Scott McKenzie, lead counsel, change and internal comms at H+K, will join Lansons in December as a board director to lead the new practice.
He has been at H+K since June 2006, working on change comms projects for a broad range of multinational firms including Shell, Yahoo, Rolls-Royce and Rio Tinto. He has also held senior comms and marketing positions at NatWest, RBS and Lloyds TSB, and has chaired CIPR Inside, the PR industry body's specialist group for internal comms.
Lansons co-founder and chief executive Tony Langham commented: 'Internal comms is one of the fastest growing areas of PR.
'For major corporations, ensuring their employees are engaged with the company and its objectives is a business imperative.'
Langham added that the creation of an internal comms practice was a natural extension of its growing work in the corporate and b2b space.
McKenzie commented: 'The most recent UK Government research indicates that only one in three employees genuinely feels engaged with their place of work. That is clearly a huge concern for UK plc and so opens up significant opportunities to offer clients the most innovative, expert and pragmatic counsel.
'Clearly Lansons are already well known for their progressive thinking in this area with regard to their own employees, so this new offer feels like a very natural extension.'
Last month Lansons was named as the mid-sized agency winner in PRWeek's Best Places to Work 2012 awards.
Earlier this month, the CIPR attempted to address what it called the 'under-recognised' discipline of internal comms with a new set of principles to help organisations evaluate their offering.
