The All-Staff email has been part of my work life for at least 30 years. Someone has important to say to everyone, they bang away on the keyboard for a bit, add the All-Staff distribution group and hit send. Job done! I received a email recently, that I know would have been better on our Intranet. Was that a good way to communication in the modern age? Here are some thoughts and a video I made recently showing how to use SharePoint instead.

There are some reasons All Staff email is good:

• It creates a record of the communication
• It reaches ‘email only’ users
• Email is convenient and we all know how to use it
• Low effort and efficient for the sender

However, there are some downsides:

• Gets lost in our overloaded inboxes
• It’s a one-way conversation (who replies to all staff email?)
• Poor targeting creates a relevance risk for communication overtime
• Once it’s sent, you can’t fix mistakes
• Productivity hit for recipients when you hit send
• People joining the organisation after it was sent, don’t see it

Is there a better way? As a SharePoint Consultant, I say yes. Now I could recommend using Viva Engage, Org-wide Teams Posts or something else, but I won’t and here’s why.

The Intranet is an “Us” space, a place where we publish information, provide resources and the gateway to company resources. For everyone!

Why create a SharePoint News Post?

Using a News Post for communication rather than an email has some big advantages, especially now that we are all using Copilot in our day-to-day jobs. Here are my top reasons:

• It creates a record of the communication (just like email)
• It can be a two-way interactive conversation (comments)
• It is discoverable into the future by new employees, Copilot and Search
• SharePoint comes with a bunch of beautiful templates to make the communication appealing
• It’s easy to add video and images
• You can easily include dynamic content and webparts to help people take up your call to action or find out more
• The FAQ webpart makes it quick and easy to answer questions people may have about the topic you are communicating on
• You can audience target to the relevant group of people

I am sure some people will say, what about people who don’t have access to SharePoint? Simple, when you hit publish, you get an option to also email the message. Your Comms team will love that the email readers stats showup in New Post Analytics.

Don’t forget that AI in SharePoint can help you author and set the right tone for the communication.

So next time you find your mouse hovering over the send button, ask yourself “do I really want to send this to all staff, or should I post it on SharePoint?”