Content curation is the source of a lot of buzz these days, with nearly all the conversation focused on ways to become a trusted guide to useful content about targeted topics. There’s an equally interesting role for content curation as an internal communications activity. Here are five curation approaches that can help employees.

Company positions and statements

Most organizations’s official statements and positions on issues are scattered in a variety of locations. Some are contained in press releases in response to an emerging story, some are buried among scores of policies, others are announced with fanfare usually reserved for product launches.

Employees are frequently queried by their social communities about their employers’ positions on subjects ranging from hiring practices to sustainability. Uncomfortable with trying to articulate the official stance themselves, many employees would prefer to provide a link to the authoritative statement of record—if only they knew where they could find it. A one-stop shop that contains all the company’s official statements would make that a lot easier.

External news

It’s hardly unusual for a company to share external news about the organization, the industry and the marketplace as a regular intranet feature. Almost always, though, these are feeds provided by an outside service like NewsEdge. A truly curated resource would provide greater value, with communicators culling through external content, selecting the best, the most interesting, the most relevant, and adding context by explaining why the story was included. This approach can prove far more useful to employees who want to stay up to speed on how the external world perceives the organization.

Key issues the company deals with

Hospitals cope daily with compliance with HIPAA, the patient privacy regulation. Curating a collection of articles that provide deeper understanding and insight into HIPAA could be a usful resource on a hospital intranet. Similarly, food companies address topics like nutrition and manufacturers with safety. Curated collections here could also prove useful, providing a one-stop shop for employees looking to get the latest information on these topics from the best online resources.

Company events

You go to the quarterly town hall meeting where company leaders give overviews of three or four topics that are important to the company. You go back to your office wondering where you can learn more. Wouldn’t it be great if, when preparing to support the company leadership, the employee communications department had prepared curated material on each of the themes, letting employees who are interested delve deeper?

Guides to core company skills

Every company employs specialists in its industry. Oil companies have pipeline engineers, for example. Pharamaceutical companies have chemists. IT companies have programmers. Internal communicators can support their efforts by collecting the best information on the web into guides that would help these professionals stay current with the latest thinking from their fields.

How else might you adopt content curation as a communication channel to enhance your internal communication efforts?