Many businesses document best practices and procedures for communicating properly with clients, customers, and partners, but neglect to apply the same level of attention to internal communications. An effective internal communications strategy can dramatically improve your organization’s culture, employee engagement, and daily operations.
However, designing a solid internal communications strategy can be daunting, especially for businesses that are rapidly growing and hiring new employees. Here’s everything you need to know about internal communications and how to implement an effective strategy.
[Read more: 6 Things Every Boss Should Do to Build an Amazing Company Culture]
What is in an internal communications plan?
Fundamentally, an internal communications plan provides a clear roadmap to provide consistent and efficient communication with employees. The goal is to help employees feel informed about the business, specific company goals, and what they can do to succeed within the organization.
Internal communication strategies vary based on the specific needs of a business, but they all should have seven fundamental components:
- Analysis: A complete overview of the current internal communications process. If your business doesn’t have a formal internal communications plan in place, the analysis should include how teams actually communicate within the organization.
- Goals: What do you want your plan to accomplish? Consider your business’s overall mission and how implementing an internal communications strategy will help you achieve it. When possible, set SMART goals to achieve desirable results.
- Audience: Consider your entire business as well as individual teams when identifying your audience. How does the accounting department prefer to receive information versus the marketing department?
- Message: Outline what specific information you want or need to include in your messaging. Why do these topics need to be communicated?
- Channel: What is the best platform for employees to receive internal communications? Many companies default to email communications, but you can also consider using messaging apps like Slack or employee advocacy tools like Sociabble or EveryoneSocial.
- Schedule: A consistent schedule is key to an internal communication strategy. Consider the timing of sensitive or important information to ensure everyone receives the same message simultaneously.
- Metrics: Finally, determine your key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure how effective your communication strategy is and where it needs improvement.
Once you’ve written your plan, take the next steps to implement your internal communications strategy.
How to implement an internal communications plan
These steps will take your plan from idea to activity.
Create a communications calendar
An editorial calendar or communications tracker gives you a complete overview of the channels and messages that are going out over the next month. Use this tracker to schedule different campaigns and develop a consistent cadence with your various internal communications. This tool will also help you avoid messaging fatigue.
“The key is [to schedule] enough communications to keep what’s important on people’s radars, but not too much that it becomes noise and people tune out,” wrote The Grossman Group, an internal communications consulting firm.
Create approval workflows
“A key part of planning out your internal communication strategy is creating an approval process for your content. This will prevent any unnecessary errors, confidential comments or news from accidentally being published to the wrong segments of your team,” wrote Sprout Social.
Depending on the size of your company, you may need multiple managers or senior leaders to review your internal content. Establish the process and put tools in place that make getting the approvals and avoiding bottlenecks easy.
Make internal communication a two-way street
Internal communication should really be more of a conversation than a one-directional campaign. Internal communication creates a company culture by inviting others to participate. Therefore, create spaces where employees can react to your messaging, ask questions, and provide feedback regularly.
The key is [to schedule] enough communications to keep what’s important on people’s radars, but not too much that it becomes noise and people tune out.
David Grossman, The Grossman Group
Make high-value content
Be discerning in what you choose to share. Again, message fatigue is real, and something you’ll be battling constantly. Sending an internal communication for the sake of consistency is worse than sending nothing at all.
“Before you share an article, video or infographic, ask yourself if you’re curating content that’s truly meaningful to your audience—or if you’re just filling a gap,” wrote Sprout Social.
Keep your content fresh by switching up what you share every so often. Feature employee stories, brand content, open job opportunities within the company, events, industry articles, company news, and employee features. Entertainment is key.
Examples of internal communications
Take inspiration from bigger enterprises as you seek to optimize your internal communications. Companies like Southwest Airlines, Google, and Heineken use different approaches to engage employees globally.
At Southwest, internal communications centers around a program called “Communicate to Motivate.” This program encourages employees to share feedback and ideas. Southwest Airlines also hosts daily huddles in which employees can share updates and communicate about any issues.
Google utilizes its suite of tools to give employees dozens of ways to participate and get company news. The company hosts internal communications on Google Groups and Hangouts to help employees stay connected and informed.
Finally, Heineken faces the monumental task of trying to engage its office-based workforce and remote workers across 192 countries. The brewer uses a combination of webinars for presentations along with global forum meetings, Heineken brand global platform communications, and global company broadcasts. Q&A sessions after each webinar give employees a channel to learn more about the company’s plans.
Why your business needs an internal communications strategy
For some companies, business communications only occur when negative information needs to be shared, such as when company goals are not met or when layoffs occur. This level of internal communication results in poor productivity, frustration, and toxic rumors.
In this type of environment, employees will spend more time on unproductive—or even damaging—behaviors, such as gossiping and worrying. If this culture is allowed to fester, you will soon experience a high turnover rate and may lose star employees.
Implementing an effective internal communications strategy results in a dedicated and more efficient workforce, greatly impacting your bottom line. According to McKinsey & Company, businesses that utilize social technology to effectively communicate with their employees improve productivity by 20% to 25%.
Furthermore, employees who feel connected and engaged with their business are more likely to act as brand ambassadors. When your employees are your best brand ambassadors, they can attract top-quality candidates and high-value leads to your company.
Most importantly, an internal communications strategy can strengthen interpersonal relationships in the workplace so that, when a crisis occurs, the team will weather the storm together and navigate it.
[Read more: WFH? How to Hire the Best Remote Employees]
Implementing a strong internal communications strategy is challenging for every business. Adopting takes time and energy and, like all good strategies, it should evolve over time. Your internal communications strategy should look different when the company is operating as business as usual, but it should rapidly adapt to meet your needs during a crisis.
Sean Peek also contributed to this article.
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