How to localize internal comms messages without reworking everything

When Flora Bertin’s team at Novartis Canada compares broad global messaging with messaging about what the company is doing locally, the local version usually gets more traction.

“We’ve tested communicating global ambitions versus what we’re doing locally, and what we’re doing locally always performs better,” said Bertin, director of corporate communications for Canada at Novartis. “The global ambitions may be bigger and more impressive, but they don’t always resonate in the same way.”

That does not mean every global message needs to be rewritten for every market, office or function. The goal is to keep the core message intact, then adjust the proof points, framing and context so employees understand how it applies to them.

Flora Bertin, director of corporate communications for Canada at Novartis, said that her team often gets broad messages from the global team and that she then needs to make it work for Canadian employees — with the added layer of needing to use both English and French.

“We’ll get campaigns and positioning from global, and then it’s up to us on how we bring it to life in our market,” Bertin told Ragan. “That usually means working quickly to ensure the messaging resonates with our local audience and reflects our realities.”

Finding the right fit means respecting the core of the message from Novartis’ global function, but then distilling it down for a Canadian perspective. For example, when Novartis launched a global well-being and mental health platform, Bertin’s team looked at Canadian employee survey data around work-life balance and mental health trends in Canada before deciding how heavily to promote it internally. Because the data showed the topic was especially relevant to Canadian employees, the team chose to make the  launch bigger than they originally planned and tied it to Mental Health Awareness Month in Canada.

“There is always an opportunity to adapt the global guidance in a way that feels relevant and authentic here,” Bertin said. “That means proof points from Canada, and understanding what employees care about and how we would actually say this in a way that lands.”

The same idea can apply to localization by office instead of country. Angela Perry, director of communications at Hardesty & Hanover, keeps core messages in companywide channels, then uses office-level channels for details that make the message feel closer to employees.

For Perry’s team, the channel choice helps define what gets localized:

• Intranet: the companywide update.
• Microsoft Teams: broad reinforcement or discussion.
• Digital screens: office-specific wins, events and reminders.

“Our intranet covers the company, all 34 offices, so everybody is getting the same message,” Perry told Ragan. “The digital screens are really where we localize.”

Keep the message from getting too splintered

Once comms pros decide a message needs local context, they can then create a short localization guide before different teams start adapting it. Instead of a formalized document, it can be a note attached to a larger message that tells communicators what can change and what needs to stay consistent in the localization process. The note should include these parts:

• Source message: The core point employees need to understand.
• Local detail: The office-specific impact or regional example teams can add.
• Channel: Where the localized message should show up for employees.

When Hardesty & Hanover rolled out its strategic plan, Perry said that her team used this type of structure to keep things organized and on track.

“There was one big message,” Perry said. “The CEO gave everybody the same foundation: here are the five pillars, and here’s what we’re going to focus on. Then he went to every office, and each office got its own version of the strategic plan message. We included employee engagement photos from that office, and whatever that office or group of offices was focused on showed up in the presentation. The message stayed connected to the firmwide plan, but employees could see where their office fit.”

Balance is a key part of the equation. Employees need to understand the big picture, but still see how it connects to their office or team.

“There needs to be enough strong recall that people feel anchored in the same message again and again,” Bertin said. “It still needs to be relevant to them in this market, this city or this moment, but they should not feel like they’re hearing something completely different every time.”

Bertin said one simple pressure test can help.

“What is in it for them?” Bertin said. “If you can’t answer that as a communicator, then you don’t have anything meaningful to give them. And if there’s nothing meaningful to give them, it’s probably not worth communicating.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.