Poppulo provides an omnichannel employee experience and digital signage platform that helps large organizations personalize communications, boost employee engagement, and manage workplace environments. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Poppulo CEO Ruth Fornell to learn more.
Background and Leadership Perspective
Can you share a bit about your background and the experiences that shaped how you lead today? Fornell said:
“I’ve spent most of my career working inside organizations going through a lot of change. This has certainly benefited me during my tenure at Poppulo, where we often work with customers going through organizational change.”
“What really stuck with me was how often strong strategies fall apart simply because people are confused, overloaded, or don’t understand the ‘why.’ That’s shaped how I lead today. I try to stay close to our customers, make decisions grounded in real employee experience, and keep the focus on clarity and accountability instead of adding more noise.”
Problem Being Solved
When you first joined Poppulo, what problem felt most important to solve — and why? Fornell shared:
“One thing I’ve learned throughout my career is that high-quality communication is inextricably intertwined with employee experience and, ultimately, performance. Unclear priorities and expectations have a direct correlation to a drop in productivity.”
“That was the global landscape I stepped into when I joined Poppulo. Large enterprises were grappling with two related challenges. The first was reach. Many organizations struggled to connect meaningfully with their entire workforce, especially frontline and distributed employees. If people couldn’t easily access company communications, they were effectively cut off from what was happening around them.”
“The second challenge was relevance. To reach everyone, organizations had to use more channels, which meant employees were suddenly dealing with a lot more information. For organizations without the ability to tailor messages to different audiences, that volume often worked against them. People started to skim, ignore, or tune out altogether.”
“These were the problems Poppulo was built to address from the beginning, as one of the early pioneers of employee communications software. From the outset, the emphasis was on communication that would fit naturally into people’s working day—so it supports the experience of work rather than adding friction to it.”
Success Definition
How do you think about success today, beyond traditional growth metrics? Fornell substantiated:
“For us, it’s also about adoption and impact of company communications – i.e. are leaders using communication strategically to drive real outcomes, and are employees empowered to do their best work? Measuring engagement, alignment, and execution in real time is critically important in gauging success – and we are helping companies realize that by empowering internal comms and HR teams to exceed their employees’, and in turn their customers’ expectations.”
Company Vision and Market Context
The way organizations operate has changed significantly over the past few years. How has that shift influenced the company’s direction? Fornell detailed:
“The increased focus on engaging both customers and employees is a result of the realization that employee experience, workplace experience and customer experience are completely interconnected.”
“Organizations are working faster, with more complexity, and with less margin for error, which has made alignment and clarity more critical than ever. Experience (and comms) is core to how companies reduce risk and improve business outcomes. We’ve moved from enabling communication as a one-way activity to helping leaders connect communication directly to execution and employee experience. Our focus is on real-time insight and AI-assisted workflows that let leaders see what people understand, where teams are ready to act, and where support is needed.”
How AI Helps
As more organizations experiment with AI, what have you learned about where it helps — and where it often falls short? Fornell described:
“We are leading the conversation on integrating AI thoughtfully and aligning it with strategic objectives. By doing this, organizations can transform their internal communications into a powerful tool for driving employee engagement and achieving business success. We have done this by taking a pragmatic approach.”
“Poppulo’s Agentic AI, embedded directly into communications and workflows, helps teams concentrate effort, surface early indicators, and respond with confidence.The goal is to reduce complexity and increase efficiency. AI helps short-staffed teams execute better and with speed, quality, and clarity.”
“AI falls short when an organization implements it as a vague aspiration without a clear, attainable goal. It needs a clear purpose. Poppulo’s Agentic AI supports personalization and prioritization to generate early signals leaders can act on in a clear, impactful way.”
