Top tactics for building an international internal comms calendar

Building an editorial calendar with an international reach is a more involved exercise than slotting employee-focused content onto a timeline. It should be a living system that responds to employee needs as they shift regionally throughout the year. That requires internal communicators to balance the need to formulate global editorial plans while maintaining the focus to ensure the content that reaches each international audience hits home. plan globally with the discipline to stay focused locally.

Alex West, senior director of leadership, family and change communication at Mars Inc., told Ragan that when her team builds out its content calendar, it seeks to tell employee stories in a way that can be filtered through the many countries and cultures represented at Mars.

“You need a spread of recognition that touches each of those global regions so people can feel recognized and see their moments celebrated in the calendar,” West told Ragan.

Here are a few tips and tactics from internal comms leaders on how you can build out content calendars that can reach employees far and wide.

• Keep the calendar flexible. A calendar should serve as a north star for getting internal content across borders — but it can still change. Sara Ng, vice president of communications and brand experience at ING Americas, builds out an editorial calendar that covers several different countries and cultures across the Western Hemisphere. “Every Monday we have an editorial meeting about what content’s coming in our different regions, what content is coming in from the products and what’s coming from other functions,” she said. “It’s really about finding the right balance because content comes in continuously. We rely on that global cadence to make sure the calendar stays responsive to what’s happening across the business.”
• Get your global colleagues involved in the building process. A content calendar with an international foothold should factor in events and holidays in other locations to garner engagement. Christina Frantom, internal communications lead at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, told Ragan that her team relies on colleagues in Germany and other locations to ensure they’re hitting the right notes, so that internal content resonates with all audiences. Consulting with colleagues helps ensure that the calendar is marking out content that resonates across different countries. This is particularly important at Mercedes-Benz due to the high level of interconnectivity between plants and corporate offices worldwide. “When something is really local — for example, a departmental holiday or a story that only matters to our plant — Germany or the larger entities might not be familiar with the nuance,” she said. “We ask colleagues around the plant who are part of the target culture, ‘Hey, read this real quick and make sure I’m not saying anything completely off base.’ The back-and-forth becomes part of building the calendar because we’re not just planning what to say — we’re also planning how to say it correctly for a global audience.”
• Figure out cultural timing and avoid cultural blind spots. In addition to mapping out when certain content items should run for different international audiences, internal communicators should also consider flagging when not to run content for specific audiences. A timing misfire can doom even the best content to irrelevance if no one’s around to see it. West told Ragan that communicators should keep a running list of international holidays and cultural observances within the calendar, in addition to staying on top of the news to “You need to be very conscious of when key audiences are going to be offline,” said West. “Those are moments where you stay quieter. And then you think about what cultural moments you’re going to lean into.” For instance, West said that during Golden Week in China — a holiday period that can last an entire week — her team avoids pushing out major internal stories because large portions of the workforce won’t be on the job to see them. Additionally, offices across Europe can go quiet for extended August holidays, requiring communicators to move their content pushes around the calendar.
• Build your international calendar with channels in mind. Through a deep knowledge of their international audience’s channel preferences, communicators can build calendars that reflect both timing and distribution needs. “We’re never just talking about when something is going to be published,” said Amanda Minto, executive director of internal communications and HR communications at Comcast. “A huge part of the conversation is how it’s going out and on what channels.” She added that in calendar planning meetings, her team will meticulously plot out pieces of content that need specific channels and how distribution for each region will work in practice. “Because of the size of the company, there is never a shortage of content so the calendar becomes the structure that keeps everything from piling up at once,” Minto said. “It’s what helps us make sure that the user experience stays fresh and that we’re spacing things out in a way that’s actually digestible to employees. Without plotting all of that out in the calendar, we’d be stepping on ourselves constantly.” Minto said that her team uses the editorial calendar to determine whether a story should appear as a banner on the intranet homepage, as one of the top five rotating stories on the platform or as a regional feature. “The calendar is where all of that gets captured so we’re not working in silos,” she said.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.