The Challenge
At Dell Technologies, the internal communications team faced a familiar challenge: how do you connect 120,000+ employees across geographies, functions, and cultures with a unified narrative that still feels personal?
They needed more than top-down messaging. They needed employee-driven storytelling, something authentic, scalable, and flexible enough to support everything from town halls to onboarding to DEI campaigns.
The IC Opportunity
Instead of siloed testimonials or one-off campaigns, Dell’s IC and employer brand teams partnered to build a global storytelling library: a curated content hub full of real employee stories, adapted for internal and external use.
What They Did Differently
- Conducted in-depth interviews with 67 employees across various roles and countries
- Developed over 30 culturally adapted video stories with multilingual captions
- Captured thousands of images and quotes tagged by audience, theme, and geography
- Created a searchable internal portal for IC and HR teams to instantly access storytelling assets based on message needs
How IC Teams Use It
- To personalize values communication by embedding real stories in leadership decks and newsletters
- To spotlight culture in onboarding journeys
- To amplify global voices during recognition campaigns or moments of change
- To move from generic talking points to emotionally resonant storytelling at scale
What Changed
Instead of struggling to “humanize” messaging under pressure, IC teams at Dell now pull from a rich ecosystem of authentic content built for agility and resonance. One team member described it as “our go-to source of trust-building content”.
Takeaway
You don’t need Dell’s scale to learn from this. Even a simple storytelling drive, recorded Zoom calls, written reflections, or themed spotlights, can evolve into a searchable bank that transforms how your team communicates.