Employee Experience and Alignment
We continue to see engagement levels struggle across industries. From your perspective, what’s really driving that? Fornell elaborated:
“Engagement is often treated as the goal. In practice, it’s the outcome. Employee experience is what gets you there, shaped in large part by how work is communicated. Employee experience defines employee engagement. According to McKinsey research, a positive employee experience leads to 16 times the engagement level of employees with a negative experience. That group is eight times more likely to want to stay at a company.”
“Engagement struggles often come down to clarity and connection. Employees are asked to navigate constant change without always understanding priorities, what is expected of them, or why decisions are being made. When communication is inconsistent or one-way, employees disengage and productivity suffers. Organizations that invest in continuous, clear, and actionable communication help employees understand their role, feel empowered, and stay aligned with the work that matters most.”
Turning Strategy Into Execution
Where do you most often see things break down when organizations are trying to turn strategy into execution? Fornell revealed:
“For years, employee communication was treated primarily as a delivery mechanism: get the message out, hope it lands, measure activity, move on. That era is over – and we saw it coming.”
“Today, communication is inseparable from employee experience and performance. It is part of the operating system, the operating platform and the fabric of a company to reduce risk and improve results. When priorities aren’t clear, productivity drops. When people don’t understand what’s changing or why, risk increases. When alignment breaks down, strategy fails.”
“I’ve spent enough time with executive teams over the years to know this isn’t theoretical. It shows up in missed targets, stalled transformations, missed commitments to shareholders, and organizations that look busy but aren’t actually moving forward together.”
“What organizations need now is an approach rooted in day-to-day employee experience—one that connects communication to execution, and insight to action. They need a single platform that lowers risk, delivers incredible experiences, and improves results. That’s Poppulo.”
What Leaders Underestimate
What do leaders tend to underestimate when it comes to communication and driving action? Fornell pointed out:
“Across every industry, leaders are being asked to move faster, execute cleaner, and deliver outcomes with less margin for error. Communications teams are under pressure. HR leaders are expected to drive measurable behavior change. IT is tasked with enabling innovation while reducing risk. These aren’t separate problems. They’re the same problem showing up in different functions.”
Growth, milestones and Market Opportunity
Are you able to share any high-level context around growth or investment? Fornell revealed:
“We are always looking for ways to better serve our customers. Our company is deeply committed to providing best-in-class solutions for internal communications and digital signage. There is strong demand from organizations that recognize communication as a critical business function, not just a support activity, and we strive every day to provide innovative solutions for those demands.”
Supporting Employees At Scale
How do you see the market evolving as companies rethink how they support employees at scale? Fornell predicts:
“Companies are increasingly focused on aligning communication with day-to-day employee experience. By using Poppulo’s AI-powered multichannel analytics for real-time insights, leaders can find out faster where to concentrate effort, and act with confidence as they communicate across the enterprise. The renewed focus and goal is sustained clarity and engagement, not just sending more messages.”
Differentiation and Future Direction
In a crowded space, what do you believe truly sets your approach apart? Fornell affirmed:
“We are transforming how leaders align, assure, and activate their employees… automatically. This is what sets us apart. We focus on outcomes, not just activity. Whether employees understand, and thereby connect communication directly into workflows, drives real impact. We work with companies around the world to put this into practice, and measure the success of the initiative.”
Making Communication Move Work Forward
What do leaders need to reconsider if they want communication to actually move work forward? Fornell emphasized:
“I’ve seen time and again that engaged employees will figure things out. They just get it. And while that still holds true, the context has changed. Today, communication and leadership are measured not by activity, but by tangible outcomes.”
Key Priorities
Looking ahead, what are the key priorities for the next 12–24 months? Fornell concluded:
“We will continue to evolve our platform to provide real-time insight, AI-assisted workflows, and alignment across functions. Another key focus is enabling leaders to act with confidence while maintaining trust, security, and governance.”
“The pace of change is not slowing, for us, or for our customers. We’re expanding our focus from enabling communication to helping leaders deliver superior outcomes across the employee experience, which is key to customer experience and the financial bottom line.”
