Research with People at the Center
For Dr. Laura Lemon, understanding organizations begins with understanding the people who make them work. As an associate professor in the College of Communication and Informational Sciences, her award-winning research focuses on internal public relations, particularly internal communication, and employee engagement, with an emphasis on how employees experience communication within their organizations.
Centering the Employee Experience
Many organizations focus heavily on productivity and outcomes, but Lemon’s work highlights the importance of employees as a central audience in organizational success. By examining how employees interpret and give meaning to their experiences at work, her research helps practitioners develop more meaningful internal communication strategies.
“Employees are an organization’s most meaningful audience,” Lemon says. “Without them, there is no organization.”
Her research moves beyond traditional management-centered views of employee engagement by focusing on employees’ lived experiences and how internal audiences co-create meaning through communication. As a qualitative researcher, Lemon also incorporates mindfulness into her research process to capture deeper insights from participants and their stories.
Before entering academia, Lemon spent more than seven years working for nonprofit organizations in Denver, where she focused on fundraising and event planning. Her professional experiences shaped her interest in studying workplace communication.
“I know what it is like to be an undervalued employee,” Lemon states. “I was responsible for raising nearly a million dollars annually during the recession, yet I was on furlough for over three years with no raise.”
From Lived Experience to Lasting Impact
These lived experiences now fuel her current projects, including a Page Center–funded study with the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder. The team is investigating how artificial intelligence (AI) may influence employee disengagement by replacing social connections with automated processes. Early insights suggest that as technology becomes more integrated into the workplace, it may begin to replace certain social connections between employees, raising important questions about connection and belonging at work.
Beyond research, Lemon has also applied her work directly to organizations. In a multi-site case study of a government contractor, she examined how internal communication influenced employee engagement during periods of major organizational change. Insights from the study were shared with leadership, leading the organization to implement changes to its internal communication practices.
By centering employee experiences in her research, Lemon aims to help organizations build more supportive and meaningful workplaces, ensuring that communication within organizations helps both employees and leadership alike.
