Inside The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit (GICC): Key Themes and Takeaways

Earlier this month, Sociabble participated as a sponsor and speaker at The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit (GICC), a leading event platform for India’s marketing and corporate communication professionals. 

The event brought together communication heads, practitioners, and technology partners to explore how internal communication continues to evolve as a key driver of employee engagement and business alignment.

The key discussions covered the changing expectations from internal communication teams: from navigating short attention spans and connecting with Gen Z employees, to the increasing use of AI and data-driven communication strategies.

Sociabble was proud to contribute to this dialogue. Our Asia Head, Krusha Malkhani, addressed the audience with an actionable framework for turning employees into informed, engaged brand advocates. Her session, titled The Secret Weapon of Corporate Communication, focused on the practical steps companies can take to build employee trust and advocacy in today’s workplace.

Here are the key highlights from our participation at The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit (GICC).

Key Insights from Krusha Malkhani’s Talk: The Secret Weapon of Corporate Communication

At The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit (GICC), Krusha Malkhani, Asia Head at Sociabble, shared a practical framework to help organizations build stronger internal communication strategies. Her session “The Secret Weapon of Corporate Communication,” focused on how companies can move beyond traditional internal messaging to create informed, engaged, and empowered employee advocates.

Krusha broke the approach into three clear steps:

Step 1: Create an Informed Workforce

Employees cannot engage if they are not informed. Krusha emphasised the importance of meeting employees where they are, across multiple channels such as desktop, mobile apps, newsletters, and digital signage. Internal communications must be inclusive, reaching frontline teams, remote workers, and client-site employees who are often left out of traditional channels.

Beyond access, relevance matters. Content must be personalised to employees’ roles, locations, and interests, avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach. Krusha also stressed the difference between static information and interactive experiences. Employees should be able to comment, react, ask questions, and participate in surveys, rather than simply receive updates passively.

Finally, she underlined the importance of measurement. Using data to track views, clicks, and engagement helps communication teams understand what’s working, identify gaps, and continuously improve their approach.

Key takeaways:

• Deliver content across multiple channels (desktop, mobile, signage, newsletters).
  
• Reach all employee groups, including frontline and remote staff.
  
• Personalise information based on role, location, and relevance.
  
• Enable two-way communication and measure engagement outcomes.

Step 2: Engage Employees

Information alone is not enough. Krusha emphasized the importance for organizations to adopt a variety of content formats to keep employees engaged – ranging from videos and reels to quizzes, polls, and gamified challenges.

She also highlighted the power of recognition. Celebrating employee achievements, milestones, and personal wins helps foster a sense of belonging and community. Leaders across all levels play a critical role in championing engagement efforts.

Importantly, Krusha stressed that communication must be designed around what employees truly care about: purpose, career growth, team spirit, and shared values.

Key takeaways:

• Use dynamic content formats (videos, polls, reels, quizzes).
  

• Recognise employee achievements and milestones.
  

• Create opportunities for community and belonging.
  

• Ensure leaders actively participate in communication efforts.

Step 3: Turn Employees into Advocates

The final focus area addressed employee advocacy. When employees are well-informed and feel connected, they are more likely to speak positively about their company – whether in person, on LinkedIn, or in other digital communities.

Krusha advised organisations to make advocacy easy and rewarding. This starts with providing employees with access to shareable content such as company news, CSR initiatives, campaign updates, and success stories. Clear guidelines and simple tools, including AI-powered caption suggestions, can reduce hesitation and encourage responsible participation.

She also highlighted the value of recognising advocacy efforts through shout-outs, leaderboards, or digital badges. The goal is to turn enthusiastic employees into natural brand ambassadors, supported but never forced.

Key takeaways:

• Make sharing company content simple and accessible.
  
• Offer pre-approved content libraries and AI support for messaging.
  
• Recognise employee advocates through shout-outs, badges, or leaderboards.
  
• Create a structured but voluntary programme to encourage advocacy at scale.
  

  

  
  

Other Key Topics Discussed at The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit

Beyond Sociabble’s session, The 2025 Great Indian Corporate Communication Leaders Summit (GICC) covered a wide range of themes that reflect how internal communication is evolving as a critical business function. From new technologies to changing employee expectations, communication leaders shared valuable lessons and emerging best practices.

Here are some of the standout themes that dominated the discussions:

Technology & Data in Internal Communication

A major theme across multiple sessions was the acceleration of technology adoption in internal communications. Speakers highlighted how AI-powered tools and data-driven platforms are transforming the role of communication teams. 

