You shared your communications nightmares. These are the best of the worst.

Every so often, every comms pro runs into a situation in which the messaging is so off or the comms instincts from leaders are so poor, they’d recoil. From typos to mistakes in oversight, the following anecdotes show that an internal communicator’s job is never easy — and when it goes wrong, it can be the stuff of nightmares. These stories are shared anonymously to protect from the horror.

The truly unfortunate typo

When your leaders want to share a message with the entire company, there should be a strong enough relationship between the C-suite and the comms department to allow someone to give the message a quick read. That didn’t happen in this case, leading to panic and immediate mop-up duty.

My boss, sending out a communication about a companywide computer virus to 4,000 people while I was out of the office on vacation, put in the subject line: “Virus fix: Shit down your computer.” Complete panic ensued.

There are more layers to this story, including the fact that he was very religious and never swore, and the way I felt when I saw the subject line pop up on my BlackBerry at the airport. My first thought was, “How will I be blamed for this?”

Every comms person deserves a break, and that includes a well-deserved vacation. But before you go away, ensure that you’ve got the right people in place to ensure that they’re reading over notes a second and third time. Always have a backup!

Not-so-anonymous surveys

Internal surveys can give communicators valuable data and insight into how employees perceive their roles and the company’s culture. Comms pros can then adjust their messaging according to what the data is telling them, and relay this information to leadership to help inform change when it’s necessary. One of the nice things about these surveys is that they’re usually anonymous, allowing employees the psychological safety to share their true feelings. That’s almost always the case — except when it isn’t.

We learned that the survey platform we were asking employees to give anonymous feedback on was in fact not anonymous.

Yikes. Remember, comms pros — get to know your tech tools inside and out. It could save you down the road.

Poor judgment on display

One of an internal comms pro’s roles should be an advisor to leadership, guiding them on what needs to be said and what should be avoided. That’s especially true when you’ve got leaders speaking live in front of an employee audience. One communicator shared an instance of a leader seemingly attempting a “joke” that did not land.

What immediately comes to mind happened a few weeks into the pandemic in 2020. To set the scene — it was a mid-sized tech company town hall. The C-suite leader is sharing business update slides — standard stuff.

Then he shares the image/meme of a woman wearing a Norton anti-virus CD-rom on her face as a mask. The best part is he said that he wasn’t sure if he should be sharing it but decided to do so anyway. It felt very tone deaf and showed very poor judgment.

Sometimes, you just have to sit back as a communicator and marvel at what messages people think will go over well in front of a crowd. There’s not a lot you can do about stopping something like this in the moment, but when you can do your best to educate your leaders on good presence in front of an audience.

Season’s greetings — from the wrong CEO

An email from the top brass, even when it’s done through a form, can show acknowledgement of the hard work employees do. But if you’re the one in charge of putting it together, you’d better be sure the right person is in the picture you’re sending.

I once reused last year’s holiday email and forgot to swap the CEO’s photo. He’d retired six months earlier, but the message went out to the whole company. For a day, everyone said it felt like he’d “returned to wish them well.” Let’s just say even templates deserve exorcisms.

Even with all the joy and laughter around during the holiday season, you probably don’t want any of that laughter to be at your expense. Give your visuals a second look before you send out your next email blast.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.