Arthur Wilson
Internal comms have never been more important. As organisations adapt to the ongoing pandemic, the way in which we communicate with employees (especially workforces now working remotely for the first time), has become critical.
This list takes a look at five ways in which you can improve your internal communications.
A great place to start is by analysing your existing internal comms strategy.
What channels do you already have in place? Do you have a clear and coherent comms strategy already?
By analysing what you currently have and how effective your previous comms efforts have been, you can start to identify where issues exist and what to focus on improving.
Having clear company goals and objectives is critical to achieving success. But if those long-term targets are only stored in the mind of your MD or some forgotten document, how can you expect everyone to pull together in pursuit of a shared, common purpose?
Regularly sharing business objectives and benchmarking current progress towards achieving them is a great way to tap into employees' innate drives to achieve success. And not just personal goals, but to behave and perform in a way in which helps the organisation they belong to achieve their specific objectives too.
When employees feel that their leaders are visible, approachable and available, they're more likely to raise concerns and also share ideas.
A great way to help achieve this is by creating an open-door policy. Encourage people leaders to set times in the day when either their office door is literally open for anyone to pop in with a question, or create digital policies which encourage both leaders and employees to start a dialogue. That could be by hosting online 'skip level' meetings whereby job seniority doesn't exist, or by making sure any employee can directly communicate with a leader's Slack or MS Teams channel.
Not many of us, and especially younger generations, work solely for money. We want to feel that we're positively contributing and that our ongoing efforts are seen, valued and appreciated.
Creating a culture of recognition, either manager-led or peer-to-peer, is a fantastic was to increase positive comms within an organisation and ensure that everyone feels that their daily contributions are recognised.
Emails are so last century!
One of the biggest issues with many internal comms efforts is that they fall on deaf ears and simply aren't engaged with. Why is that? Part of the issue can be down to the way in which those comms are delivered.
Yes, we'll all read an email from our boss. But we're far more likely to engage with a communication if it's delivered in a more creative way. How about a company-wide video message from the MD? Or a voice note? Or some accompanying slides to illustrate a point?
Using multimedia in internal communications is very effective at conveying emotions too. Difficult subject? It's easier to show empathy in a video. Need to get technical information across? Get some quick charts and slides made to support your points!
These are just a few ways in which you can begin to improve the internal communications within your organisation.
Looking for some more great examples? The team over at The Comms Guru put together this great list of 35 internal communications examples which is a good place to head to next.
