What General Mills’ restructuring means for the future of corporate comms

Editor’s note: We are re-running the top stories of 2021 as part of our year-end countdown.

Last week, General Mills announced a restructure to their corporate communications team.

What was once a single, traditional corporate communications team will now become three teams overseen by one leader:

This shift is more than just a reorg. It’s more than a shuffling of the teams, people and leaders. It’s a rethinking of how corporate communications must operate in order to best move the business forward. It’s a reflection that the experience built for employees should be a priority—not an afterthought.

This move is signaling an understanding of the value and imperative in engaging their employee audience—and that this is no simple task. To do so effectively requires trained, specialized professionals in the same way engaging a consumer audience does.

As employee experience practitioners, we believe that who your brand is on the inside shapes how customers see your brand on the outside. By making employee experience and internal comms central to their communications operations, General Mills is demonstrating that they “get it,” and they believe the employee audience is essential to the brand’s success.