From Push to Participation: Rethinking Internal Communications

Insights From Kelly Newman, Head of Internal Communication & Engagement at Ampa Group

Sometimes, the most inspiring stories come from teams doing more with less. That was certainly the case on the Internal Communications Stage at last year’s Employee Engagement Summit, where Kelly Newman, Head of Internal Communications at Ampa Group, shared how her team of just two reinvented how communications flow through a 1,300-strong legal and professional services group.

Kelly’s message was simple but powerful: employee engagement isn’t just about sending updates – it’s about building participation.

The story began with a reality many communicators can relate to – information overload. Ampa Group’s internal channels were heavy on “push” content: two weekly newsletters and a static landing page filled with links. Useful? Yes. Engaging? Not so much. Kelly described how employees often missed key updates or struggled to find them later, echoing McKinsey’s finding that the average worker spends 1.8 hours a day searching for information.

Something had to change.

That change came in the form of Engage, a new employee app designed to make content interactive, searchable, and accessible on demand. Launching it was no small feat – Kelly admitted to anxieties about readiness and adoption – but the results spoke for themselves. What started as a tech rollout quickly became a cultural shift: from one-way broadcasting to two-way dialogue. Employees could now tag content, schedule posts, and discover what they needed when they needed it.

But perhaps the most impressive part? Kelly and her colleague managed all this while remaining a two-person team. Recognising the limits of a centralised model, she flipped the script. Instead of being gatekeepers, they became enablers. By training key business areas to manage their own sections within the app, Kelly built a network of empowered content owners – turning communication into a shared responsibility rather than a bottleneck.

Collaboration didn’t stop there. Ampa Group’s Responsible Business team soon joined forces with internal comms to prioritise awareness campaigns. Together, they invited inclusion group champions to create blog posts rooted in authentic, lived experience. The impact was striking: engagement soared, comments multiplied, and active usage hit 91%.

And when Kelly opened the door to social posting within Engage, participation deepened even further. Handpicked champions and office heads began sharing photos and updates in real time – representing just 20% of the content, yet driving double the engagement of standard posts.

Kelly closed the session with a message for all communicators – no matter the tools at your disposal. Internal comms doesn’t have to rely on glossy apps to succeed. What matters is creating space for employees to tell the story themselves. Whether through your intranet, Microsoft Teams, or a simple shared channel, engagement thrives when it’s powered by peer connections, trust, and empowerment.

To register for the 2026 Engage Employee Summit click here.