Hump Day Hype –Turning Internal Communications Into Employee Engagement

The Challenge

At Senior Smiles Dentistry, important company announcements and communications were often competing with the demands of busy dental practices. Doctors and employees were focused on patients, schedules, and day-to-day operations, making it easy for important emails to get overlooked.

The challenge was to create an internal communication channel that employees would actually want to open, read, and participate in—rather than another corporate email that could be ignored.

The Strategy

I created Hump Day Hype, a weekly internal newsletter designed to make company communication more engaging, interactive, and fun. Rather than simply delivering information, the newsletter combined useful company updates with humor, recognition, gamification, and employee-generated content. The goal was to create a recurring communication that employees looked forward to receiving while reinforcing important company information.

The Creation: Hump Day Hype

Each weekly edition featured several recurring components:

🦷 Weekly Dental Humor Comic

I created a weekly dental-themed comic to bring personality and humor into the newsletter.Employees and doctors could submit ideas, funny situations, or real stories from their practices, which I turned into comic concepts. This gave employees an opportunity to contribute directly to the content and helped make the newsletter feel relevant to the people receiving it.

🧠 Trivia + Gamification

Each newsletter included a trivia question tied to information shared in previous editions.The concept encouraged employees to actually read and retain company communications, because answers could be found by going back through past newsletters.

Correct answers were entered into an end-of-month raffle, giving employees an additional incentive to engage with the content.

📣 The “Need to Know” Section

The newsletter included a dedicated Need to Know section containing the most important company announcements, updates, deadlines, and information employees needed to be aware of.

This created a consistent destination for critical communications while keeping them easy to find within the newsletter.

⭐ Employee Spotlight

The Employee Spotlight highlighted an employee nominated by their peers.Employees submitted nominations recognizing coworkers for their contributions, and a selected nominee was featured in the newsletter.This transformed internal communication from simply company-to-employee into employee-to-employee recognition, helping reinforce a culture of appreciation.

Social Media Integration

The Hump Day Hype newsletter also supported Senior Smiles’ external social media strategy.Employee Spotlight content could be repurposed for social media, extending internal recognition into the brand’s public-facing channels. Dental humor developed for the newsletter could also be adapted into social content.

This created a connection between internal culture and external brand communication, while allowing content to serve multiple marketing purposes.

The Results

Over the course of three months and consistent weekly editions, Hump Day Hype became a successful internal engagement initiative.

• 90% newsletter open rate
• 50% employee participation in the trivia questions
• 50% doctor participation in the trivia questions
• Increased opportunities for peer recognition and employee-generated content
• Created a repeatable channel for companywide announcements and communication
• Generated content that could be repurposed for Senior Smiles’ social media channels

Hump Day Hype demonstrated that internal communications don’t have to feel corporate or transactional.

By combining useful information + humor + recognition + gamification + employee participation, I created a communication format that employees actively engaged with.

The initiative turned a traditional weekly newsletter into an employee engagement platform—one that helped Senior Smiles communicate important information while strengthening connection and participation across the organization.

Key Takeaway

When communication competes with a busy workday, engagement has to be designed into the experience.

Hump Day Hype made company communication something employees had a reason to open, participate in, and remember.