The State of Internal Communication 2026
A fresh look at who your communication reaches.
What's working? Who feels left out? And where could audio help? Explore the research and bring new ideas to your next internal communication plan.
Three findings worth a closer look
66.2% recorded unique open rate
Internal email remains a valuable channel. PoliteMail's 2026 benchmark reports a 66.2% recorded unique open rate across the internal emails it measured.
PoliteMail 202645% felt uninformed about the reasons for change
45% of surveyed non-desk employees said they were not really, or not at all, informed about why their company makes changes.
Staffbase/YouGov 20259% were very satisfied
Only 9% of surveyed non-desk employees were very satisfied with internal communication.
Staffbase/YouGov 2025
Keep the channels that work. Ask who is missing.
Email, meetings and your intranet all have a role. The report explores where audio could add something different: a way to catch up without sitting down to read.
Inside: key findings, questions to discuss with your team and a practical framework for spotting communication gaps.
Try turning your next update into audioUseful to your team? Pass it on.
Forward the PDF to a colleague or share this page with your network. When citing the report, credit Brandscast and link to this page.
About the research
This report brings together published research, compiled by Brandscast, a private audio tool for internal communication. No original survey was conducted by Brandscast. The PDF includes the complete bibliography and methodological limitations.
Sources
- Staffbase/YouGov, 2025 International Employee Communication Impact Study. Staffbase and YouGov surveyed 3,574 employees across Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the US. Fieldwork: 12-21 February 2025. The percentages above refer to the non-desk subgroup, not the full sample.
- PoliteMail, Internal Email Communications Benchmarks 2026. More than two billion internal emails sent to nearly eleven million employees across ten industry sectors. Provider-recorded metrics are not confirmation of human attention or comprehension.
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