“Shall we come back to this in the New Year?”

This is now a familiar refrain around offices, as teams rush to get a few final priorities over the line around Christmas lunches, nativity plays, and looming holidays and – just maybe – kick a couple of trickier cans down the road.

For internal comms, the end of one year gives an opportunity to celebrate progress made over the last twelve months.

Reminding teams of what has been achieved and how it all fits together with the grand plans laid out all the way back at the start of the year helps send them away with a sense of feeling valued.

Internal comms has another important role in helping lay the groundwork for the year ahead.

Psychologically, mid-December to early-January are probably the longest fortnight of the year… particularly given the ‘quiet August’ never ends up actually materialising.

And while most employees will rightly switch off from work for however long their own Christmas breaks last for, planting seeds for 2025 at the end of 2024 is important.

Here’s three things internal comms can do to help at Christmas time:

1. Celebrate success. With so much going on throughout the course of a fast-paced year it can be hard to remember what actually happened (“was that really this year?!”). Let alone to take stock and appreciate the bigger picture. Internal comms should help leaders to paint that bigger picture – even if it ended up looking slightly different in the end - and thank the people who helped make it happen.
   

2. Reflect on challenges. In any year there will be lots of things that went wrong or came out of nowhere and changed the equation. Being upfront about the downs as well as the ups of the last year reminds teams that the challenges of next year can be met too. It also shows honesty – and vulnerability – from leaders willing to show that they are not infallible and cannot predict the future, but that at the same time they are thinking hard about anticipating and preparing for what they think is coming in 2025.
   

3. Set the tone for next year. Leaders do have to think constantly about what the future is likely to bring and how they want to ride those waves rather than be buffeted by them. Internal comms are essential to conveying that active vision. Repetition is key, so messages delivered in December have to be underlined in January and beyond. But the end of the year is a crucial moment to start the mental pivot towards what comes next. Providing a clear idea of what opportunities await when the holidays are over gives people something to start thinking about and will help them hit the ground running in January.

This is also a good time for internal comms professionals to engage of a bit of their own self-reflection.

Seeking feedback and thinking about what worked well and what didn’t should be an ongoing process, of course, but harnessing that natural tendency for a bit of end-of-year reminiscence can pay dividends.

Reflecting on trends in how expectations of employees are evolving and what might need to be done differently, on what channels of communication works best and what tone gets the best response, for example, can all help internal comms teams do even better in 2025.

After a bit of a break, of course.