Internal Communications: What’s Your Plan?

Do you give your internal communications strategies the attention they deserve or are you focusing on external audiences at the expense of perhaps your most important audience: the people who make up the organisation? These people not only represent your brand to potential and existing clients, they’re also an integral part of your operation’s success and the discipline of internal communications is the glue that holds your people together and committed to the organisational purpose.

With jobs moves hitting a record high of 988,000 in the final three months of 2021, UK employers consider employee retention and attrition, as well as staff welfare and resilience as their top HR challenges for 2022.*

This people-centric approach is here to stay so regardless how big or small your organisation is, you need to come up with ways to facilitate communication within the organisation whether that’s from the top down or among peers.

After all, if your people don’t have a genuine feeling of shared purpose, how can they contribute to the best of their ability?

Keep it relevant

We know what you’re thinking. Not everyone needs to be involved in everything so how much sharing is too much sharing? For example, your frontline staff doesn’t necessarily need to know about the business’ ten-year plan or the financial forecasting in order to be happy in their role or perform well. You may be thinking that they probably don’t even care and you might partially be right but this ignores the fact that employees already have a perception of how the company is doing or an opinion about where the company is heading and they can share this with others, so wouldn’t it be great if you were involved in this conversation and shaped the narrative?

This doesn’t mean sharing internal documents across all departments. The discipline of internal communications serves a different purpose; it holds the key to ensuring that your people feel involved and understand their role in the wider business context. It speaks into your workforce’s commitments, aims and values.

Keep it two-way

Traditionally, internal communications have been used to disseminate information from the top-down but the days of purely using it to deliver executive messages are giving way to successful organisations that understand that two-way internal communications is the backbone of their business. Some employees go to work, get their job done then go home and don’t think about work at all and that’s fine. On the flip side, some employees want to have an active role in how their workplace is shaped. Ignoring these employees and their desire to feel more involved can lead to talent retention issues.

A two-way internal communications strategy provides avenues for people to contribute to their organisation in a meaningful way and create value across different areas of the business. It can also be used as a great listening tool to ensure is the workforce is healthy, happy and productive.

Keep it fresh

With the continual evolution of the business landscape and the emergence of new digital processes, internal communications is a field that requires constant rethinking. How effectively a message is communicated is just as important as the message itself so it’s important to choose the channels that best fit your objective and the people you’re trying to reach within your company. Previously, people relied heavily on email memos and board postings to get the message across but these days, intranet, staff apps, video calls, video, emails are just a few of the channels that can be used. The hard part is finding what will resonate most with your team.

That’s why it’s important to take into consideration the geographical, technological and emotional aspects of communication and accept that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to choosing channels.

Keep it up

Developing organisational resilience and a great culture that retains and attracts talent, means that business leaders will have to connect more deeply with employees and that’s where internal communications steps in.  Getting your internal communications right requires more than just a few words on the wall, and it isn’t just about getting policies in place.

Building a solid internal communications process rooted in transparency and trust takes time and experimentation so it’s important to keep it going and make it an integral part of your culture.

*Source: ‘The Future of Work and People’ survey by SD Worx, 2021.
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash