AI and the New Mandate for Corporate Communications Leaders in 2026

The “AI Revolution” is well underway.  The tech behemoths are racing to build the infrastructure to enable Artificial General Intelligence.  At the same time, there are those companies focusing on the practical application of AI within specific industries.

Let’s call this Applied Artificial Intelligence.  

When it comes to the enterprise, corporate communications is destined to be impacted by this.  How content is created, organized, governed, and delivered directly affects not only a company’s ability to execute its strategy, but also employees’ ability to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the largest companies in the world, consulting with them on their implementation of their new Staffbase communications platform.  I have helped them rethink the communications layer of their digital workplace — particularly their intranets and supporting channels. Across organizations and industries, the same patterns repeat themselves: fragmented intranets (often built on SharePoint), conflicting content spread across different systems, weak governance around publishing and prioritization, and blurred lines of ownership between IT, HR, and Communications when it comes to employee experience.

These challenges are not new. What is new is artificial intelligence — and its ability to expose them at scale and with greater consequence.

Whether formally charged with the mandate or not, Communications teams ultimately shape the experience employees have with organizational content. Given what we already know about AI’s growing role in content creation, personalization, and discovery, this moment represents both an unprecedented opportunity and a real threat for the profession. 

Applied Artificial Intelligence:  A Blessing or Curse for Communicators?

Applied Artificial Intelligence is already reshaping how information flows inside organizations — and in many cases, it has begun to reshape the Communications function itself. The real question for Communications leaders should not be whether change is coming, but who will lead it. Communications can either define how AI is applied in service of clarity, relevance, and trust — or be reshaped by systems and decisions made elsewhere.

In my consulting work with large enterprises, I consistently see Communications teams standing at the crossroads of employee experience, digital workplace, and organizational effectiveness. They grapple with many of the same challenges:

• Disparate systems that leave employees unsure where to go for the information they need to do their jobs

• Information overload and one-size-fits-all intranets that make it difficult to know what content actually matters or is important

• Employees who lack a clear understanding of the company they work for and its priorities

• Aging systems and poor analytics that make it difficult for organizations to even know these problems exist

At this point, most organizations recognize AI’s potential. Having consulted on hundreds of intranet projects and seeing firsthand how AI can already assist with content creation, it’s clear that the next 12–18 months will be decisive. Communications will either continue to evolve as a strategic, experience-driven discipline — or regress to a channel-based service, managing outputs while relevance, personalization, and experience are defined by others, including algorithms.

What Comms Leaders Should Focus On . . . Now

To address the challenges above and considering the fact that AI is already being introduced into the digital workplace, Communications professionals have a simple choice: lead or follow.  In many companies, the conversation has already started in the IT department where employee experience isn’t necessarily front of mind.  However, to the extent the AI conversation isn’t fully underway, foundational decisions regarding ownership, governance, and purpose are still open for discussion and the opportunity for communications professionals to lead the way still exists.  

The following priorities reflect the work that must happen so that AI can meaningfully improve the employee experience.

1. Get Honest About (and articulate) the State of Your Digital Workplace

Employee experience is suffering in the enterprise since so many companies are challenged with having numerous, disparate content repository systems leaving employees unable to find the content they need to do their work.  When searching for content, employees are confronted with a patchwork of old and conflicting information.  Whether it be SharePoint, ServiceNow, various HRIS systems like Workday or UKG, Salesforce and more, the digital workplace of many organizations is fundamentally disorganized.

If it hasn’t already, AI will eventually expose this.  Communications leaders would be well served to assess:

• How many places employees actually go for information

• Where content overlaps or conflicts

• Who owns messaging decisions

• Whether there is a single source of truth

Once this diagnostic work is done, Applied AI solutions can begin to address these systemic issues. But someone must first take responsibility for understanding the current state — objectively and clearly. This is a natural leadership opportunity for Communications.

2. Establish Clear Governance Before AI Establishes It for You

With so many systems and people across an organization creating content and placing it in their repository of choice, no wonder employees find themselves wasting time trying to find what they are looking for or to figure out where to go to arrive at what is the source of truth.  

Of the Fortune 500, 80% use Microsoft SharePoint as the primary operating system for their digital workplace with roughly 50% using it as the foundation for their corporate intranet. In my consulting work over the past year, one reality has become clear: no two organizations use SharePoint in the same way. There is no standardized playbook for structuring content, governing ownership, or ensuring accuracy at scale. As a result, companies often find themselves with dozens — sometimes hundreds — of SharePoint sites created by different, largely unmanaged contributors, publishing content without clear accountability for accuracy or relevance.

This lack of governance is what is contributing to the poor employee experience.  AI will uncover this.  Communications leaders have the opportunity to define the appropriate governance structure and enforce it.

3. Redefine the Role of Communications Around Relevance, Not Output

The employee experience in most organizations continues to suffer from a lack of personalization, persistent information overload, and content that is broadcast broadly rather than delivered based on what is important to me.

When I was starting out in the public relations industry, corporate communications was largely viewed as a support function — focused on outputs such as newsletters, emails, press releases, and media campaigns. Over time, that perception began to shift. Organizations recognized the strategic value Communications professionals bring through narrative development, emotional intelligence, stewardship of brand voice, and the growing ability to use technology and data to demonstrate how communications supports business goals.

Artificial intelligence is about to challenge that progress.

To maintain what the profession has accomplished over the years, Communications leaders must assert ownership over the rules of relevance. AI can undoubtedly help communications professionals create content faster and also help scale relevance with algorithms that influence what content employees see, where and when it appears, how it is organized, and whether it is engaged with.

What AI cannot do is define purpose, nuance, or intent — these remain human responsibilities.

In an AI-driven workplace, Communications must move beyond measuring success by volume and velocity of output and instead be accountable for whether employees receive the information that matters, when it matters, in a form they can trust, and in a way that they can understand and absorb. Redefining the role of Communications around relevance is not an evolution of the function; it’s a requirement for continued influence.

Artificial Intelligence is forcing long-overdue decisions inside organizations — about ownership, governance, and, ultimately, relevance. The question is not whether AI will reshape the digital workplace, but who will shape how it is applied.

For Communications leaders, this moment presents an opportunity to sustain and strengthen  the strategic role the function has earned over time:  defining intent and a company’s narrative and prioritizing meaning.  It demands more than just tool adoption for content creation purposes.  In an AI-driven workplace, relevance is no longer a byproduct of communication — it is a source of influence.

That leadership cannot exist in isolation. As AI increasingly turns technical architecture into lived employee experience, Communications must work alongside IT as a co-designer of the systems that determine what employees see, trust, and act on. Not as a downstream stakeholder or a reviewer of finished decisions, but as a partner shaping outcomes from the start.

The real risk isn’t that AI will replace Communications professionals. It’s that relevance, governance, and intent will be defined elsewhere. The next 12–18 months represent a narrow window for Communications leaders to prevent this from happening.