How do we help employees explain our business?

Find the stories in existing business material rather than expecting employees to turn dense information into accessible explanations themselves. Case studies, technical documentation, press materials and internal content can hold useful accounts of the organisation's work, but their original formats may make them difficult to remember or share.

At IBM, employees had extensive knowledge and access to powerful stories, yet much of the material was buried in documents intended for technical or enterprise audiences. The storytelling platform developed for IBM drew on a wide library of case studies and internal materials, distilling complex information into concise narratives. Use the same approach: treat existing documents as the factual foundation, then do the editorial work needed to give employees a clear account they can use.

Connect complex work to everyday experiences so employees have concrete examples to use when explaining the business. Look for familiar objects, places and human experiences that make a technical achievement tangible, then describe the connection in simple, memorable language.

For IBM, the storytelling approach centred on the everyday relevance of its innovations. Rather than asking employees to explain complex technologies in isolation, the approach connected the technologies to the world around them, giving employees material suited to professional and personal conversations. The practical task is to identify the recognisable experience through which someone can understand the work.

The Institute of Internal Communication reported in 2025 that Experian's We Do That campaign used colleague storytelling to show employees how their work improves people's financial health and make the company's purpose more human.

Package the stories for easy sharing by creating concise, visually engaging story nuggets and keeping them in a reusable library. Give employees accessible material rather than leaving them to reconstruct the business story from long documents.

For IBM, complex information became short narratives linking innovations to familiar objects, places and human experiences. The stories appeared on a dedicated website, social channels, YouTube, internal communications, environmental branding, printed books and event cards. Across the formats, the shared narrative was that IBM's technologies quietly shape the modern world.

The This is IBM campaign ran from 2019 to 2023, growing from a UK and Ireland website into printed promotional assets, event stands and geography-specific web pages across Europe and Asia. A practical model is a shared story library with materials that can be adapted for different locations while retaining a consistent account of the business.