The Internal Comms Podcast

In the first episode of Season 16, host Katie Macaulay sits down with expert digital workplace consultants Sharon O’Dea and Jonathan Phillips to explore the value of understanding what employees actually need – to “start with the appetite, not the fridge.”

Sharon O’Dea is an award-winning intranet expert with nearly 20 years’ experience helping organisations create effective digital workplaces. Jonathan Phillips is a digital workplace and communications expert specialising in intranets, content, governance and employee experience.

Together, they discuss writing carefully crafted communications for AI, the limitations of personas, creating a shared language for internal communication and why the information employees can’t find may tell you more than what they can.

This is a conversation packed with practical ideas, smart insights and provocative thoughts, some of which is taken from the guests’ new book, Digital Communications at Work.

In this special episode of the Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie Macaulay looks through 15 seasons of the podcast and pulls together some of her favourite conversations about the craft, the science and the power of storytelling in internal communications.

Stories help us understand, remember and care, and make sense of complexity. They build trust, create connection and move people in ways that data alone rarely can. In this episode, six guests share how to make the most of this powerful tool.

Hear Jeremy Connell-Waite (ep #113) explain what Aristotle meant by story and what we actually mean when we talk about storytelling, Sean Langston (ep #103) on challenging leaders to answer human questions, Gabrielle Dolan (ep #42) share the value of collecting stories, Shane Hatton (ep #77) show how a single story can travel through an organisation and embody its values and identity, Jo Hudson (ep #121) tell the story of the ‘Bupa elephant’, and Agatha Juma (ep #94) introduce a practical three-part storytelling framework.

As Katie explains: “Stories aren't a soft skill or a nice-to-have. They're how human beings make sense of the world. They're how we explain change, share values, build trust and help people see not just what's happening, but why it matters.”

Happy listening.

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This episode is for everyone.

The Internal Comms Podcast is on the road, at the IABC 2026 conference in Toronto, where host Katie Macaulay sat down with comms consultants Lisa Riemers and Matisse Hamel-Nelis to discuss their new book, Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust.

They explore why accessibility is central to excellent internal communication and share their experiences of discovering accessible communications, why traditional approaches often miss audience needs and how communicators can create content that works for everyone.

The conversation also covers accessible documents, inclusive events, AI, plain language, user testing, practical steps communicators can take to remove barriers and how an unfortunate hashtag showed Matisse why accessibility really matters.

Tune in and share your thoughts – use #TheICPodcast

For decades, organisations have obsessed over employee engagement. But what if we've been measuring the wrong thing? What if engagement isn't the key to organisational performance after all?

In this episode, Katie sits down with happiness researcher, statistician and author Nic Marks to explore why happiness is the foundation of performance.

Nic has spent more than 30 years studying what makes people and societies flourish. His TED Talk on the Happy Planet Index has been viewed more than two million times. His new book, Happiness is a Serious Business, challenges one of the most widely accepted ideas in management. Instead of focusing on how much discretionary effort employees are willing to give, Nic argues that leaders should start by asking a much simpler question: are people happy?

Katie and Nic explore the limitations of employee engagement, why happiness is a better predictor of performance than many leaders realise and how organisations can measure what really matters.

Along the way, they discuss why boredom may be more damaging than stress, why feelings are data, how relationships shape our experience of work and Nic's deceptively simple formula for creating better teams: Measure. Meet. Repeat.

Where’s internal communication heading? Colin Archer has a pretty good idea.

In this episode of the Internal Comms Podcast, host Katie talks to the Spirax Group’s head of communications about an initiative Katie describes as ‘one of the boldest, bravest, most innovative I’ve seen.’

The Communicating Organisation is an approach to internal communications that replaces traditional top-down messaging with a network of trusted, peer-nominated employee Connectors who are equipped with the skills they need to share information and feed insight back into the organisation. It is designed to make communication more authentic, responsive and rooted in real employee experience.

