Internal communications during a merger: making SharePoint work when it matters most
I’ve seen this many times as a consultant:
A merger or acquisition has just been announced. Leadership is under pressure. Employees are anxious, distracted, and already reading between the lines. Two cultures, often with very different ways of working, are suddenly expected to feel like one organisation.
Somewhere in the middle sits the employee communications lead, trying to create clarity, calm, and confidence using the tools they already have.
In organisations of 100 to 1,000 employees, this moment is especially intense. There’s enough scale for complexity to matter, but rarely enough time, budget, or political headroom for a big intranet rethink. You’re expected to move fast, communicate clearly, and bring people with you, all while still running business-as-usual communications.
Over the last 15+ years working alongside internal comms teams using SharePoint, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat itself during mergers. The pressure isn’t just about what you say. It’s about how it lands, emotionally, visually, and how you capture feedback and sentiment.
That’s usually where things start to creak.
Why mergers so often break internal communications
Most internal comms teams don’t fail during mergers. The platforms they rely on simply weren’t designed for this kind of moment.
SharePoint is strong at many things. Governance. Document management. Publishing news at scale. But during a merger, internal communications needs to do something different.
It needs to cut through uncertainty and rumour.
It needs to signal leadership presence and intent.
It needs to create emotional reassurance, not just updates.
It needs to provide a clear narrative people can follow.
Standard SharePoint news layouts are flat and functional. Everything looks similar. Big messages compete visually with small ones. Over time, employees learn, often subconsciously, that “news” doesn’t demand their attention.
Visibility is another challenge. Even well-written merger updates can disappear into feeds, pages, or email digests that employees skim past. Feedback is usually limited, delayed, or too shallow to give you real confidence about how things are landing. Trying to poll people with a Microsoft Form is frustratingly inadequate.
This isn’t a people problem. It’s a mismatch between what the moment requires and what the default communications layer delivers.
What comms leaders actually need in a merger moment
When organisations are merging, internal communications has to work harder, but also smarter.
From what I’ve seen, comms leaders need five things above all else.
1. Clarity and consistency
One narrative. One place to go. One voice that employees recognise and trust.
2. Emotional resonance
People don’t engage with mergers through policy updates. They engage through stories, visuals, and visible leadership.
3. Strong visual hierarchy
Employees should instantly recognise what matters today versus what’s background context.
4. Two-way communication
Not a survey three months later, but ongoing signals, sentiment, and questions you can respond to quickly.
5. Speed without ceremony
You don’t have time for six-week discovery phases, steering groups, or design councils. You need improvements that show impact now.
That combination is hard to achieve if internal comms is treated purely as content publishing rather than experience design.
How to get the best out of SharePoint right now
Before talking about what’s missing, it’s worth being honest about what does help, if used deliberately.
Create a single source of truth
A clear Home site or merger hub matters. Not five separate pages. Not a sprawl of links. One place that leaders reference consistently and employees learn to trust.
Use Hub sites to unify, not just aggregate
If you’re bringing two organisations together, a shared hub can signal unity, but only if the content feels intentionally curated rather than mechanically rolled up.
Be intentional with news
Not everything deserves equal weight. Fewer, more meaningful posts with a clear cadence often outperform frequent low-impact updates.
Pair news with email deliberately
Email still matters during mergers. Use it as a front door, not a dumping ground. Drive people to a consistent experience rather than fragmented messages.
Establish visible ownership
Employees want to know who is speaking to them. Named leaders, consistent voices, and recognisable patterns build trust.
Use simple feedback where possible
Quick polls, reactions, or lightweight sentiment checks can help, even if they’re imperfect.
All of this helps. I’ve seen teams stabilise chaotic moments using exactly these tactics.
But there’s usually a ceiling.
Where SharePoint starts to show its limits
Even with best practice, SharePoint on its own often struggles to deliver what mergers demand most.
High-impact storytelling is difficult when every message looks structurally similar.
Visual engagement is limited when layouts prioritise uniformity over emotion.
Feedback loops are slow when insight relies on separate tools, delayed surveys, or manual interpretation.
Most importantly, it’s hard to create a sense of momentum. That feeling that something is happening and that you’re part of it is difficult to achieve using static publishing patterns.
This isn’t about bashing SharePoint. It does what it was designed to do. Mergers simply expose a gap between publishing information and shaping experience.
That gap is where employee confidence often leaks away.
Why I’m building Dexy
Dexy exists because I’ve watched this same scenario play out too many times.
Good comms people. High-stakes change. Tools that make powerful storytelling harder than it should be.
I’m building Dexy as a communications experience layer for Microsoft 365. Not a replacement intranet. Not another long transformation programme. Something that sits alongside SharePoint and helps internal comms teams:
Create stronger visual hierarchy
Deliver messages with emotional weight
Improve engagement without complexity
Understand what’s landing, quickly
It’s designed for moments like mergers, rebrands, and leadership transitions. Moments where you don’t need more features, you need better impact.
Dexy is about speed, focus, and respect for the reality comms teams live in. It’s the result of pattern recognition after years of watching teams push SharePoint as far as it will go and still feel something missing.
A final reassurance
If you’re navigating a merger right now and internal communications feels heavier than ever, you’re not imagining it.
This is one of the hardest moments for comms leaders. The emotional load is high. Expectations are relentless. The tools don’t always help.
But meaningful improvement doesn’t require a year-long intranet rebuild. Small shifts in experience, visibility, and feedback can change how employees feel surprisingly quickly.
I’ve seen it happen, again and again.
Dexy is being built because this moment matters. And because internal communications deserves tools that rise to it, not get in the way.