Potential noise reduction interventions include:
- Work with your IT team to create/reference help guides for managing notifications, a common ‘noise’ source.
- Identify high-risk employees for targeted support. Analytics can help identify those at the center of busy digital networks. They are often the people whose attention is most sought after (e.g., organizational leaders).
- Seek to segment your audiences into targeted Viva Engage communities. Most community membership is opt-in, and therefore targeted. However, be aware that large communities are not immune to creating their own noise.
- Try to avoid duplication of messages. This can often occur in large organizations with overlapping or matrix organization structures. Again, group interaction analytics can identify work overlaps that may not be evident on the formal organization chart:
Noise reduction methods can only go so far though. Problematically, one person’s “noise” could be another’s insight. External social media practice cannot control the noise. To cut through the signal requires greater focus and targeting. Success is predicated on having a clear purpose and a strong understanding of the intended audience. The same can be said for internal communications. So what might such purposeful communication look like?
Focus and Targeting
Looking specifically at the communications IC is responsible for:
| Communication Type | Targeting Strategy |
|---|---|
| Compliance and Policy | All staff engagement is required. Typically use branded emails and/or digital signage that consistently identify messages as “must read” messages. IC designs for ease of engagement. |
| Operational Updates | Align messaging with the formal organization structure and distribute through the appropriate leader/executive. IC to coach leaders on composition and best channel to use e.g. Teams, Outlook, Viva Engage, etc. |
| Company News | IC takes ownership. Consider how to use SharePoint Online and Viva Engage to maximize engagement company-wide. We have case study examples (AllPoints Fibre Networks and Aggreko) that have chosen to use Viva Engage as their preferred News publishing platform, over the traditional SharePoint Intranet. The rationale is to encourage two-way engagement with news. As a global energy provider, Aggreko enables audience targeting, with specific intranet content prioritized for specific audiences through SharePoint web parts, page libraries and navigational links. |
| Culture and Engagement | Viva Engage is the channel of choice for organization-wide culture and engagement initiatives. Ideally we want to maximize participation. For example, IC at automotive firm RAA facilitated a more collaborative culture with their ‘tag a friend and win a free coffee’ campaign, reaching over 80% engagement with employees. |
| Strategic Input and Dialogue | While strategy discussions are regularly the purview of senior executives, at times CEOs have reached out to all employees on Viva Engage for ideas to inform their strategy work. For example one Health insurance CEO posted a simple question "What does quality of life mean to you?" as input to a new vision statement. |
In Summary
Our 2025/6 Viva Engage benchmarking study identified the increasing use of Viva Engage as a communications channel, though with falling levels of two-way engagement. While this additional broadcasting channel might have added to the “information overload” problem, it also gives internal communications leaders an opportunity to steward better communication practices across the enterprise.
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When crafting your next message for internal distribution, consider the cost to the receiver to consumer the message. The full cost of poorly targeted communications is amplified and therefore will come into sharp focus for you.
Editor's Note: Where else should internal communications be focusing?
- AI Intranets Just Made Your Internal Comms Job Way More Interesting — The rise of AI-assisted intranets doesn't spell the end of internal comms. It just means the job is changing. Here's how.
- The Neuroscience of High-Impact, Lower Noise Internal Communications — How brain-based communication strategies drive business results in an era of information overload.
- Using Internal Communications to Elevate the Employee Experience — There's a clear connection between effective communications and employee engagement. If engagement is suffering at your organization, here's where to start.
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