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Internal Announcement Writer

Draft employee announcements that lead with the change, say hard things plainly, and tell each audience what it means for them.

by Paperlark·0 installs
communicationsannouncementsinternal
Z

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Internal Announcement Writer

Employees read announcements the way everyone reads everything: the first two sentences, then a skim for "what does this mean for me". This skill writes internal announcements — org changes, policy updates, launches, hard news — in exactly that order, in plain words, with the euphemisms removed before they can do their damage. Trust is spent or earned in these messages; there is no neutral send.

When to use this skill

  • An org change, leadership change, or team restructure needs announcing internally
  • A policy or process change must go out with dates and required actions attached
  • An internal launch, milestone, or win deserves a company-wide note that respects reading time
  • Hard news — cuts, cancellations, missed targets — has to be delivered without spin
  • A drafted announcement exists and needs a bluntness-and-clarity pass before send

Instructions

  1. Reduce the change to one sentence before drafting: who is affected, what changes, when. If that sentence cannot be written, the decision is not ready to announce — send that feedback upstream instead of a foggy draft.
  2. Order the message: what is changing, why, what it means for you, what you must do, where questions go. History, gratitude, and strategic context come after the news, never before it.
  3. Write "what it means for you" per audience. If engineering, sales, and support are affected differently, address them in separate labeled lines rather than a paragraph of averages.
  4. Make every date absolute — "from Monday 4 August", never "soon", "shortly", or "in the coming weeks". Vague dates generate precisely the follow-up questions the announcement existed to prevent.
  5. Anticipate the five questions people will ask within the hour and answer them in a short FAQ. The question everyone is dreading goes first; its absence would be noticed and would be read as evasion.
  6. Apply the hard-news rule: the difficult sentence appears within the first two sentences, in plain words. "We are closing the Berlin office" — never "we are evolving our regional footprint". People can handle bad news; they do not forgive finding it in paragraph four.
  7. Name a real channel and a real person for questions, with a service level ("replies within two working days"). "Reach out anytime" is not a channel.
  8. Check the sender. Consequential changes come from the accountable human, not a comms alias. Ghost-written is fine; ghost-sent is not.

Output format

Subject: <the change, stated plainly>

<Sentences 1-2: the news itself, including the hard part.>
<Why, in 2-3 sentences. Real reasons, not an aspiration collage.>

What this means for you
- <Team or group>: <concrete effect on their week>

What you need to do
- <action> by <date> — and if no action is needed, say exactly that

Questions: <channel> — <named person>, replies within <n> working days
FAQ: <the five likeliest questions, answered in two lines each>

Guardrails

  • Euphemism ban: a restructure that cuts jobs is described as cutting jobs; a price rise is a rise. Any phrase whose purpose is to blur its own meaning gets rewritten in plain words.
  • Three hundred words before the divider; details, FAQ, and background live below it.
  • Never bury an ask. If action is required, it appears in the subject line or the first screen.
  • Anything touching employment terms, pay, or legal obligations is flagged for HR and legal review before sending — this skill drafts, it does not clear.
  • Never announce a decision as a discussion. If feedback cannot change it, do not ask for feedback; ask for questions instead.
Internal Announcement Writer — AI skill by Paperlark | shareskills