A decade ago, internal communication was limited to announcements by senior management. However, an increasing number of companies are beginning to realise that the scope of communication needs to be far broader. It needs to be interactive to encompass your employee’s voices.
Today, the modern workplace is centred around a constant flow of information. Whether that’s announcing company news, sharing documents or brainstorming new ideas with co-workers, effective communication is essential. This has become even more important with offices all around the world, people operating in different time zones and an increase in remote working as a result of COVID-19.
Successful internal communication is vital as it helps to increase employee engagement, build stronger teams, and enhance the competitiveness of your company as you can respond to and execute tasks more effectively. In this blog, we run through our top 5 rules for establishing an engaging and effective internal communication.
Mass emails as a method of communication simply no longer cut it. There has been a shift to more intuitive platforms that encourage higher forms of participation, such as an intranet or messaging app. The aim of this is to minimize confusion by centralising your content.
EasyShare is a pre-built digital workplace on Office 365 featuring extended functionality and an enhanced look & feel. EasyShare is more than just an intranet, it comes rich with everything you need to build and maintain a well-governed, evergreen digital workplace with features and functionality that meet modern organisational needs.
“Staff feel more up to date and ‘in the loop’ regarding company news and announcements. They’re engaged and it’s much easier and faster to find the information people are looking for without the hassle of emailing around the office.”
Kerman and Co LLP
It is paramount that you have a clear, robust, and well-thought-out internal communications strategy before introducing any internal communications tool to your organisation. The strategy is the backbone to your internal communications plan and will ensure you stay on the right path throughout. Having a clear strategy will make it easier to focus your efforts to make the greatest impact possible.
Most organisations already have some sort of internal communications strategy, but companies must take time to evaluate how they are reaching out to their employees and if this method is working. Organisations should be asking themselves; How is the current strategy performing? What problems are we facing? And what tools are we using?
When trying to come up with your internal communication strategy you need to ask yourself questions. What are your goals? What does success look like for you? After this, you need to layout a timeline of how you are going to achieve those goals in a realistic time frame. Finally, define how you are going to measure the success of your platform. This can be done by analysing employee engagement, are they reading internal content or sharing company content on social media, intranet usage or the number of project management issues.
Since company intranets were first introduced, they have come a long way. From being used solely as a site to store business information to slowly becoming the business equivalent of a social media platform. Combining document management and self-service tools and most importantly departmental communication, they are now a digital hub for all internal communications.
A key aspect of internal communication is openness. Successful internal communication is a two-way street. It is just as important to listen to your employees and regularly ask for their feedback as it is for managers to provide employee feedback. This creates an open, trustworthy culture that encourages dialogue between teams and individuals.
Functions such as commenting, liking, and sharing promote company engagement, creating a more engaging environment where workers can interact with each other.
While it is important to share news and updates, these should always be tailored to individual users, or you risk overloading them with an abundance of notifications. Each intranet should employ personalisation to ensure employees only see the relevant information they need to stay up to date without becoming overwhelmed. This can be achieved through tailored notifications, filtering, and features like context search. These features are key to streamlining the information a worker sees and will help them create their own personalised newsfeed.
Sharing and highlighting members of your organisation who have achieved their goals is essential to producing a positive flourishing community. Whether it’s in the form of a shout out, a like, a favourite or an employee spotlight article, a virtual pat on the back is a great way to publicly acknowledge your team members.
This type of content provides an excellent opportunity to inform people across the organisation about what’s going on, who’s working on what and which goals are being met. It creates a positive work environment and helps give employees a sense of purpose, ultimately leading to higher worker satisfaction.
Internal communications practices have come a long way in the past ten years. Increasing the effectiveness of your internal communication to create a more connected workplace, is now easier than ever due to the proliferation of software designed specifically for that purpose such as EasyShare.
If you’d like to talk to someone about building a business case for your intranet project, reach out to our knowledgeable team here.
Also, check out some of our other blogs; How to build the best Intranet for your business and 'Teams vs Slack.'
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