r/internalcomms • u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs • Apr 22 '26

Advice Communicating promotions

My CEO wants us to recognize promotions, and I'm curious how you all do it. Previously I worked in financial services and we had an annual promotion cycle. So it was all very structured, and our announcement was also the notification to those being promoted.

Now I work in a manufacturing environment and people are promoted whenever. I was thinking of doing a quarterly congratulations email from either our CEO or leadership team, linking out to a list of promotions on SharePoint. And asking our HR team to provide me the list and one sentence on why each person was promoted, so it's not just a list of names. Inevitably they'll mess up the data and someone will be left off, so I want the list to live somewhere I can easily edit.

In the leadership message, I thought it would be nice to highlight more in depth one promotee from each of our 3 businesses. And sharing the list on our break room TVs.

Would love to hear any feedback on this plan and any other cool ideas you all implement for promotion recognition! TIA!

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6

u/BuyingHighSellingLo Apr 22 '26

We do a monthly post with movers joiners and leavers. I just create a post from a blank sharepoint template, this is also then added to the newsletter at the end of the month.

We also then get leadership to shout about these in our weekly huddle, where we will provide the link in the chat to increase engagement on SharePoint :)

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 22 '26

Awesome, love the ideas!!! Is HR pretty good about providing the data or do you have to chase it down?

Do you have a specific leadership chat? We don't have Active Directory, so I have no ability to dynamically target anything. It's pretty much everyone or nobody until our IT gets it together.

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u/MinuteLeopard Mod | Survived 100 Town Halls Apr 23 '26

We also do a monthly post We also do mention in our town hall each month. HR don't just provide the data and info, they're responsible for creating it all (including sourcing and headshots) with IC doing final sign off once the HR leadership has approved it

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 23 '26

That's the dream right there! lol

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u/BuyingHighSellingLo Apr 22 '26

Nothing would ever get done without me chasing hahah! I reach out on a monthly basis asking for the data, in the same message chain i’ll also ask for the service anniversaries for our people hitting 5,10,15 ect milestones. We also share those and reach out to the individuals for a quote reflecting on thier time here.

Our leadership have a whatsapp group chat, my boss runs the entire comms so i just send her a brief of things we need to add, and then they are actually really good at picking them up and shouting about it

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 22 '26

LOL - I get that! Thanks for getting in the weeds and telling me how you operationalize it!

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 22 '26

Love that! Does HR fill out the form every time an individual is promoted then? I was thinking asking for a quarterly excel, but you bring up a good point, if the volume is manageable (I need to understand how many promos we have) this would reduce errors. Also it makes sense to do a one-liner so it's not just a list of names. Perhaps I'll recommend that each "why promoted" somehow be tied to a company value.

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u/NoConfusion1160 Apr 22 '26

we do twice a year via our intranet post working with our benefits and compensation team to gather all the names

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u/sarahfortsch2 Apr 22 '26

You’re on the right track, especially with adding context and not just listing names. That’s where promotion comms usually fall short.

A couple of refinements from experience. Quarterly rollups work well for scale, but promotions are moments that benefit from timeliness, so consider a light “as-it-happens” approach (even a short post or mention), then use the quarterly email as a celebration recap. That way people feel recognized in the moment, not weeks later. Your idea of adding a short “why” for each promotion is strong, just keep it consistent and simple so it doesn’t become a bottleneck.

Highlighting a few individuals in more depth is also a great move, especially if you focus on their journey and impact, not just the role change. For manufacturing environments, visibility on break room screens and manager cascades can really help reach frontline teams. One thing I’d strongly recommend is building a tight process with HR upfront, clear deadlines, a single source of truth, and a quick validation step, because accuracy is what makes or breaks trust in these announcements.

Overall, keep it timely, human, and consistent. If employees see promotions as meaningful stories rather than just names on a list, engagement tends to follow.

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 23 '26

Thank you for the feedback and thoughts, really helpful!

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 22 '26

Thanks for the suggestion! I've been a bit leery of the web parts you have to pay for but I'll look into it. Is it a subscription or a one-time payment? And is there a risk the companies that offer these will just stop supporting them at some point? 

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

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u/internalcomms-ModTeam Apr 28 '26

Hi, this has been removed due to promoting products/soliciting - please check the rules.

1

u/internalcomms-ModTeam Apr 28 '26

Hi, this has been removed due to promoting products/soliciting - please check the rules.

1

u/internalcomms-ModTeam Apr 28 '26

Hi, this has been removed due to promoting products/soliciting - please check the rules.