In fast-moving organizations, building moments of connection can be tough. Whether it’s onboarding a new hire, launching a major initiative or aligning a team around a goal, internal communication plays a key role in shaping how employees feel, act and grow at work.
Here’s the challenge: People are overloaded, attention is fractured and passive formats don’t break through. Slide decks, Teams meetings and one-way broadcasts might check the box that something has been communicated, but they often miss the opportunity to inspire real understanding or engagement.
The solution might lie inside in the evolving world of workplace learning and training and what’s making an impact there.
What modern training gets right
A recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted a surprising disconnect: Companies are spending trillions on new technologies like AI, but employees still default to old tools. Why? Because the training doesn’t stick.
The stats are sobering:
- People forget 50% of what they learn within an hour of traditional training
- After a week, they retain just 10%
But when learning happens through experience, retention and confidence increase dramatically.
Enter extended reality (XR)—, an umbrella term for virtual (VR), augmented (AR) and mixed reality (MR). These tools are proving that doing is more effective than watching. In training settings, VR learners complete programs four times faster and demonstrate 275% higher confidence in applying what they’ve learned.
The takeaway here isn’t that every workplace needs headsets. It’s that the most effective learning today happens when employees are emotionally involved, physically engaged and learning in context.
Internal comms should take notes
This learning insight has big implications for how we think about internal communications, especially events and experiences.
Town halls, culture moments, initiative launches, big rollouts … these aren’t just information drops. They’re opportunities to shape how people feel about the organization, the work and their role in it.
But too often, they default to passivity: a packed agenda, a long presentation, a single speaker. People tune in, but they don’t engage. They hear the words, but they don’t feel the meaning.
If we borrow from what’s working in modern training, we can build internal events that create real moments of clarity, alignment and energy. Not because they’re flashy—but because they’re designed for how people actually learn and remember information.
From informing to involving
Think about the best internal experience you’ve attended. Chances are it wasn’t the one with the cleanest slides or longest agenda. It was the one that made you feel included, inspired or activated.
Internal communicators are shifting away from transmission, toward transformation.
Here’s how that looks in practice:
- Immersive onboarding: Instead of static welcome videos, create role-based simulations or team challenges that help new hires navigate real scenarios.
- Culture activations: Use storytelling, visuals and live facilitation to connect values to day-to-day behaviors.
- Leadership updates: Structure town halls like live shows with a host, real-time interaction and purposeful transitions.
- Learning labs: Combine asynchronous prep with interactive workshops where employees get to apply new ideas in real time.
These don’t require VR goggles. They just require an experience mindset, something internal comms teams are uniquely positioned to lead.
The platform still matters, but the design matters more
Tools like Teams and Zoom are perfect for getting work done, but they’re not going to instantly deliver meaningful moments of connection out of the box.
When the message matters, the platform should support more than just video. It should also allow for interaction, breakout spaces, live chat, branded environments and smart measurement. But even more importantly, what you do with the platform shapes the experience.
It’s not about being flashy. It’s about being intentional. Designing a session with moments of pause. Structuring content around what people will do with the information. Creating space for reflection, connection and feedback.
In other words: build internal comms events like you build learning experiences.
Experience is how people understand culture
People don’t want to just hear about culture. They want to experience it.
For internal audiences, that’s not just about swag or slogans. It’s about being in spaces (virtual or physical) that feel human, that invite participation and that reflect the values and energy of the organization.
Whether you’re hosting a leadership Q&A or rolling out a new strategic initiative, the question isn’t just “what do we want people to know?” It’s “what do we want people to feel, remember and do afterward?”
That’s the opportunity of experience-led internal comms.
Getting started with small, strategic shifts
You don’t need a new platform or a huge budget to start designing more immersive internal events and experiences. Try starting here:
- Open with a story, not a summary
- Use a human host to guide momentum and interaction
- Build in space for peer voices through live Q&A, chat prompts or shared reflections
- Structure content around actions, not just updates
- Tie each experience to a larger moment, initiative or strategy—it should feel part of something
The most meaningful change is often in the intention, not the format.
Internal comms is the frontline of connection
As the pace of work accelerates and hybrid models stay the norm, internal events are becoming more important—not less. They’re not “nice to have” moments. They’re where culture gets built, trust gets strengthened and clarity gets created.
And just like with training, people don’t remember what they saw. They remember what they experienced.
