Internal communication is one of the biggest challenges for large companies. As an organisation grows and expands its operations across multiple locations, sites or stores, keeping every employee informed and connected becomes increasingly complex, especially when a large part of the workforce doesn’t have permanent access to a computer or a corporate email address. Information ends up scattered across channels that don’t talk to each other, and HR loses visibility over what it receives and resolves.
It’s one of the challenges Humand helps solve: centralising communication and employee support in one place, regardless of the size of the business. Throughout this article we use OXXO, the largest retail chain in Latin America, as an example to show how this problem looks in practice and what’s needed to solve it at scale.
Signs that internal communication is fragmented
Before thinking about a solution, it helps to identify the problem. These are the most common warning signs:
- Messages don’t reach everyone equally. When communication depends on supervisors, message chains or informal channels, it’s hard to guarantee that every employee receives the same information at the same time.
- Information is spread across too many channels. WhatsApp, physical noticeboards, email, informal groups: when several channels coexist without a clear criterion, employees don’t know where to look, and HR loses visibility over what’s been communicated.
- HR spends a disproportionate amount of time on repetitive tasks. Queries about holidays, payslips or internal policies, which could resolve themselves, end up taking time away from higher-impact initiatives.
- There’s no way to measure whether messages were read. Without data on reach, open rates or engagement, it’s impossible to know whether a communication achieved its goal or got lost along the way.
This is the situation OXXO faced before working with Humand: there was no visibility over the volume of enquiries the company received, and much of the operation depended on disconnected channels.
What a scalable communication strategy needs
Solving this doesn’t depend on company size, but on having a strategy designed to scale:
A centralised channel. Institutional information is published once and reaches every employee, with certainty, without depending on someone else passing it on.
Self-service for employees. Tasks such as payslips, letters or insurance queries get resolved without relying on an intermediary, freeing up time in both small HR teams and large structures alike.
Automating the first line of support. An AI-powered chatbot answers frequent queries instantly, leaving the HR team available for the cases that genuinely require their judgement.
Tracking metrics. Without data on reach, open rates and engagement, there’s no way to know whether the strategy is working.
How OXXO applied it
OXXO translated this into three concrete areas. Knowledge libraries replaced scattered channels and centralised the company’s key documentation in a single space, accessible to its 150,000 employees. A portal centralised more than 100 HR processes in one place. And an AI-powered chatbot (Sammy, rolled out to 20,000 employees) automated the first line of enquiries, resulting in a 94 % increase in overall efficiency and 118 hours of monthly savings per agent.
The overall result: 90 % user activation on the platform and 80 % of employees active every month. The shift went beyond operations: with clear access to information, teams became more focused, which improved customer service in every store.
Metrics worth tracking
To know whether an internal communication strategy is working, in any company, it’s worth monitoring:
- Open rates and reach of communications.
- Participation in internal surveys.
- Platform activation and adoption rate (90 % at OXXO).
- Employees active on a regular basis (80 % monthly at OXXO).
- Volume of enquiries resolved without an intermediary.
This isn’t a problem exclusive to giants like OXXO
Scattered channels, HR with no visibility, employees left far from a simple answer: these are symptoms of the same underlying problem, and they show up in any company that grows, not only the biggest ones. OXXO is simply the largest, most visible example. The same approach, centralise, automate and measure, works for any company that starts to notice its communication getting out of hand.
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