With Diwali decorations up in the grocery shops and celebratory posts appearing across social media, at Alive we often ask ourselves this one question:
What does the Diwali message on the intranet feel like to the people it’s written for?
For an internal comms team juggling deadlines, campaigns and a busy cultural calendar, the process can look something like this:
Find last year’s post. Change the date. Refresh the graphic. Give the copy a quick once-over.
“Happy Diwali to all our colleagues celebrating!”
Approved. Scheduled. Next job.
It’s an understandable routine. But when a cultural moment becomes a recurring publishing task, it’s easy to lose sight of the employee experience behind it.
Does the message reflect colleagues’ lives? Can they act on the invitation? Does what we say match what happens at work?
These are internal comms questions – and they deserve a fresh look each year.
Give the message a job
A warm greeting can be enough. Every celebration doesn’t need a campaign, a video and a downloadable toolkit. But be clear about what you want the communication to achieve.
- Are you acknowledging something important to colleagues?
- Sharing an invitation?
- Helping managers plan around people’s celebrations?
- Creating space for employees to share what Diwali means to them?
A common mistake is trying to do all of this in one intranet post. The greeting, event details, employee interview and manager guidance compete for attention. Readers have to work out which parts matter to them.
Choose a purpose, then build around it.
Leave room for a different answer
An annual request for employee stories can become surprisingly fixed.
“Could you tell us about the food, the clothes and how your family celebrates?”
You might get lovely answers. But you’ve already decided which parts of the experience belong in the story.
If every contribution follows that pattern, colleagues may feel there’s only room for a colourful, cheerful version of their experience. The things they actually want others to understand can get squeezed out.
Another easy mistake is presenting one person’s account as an explanation of how everyone celebrates. That puts pressure on the contributor to represent people whose experiences may be very different.
A more open invitation could be: “What would you like colleagues to understand about Diwali?”
Let contributors shape what follows. Make participation optional, allow time and give people a chance to review their words. Present their story as their own.
And if last year’s contributor would rather just enjoy their celebrations this year, that’s absolutely fine.
Check the words you reach for
Familiar phrases can slip into internal comms without much thought. It’s important not to position some employees as outsiders in their own workplace. The writer may intend enthusiasm, but the reader may feel they’re being treated as a curiosity.
Acas warns that small comments and questions, even when unintentionally offensive, can leave people feeling that they don’t belong. For internal comms teams, that’s a reason to consider whose perspective our words assume. “Their different traditions” might sound welcoming – but different from whose?
A more direct invitation, such as “Discover how colleagues celebrate Diwali”, creates space for people to share without framing their experience as unusual.
Keep the language warm, specific and straightforward. Check cultural details rather than carrying them over from last year’s copy. Give the imagery the same attention.
An avoidable error can be particularly frustrating for employees who spot it immediately. It may suggest that publishing on time mattered more than understanding the occasion.
Build a reliable checking process into the plan, with enough time to act on feedback.
Fresh doesn’t have to mean bigger
There’s pressure in creative work to produce something new every time.
But a thoughtful update might be small: a clearer invitation, a corrected assumption, a different way to contribute or a change prompted by last year’s feedback.
Use Diwali as a reason to look again at who your internal comms reaches and how it lands.
Before you change the date, ask what you’ve learned. Then let colleagues see the difference.
Got a recurring comms moment that needs a fresh approach?
Bring us last year’s post, this year’s brief or the cultural calendar you’re struggling to keep up with. We’ll help you sharpen the purpose, find the story and create internal comms that feel relevant to the people receiving them.
Email hello@alivewithideas.com and tell us what’s coming up.
And from all of us here at Alive, Happy Diwali!
