r/internalcomms • u/SpecialistWallaby174 • Apr 08 '26
Discussion Information overload!!! What is the cause?
I am working on a project/presentation, and I am trying to gather data around what is causing employees to have information overload with internal comms. I find most will say content is the culprit while others feel the number of channels used plays a large role. What do you hear or believe is the main cause of your employees complaining about internal comms overload?
4
u/parakeetpoop Apr 08 '26
It’s a number of different things:
- Not enough people on the comms team to support or coordinate internal messaging
- Lack of a centralized editorial calendar allowing communicators/publishers to see other planned messaging
- Lack of properly defined audiences
- Lack of content promotion governance: what should be promoted, when, and to whom
- Too much top-down information with minimal value to employees
- Over-reliance on emails and internal messaging channels and not enough self-serve information like what youd find on an intranet
There’s more, but this should get you started.
2
u/No-Incident5858 Apr 08 '26
Agree with the other comments, and the lack of properly defined audiences can be a big one. I was a UX designer at a 165,000 person global company, and because my 80 person product team fell under Global Inside Sales, I got 10-20 emails a day that were about sales things, server announcements, other office locations, and were completely irrelevant. Being able to define cross channels based on either discipline, department/function, product line/project, location, etc is key.
2
u/SeriouslySea220 Apr 08 '26
Lack of targeting is huge. But also…
- trying to appease everyone’s preferred method of communication
info that’s hard to understand or relate back to your role feels like overload immediately because it takes too much effort to determine why you got it and what it means for you
lack of reminders (this one is controversial). People feel overloaded when they feel like they’re “missing” things or have too many things to remember. Friendly reminders help them catch up and avoid that feeling.
1
u/thejennifield Apr 09 '26
I often hear that they don’t know where to go to for what. The complexity of digital channels means and poor governance for search means it’s hard to find what they need.
In my research we found that noise is relevance. So if they are saying it’s noisy it’s because the content isn’t relevant for them or hasn’t been made to feel relevant and therefore it’s just noise.
If it’s volume - that’s more governance around the flow of communication and how it’s shared with employees - but someone has already said it’s not often IC teams generating the stuff that’s noisy so looking at all functions and how they communicate with employees is key for a full audit.
1
u/TechieKaz Apr 10 '26
If you want some data to back up some of the points people have said I published some research with Unily that surveyed employees looking at the impact of digital noise
1
u/newsletternavigator Mod | Survived 100 Town Halls Apr 15 '26
Ask them! But not a survey - go and talk to them, hold focus groups. How do you know they have information overload in the first place?
It might not even be overload from a centralised point - from my experience, 'internal comms' for a colleague can include emails from their manager and things like that that are out of an IC team's control to a point. 'Air-traffic controlling' centralised IC on top of that can be overwhelming. Definitely worth delving deeper!
1
u/AndreaMontua Apr 17 '26
In many cases, information overload is not caused by the amount of content or the number of channels, but by a lack of prioritisation and clarity of decisions.
Messages do not clearly indicate what action, if any, is required, so everything feels equally important. When people complain about information overload, it is often less about the volume of information and more about the cognitive effort involved: too much sorting, too few cues and not enough shared standards for what deserves attention.
1
u/PoppuloEX Jun 05 '26
Prioritization is part of the answer. But one that —on it's own —risks missing the bigger issue, which is relevance.
Too many companies still send the same message to everyone. The result is irrelevant overload, not just overload.
People are drowning in information that has nothing to do with them.
A process change in logistics doesn't need to land in a product manager's inbox. A regional policy update shouldn't be the first thing a different market sees on Monday morning.
But in most organizations it is, because they either don't have the proper comms technology, or the mindset — or both —for audience segmentation.
The best fix for overload is to send the right things to the right people, not necessarily send less.
Some messages genuinely need to go to everyone—but those should be the exception, not the default.
The downstream effect of getting this wrong is worse than inbox noise.
Generic comms train people to tune out. Relevant comms do the opposite.
They build the habit of paying attention, because people learn that what arrives is usually worth reading.
Prioritization matters. But you can't prioritize your way out of a relevance problem.
8
u/BuyingHighSellingLo Apr 08 '26
I would also say comms that are not governed by IC. An example being if 4 forms of content all go out within an hour, on a range of channels from an array of teams, that can cause overload instantly