The idea came to Colin while he was standing in a ditch. Katie and Colin discuss this unexpected origin story, plus the initiative’s impact, how it’s measured and where it’s heading. They also discuss internal comms role as a capability builder, linking the internal comms strategy to business strategy and how to make the time you spend at work time well spent.

Read more about the Communicating Organisation.

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All-star IC double act Kevin Ruck and Martin Flegg return to the Internal Comms Podcast to provide a to-the-minute update on where they think internal communication is today. And it’s not looking good for leaders.

‘Trust just isn’t there anymore,’ Martin tells Katie in an episode packed with insight. The authors of the newly published fifth edition of their book Exploring Internal Communication: Towards Dialogue in the Workplace share their thoughts on trust, the employer-employee relationship and the myth that line managers are worse communicators than senior leaders.

The episode also explores how employees are becoming more willing to speak up, the role digital channels play in stifling creativity, organisations deploying leader avatars, the rise of ‘casualisation’ and how to make content work.

Listen in, share your thoughts, then join the conversation using #TheICPodcast.

The podcast’s most frequent guest is back to share more of her invaluable insight, knowledge and IC know-how.

Rachel Miller, founder of All Things AI, change expert and author, is synonymous with the internal communication profession.

And she has a new book out: Successful Change Communication: How to Inform, Involve and Inspire Your Employees. It’s a practical handbook for any organisation navigating change, which, in 2026, is more relevant than ever.

Host Katie and Rachel discuss the catharsis of writing a book about change, the emotional impact of change programmes, the most common mistakes organisations make, Rachel’s four-part Cloverleaf model for assessing communication, AI in the workplace and the importance of marking the end of change.

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In this episode, host Katie Macaulay sits down with one person and three job titles. Alex Zeitz is senior director of global operations, experience and belonging at Virgin Voyages. So, one job title really. But while many organisations would separate these responsibilities out, the award-winning cruise business deliberately brought them together. 

Katie speaks to Alex to find out why. 

Alex’s first time on a cruise ship was as a dancer. Since then, he’s gained 20 years’ experience across travel, hospitality and entertainment and shares what he’s learned.  Katie and Alex explore how exceptional customer experience always starts with people, why great leaders admit they don’t have all the answers and how Virgin Voyages hires for skills, mindset and perspective, and looks for talent from outside the industry.

Drop anchor, dive in and share your thoughts – use #TheICPodcast

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is one of the world’s best-known and most extraordinary not-for-profit organisations.

One of its core principles is témoignage – to bear witness, to share. Communication, therefore, sits at the very heart of its mission and as Head of Internal Communications, Eva Kongs leads efforts to communicate with staff responding to some of the world’s most devastating crises.

From an internal communications perspective, this is a challenge like few others. 130 different nationalities. A truly frontline workforce setting up field hospitals, mobile clinics and improving sanitation in disaster zones. And an extraordinary range of roles – from medical professionals to drivers, accountants to anthropologists, fundraisers to architects.

In this special episode, Katie Macaulay and Eva (a long-time Internal Comms Podcast fan) discuss transcreation, how print at Médecins Sans Frontières has made a clever comeback, how experience can be more important than position and having a clear purpose.

Don’t miss it.

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If you’re tired of the ‘when will internal communication make it to the top table?’ debate, the first episode of Season 15 is for you.

Emma Bridger, a psychologist turned engagement specialist, has spent more than two decades helping organisations create more human workplaces. Lee Smith co-founded Gatehouse and launched the State of the Sector survey, now the largest global research study of internal communication.

They’ve written a new book, People-First Internal Communication: Improving Engagement and Retention in the Workforce, which moves beyond the long-running conversation about the influence of internal communicators and into an exciting new people-led era. They join host Katie Macaulay on the Internal Comms Podcast to discuss their big idea: thinking of employees not as an audience, but as actors.

They also explore why internal communication can sometimes feel stuck on repeat, how design thinking can transform the way we approach communication planning, AI, chaos and why the moments that matter most in the employee journey can be surprisingly small.

Tune in and share your thoughts – use #TheICPodcast