What used to be manual and time-consuming processes like content creation, message delivery, and campaign tracking are now being automated, allowing teams to focus more on content strategy and employee engagement.

The conversation also addressed the shift towards personalisation at scale. As employee expectations grow, communication must feel relevant and targeted. Segmentation, automation, and analytics are becoming essential tools for internal comms teams to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.

Key discussion points:

• Growing adoption of AI for content creation, automation, and scheduling.
  
• More targeted communication using segmentation to ensure relevance and reduce noise.
  
• Greater reliance on analytics and dashboards to track engagement and optimise content performance.
  

Adapting Communication for Changing Employee Expectations

A recurring discussion at the summit was how communication strategies must evolve to meet the expectations of younger, digitally fluent employees, particularly Gen Z. Several speakers highlighted how this generation’s information consumption habits are forcing communication teams to rethink both what they say and how they say it.

Gen Z employees expect communication to be fast, authentic, and interactive. Traditional formats such as long emails or intranet articles often fail to capture their attention. Instead, they respond better to visual storytelling, short-form video content, and formats that mimic the experience of platforms they use outside of work, such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

The tone of communication also matters. Companies shared how they are experimenting with more informal, relatable messaging, as well as opportunities for employees to co-create content, share experiences, and participate in internal campaigns. The message was clear: if organisations want to engage Gen Z employees, they must meet them on their terms.

Key discussion points:

• Rethinking tone, platforms, and formats to appeal to Gen Z expectations.
  
• Moving towards short-form, visual, and mobile-first content.
  
• Using storytelling, memes, polls, and employee-generated content to drive engagement.
  
• Ensuring hybrid, remote, and frontline employees still feel included and informed.
  

Leadership, Strategy, and the Evolving Role of Internal Communication

The final core theme was about redefining the internal communication function itself. As employee engagement and organisational culture become key business priorities, internal communication leaders are being asked to step up as strategic partners.

There was broad agreement that internal comms teams are no longer viewed only as a messaging function, but as critical contributors to business performance. Speakers shared examples of how their organisations are investing more time and resources into internal communication. 

There were also calls for leadership to communicate with greater vulnerability and authenticity, especially in times of uncertainty or crisis. Yet the challenge remains: how can internal communication teams better prove their business value and move from a cost centre to a strategic enabler?

Key discussion points:

• Significant increase in time, resources, and budgets being allocated to internal communication.
  
• Communication leaders pushing for a stronger voice at the leadership table.
  
• Call for more open, vulnerable, and transparent communication from leaders.
  
• Clearer alignment between internal communication strategies and wider business objectives.
  
• Ongoing challenge of demonstrating internal communication’s direct impact on business results.
  
• Growing overlap between internal and external communication roles, with teams collaborating more closely.

How Sociabble Enhances Corporate Communication

Many of the challenges raised at GICC are ones that Sociabble helps our clients address every day. From information overload and inconsistent engagement, to building an active culture of employee advocacy, these are familiar conversations for our team.

Multichannel access is a core strength of the Sociabble platform. We help organisations deliver content seamlessly across channels – desktop, mobile apps, newsletters, Microsoft Teams, even digital signage – ensuring no employee segment is left behind. 

Messages can be personalised by role, location, and interest, so that employees receive content that matters to them. As several speakers highlighted, measurement is just as important as delivery. Sociabble provides detailed analytics so teams can see what works, where engagement drops off, and how to refine future communication.

The event also showed how employee expectations are shifting from receiving updates to creating experiences. Sociabble enables teams to design internal campaigns using videos, polls, surveys, quizzes, and even gamified challenges that invite employees to participate and share. 

Finally, companies shared how they want employees to become ambassadors, but often lack the tools to make this easy. Sociabble simplifies this by offering pre-approved content libraries, AI-powered message suggestions, and simple sharing options. We also help organisations motivate participation with leaderboards, digital badges, and recognition for their most active advocates.

The solutions may vary by company, but the goal is universal: to build internal communication that connects, inspires, and empowers employees at every level.

We’ve already partnered with industry leaders around the globe to optimize employee communications, including names like Coca-Cola CCEP, Primark, and L’Occitane en Provence. And we’d love to discuss ways we can help your company get the most out of its internal comms, too. Book a free, personalized demo with Sociabble today.