An internal communications 90-day plan for your first three months as head of comms

An internal communications 90-day plan is a new comms leader’s roadmap for the first three months: what to learn, what to fix first and what to promise leadership. Most new heads of internal comms inherit the same mess. Messages go out from a dozen senders on a dozen channels, nobody knows what gets read, and leadership expects a strategy by the end of the quarter.

This playbook gives you a week-by-week plan. If you need to run a formal review along the way, our glossary entry on the internal comms audit walks through each part of one.

Why do new internal comms leaders struggle in the first 90 days?

New internal comms leaders struggle because they’re asked for a strategy before they have any data to build it on.

• No baseline. Email open rates sit in one tool, chat reactions in another, and frontline reach isn’t measured at all.
• Too many senders. HR, IT, leadership and every department send their own messages, with no shared calendar.
• Pressure to look busy. Launching a new newsletter in week two feels like progress but adds to the noise.
• Leadership wants proof. Without numbers, your plan is an opinion, and opinions are easy to cut at budget time.

If you’re new to the function as well as the company, our beginner’s guide to internal comms covers the basics.

What should you have by day 90?

By day 90, you should have a baseline, a few visible wins and a plan with goals leadership has signed off.

• A map of every channel, who sends on it, how often and to whom.
• A baseline for reach and reads by team, site and channel.
• Two or three quick wins people noticed, such as fewer all-staff emails.
• A shared comms calendar that every sender uses.
• Three goals tied to business priorities, with how you’ll measure each one.
• A monthly report format leadership has agreed to read.

The internal communications 90-day plan, step by step

Work in three blocks of 30 days: listen, fix, then plan.

Step 1 (days 1 to 15): Meet the people who send and the people who read

Talk to leadership, HR, IT and a few managers about what they need from comms. Then talk to employees, including frontline staff, about where they actually get their news. Write down every complaint you hear twice.

Step 2 (days 1 to 30): Audit every channel and message

List every channel, every regular send and every sender. Pull a month of sends and note who they went to, what they asked people to do and what happened. This inventory is what your plan gets built on.

Step 3 (days 15 to 30): Set your baseline

Measure reads, clicks and replies per channel, split by team, site and manager. Note who you can’t measure at all, usually staff without a work email. That gap is often your first big finding.

Step 4 (days 31 to 60): Cut noise and ship quick wins

Stop low-value sends and merge overlapping newsletters. Swap one all-staff blast for targeted sends. Give managers a short weekly briefing they can pass on. Pick wins people will notice within a month.

Step 5 (days 45 to 75): Put every sender on one calendar

Build a shared calendar of planned sends so HR, IT and leadership stop landing on the same day. Agree simple rules on who approves what, and who sends to all staff.

Step 6 (days 61 to 90): Agree goals and a reporting rhythm

Turn what you learned into three goals tied to business priorities, such as faster policy sign-off or better frontline reach. Show leadership the baseline, the quick wins and the plan, then agree a one-page monthly report.

What should go in your first report to leadership?

Your first report to leadership should fit on one page and answer three questions: who are we reaching, who are we missing, and what are we changing.

• Do show reach by team and site. Don’t lead with a company-wide open rate.
• Do name the groups you can’t reach today. Don’t hide them to make the numbers look better.
• Do list your quick wins with a before and after. Don’t list every message you sent.
• Do end with what you need from leadership. Don’t end with a list of tactics.

How do you prove your first 90 days worked?

Your first 90 days worked if you can show where you started, what changed and what’s next, using the same measures each time.

Compare your day-30 baseline with day 90: reach by team and site, the number of all-staff sends, and which groups you can now measure. With ChangeEngine’s engagement analytics, reads, clicks and actions come out by department, location and manager across every channel, ready to export for leadership. Keep the same one-page format every month so trends are easy to spot.

Common worries, and what to do about them

“I don’t have any baseline data.”

That’s normal, and it’s a finding in itself. Start measuring in your first month and report the gap honestly. Day 30 becomes your baseline.

“Leadership wants a strategy in week two.”

Give them a timeline: what you’ll learn by day 30, what you’ll fix by day 60 and when they’ll see the plan. A clear schedule buys you time to get it right.

“Every department wants its own channel.”

Let them keep sending, on one shared calendar with agreed rules. Fewer, better-timed messages help every sender get read.

Get your baseline and quick wins in one place

ChangeEngine gives a new comms leader one place to write, target, send and measure every internal message across email, Teams, Slack, SMS and print.

Audiences come from your HRIS, so you can target by team, site or role from day one and see reads and clicks broken down the same way. AI drafts messages and designs in your brand, the Communication Orchestrator sends one message across channels and follows up with people who didn’t open it, and Engagement Analytics gives you the baseline and the monthly report. See how it works for comms teams on the internal comms software page.

Most teams are fully set up, integrations included, in 7 to 10 business days.