No matter what size your company is, you need to be communicating with your employees on a regular basis, and they need to be communicating with each other.

Internal communications, when done right, means your employees are informed about what is happening across the company. Communicating successes and sharing ideas are hugely important in making employees feel informed and empowered. This builds a strong online community which can translate into an even stronger offline one.

If you’re unsure where to begin or feel your internal communications’s strategy needs a refresh, read our top tips for getting started.

Visualise your goals

Before you begin communicating to your company at large, you need to identify your internal communication goals. These overarching aims will inform the type of content you gather, who you want to communicate it to, and what platform you use to share it.

• Do you want to increase communication between multinational sites?
• Is sharing team successes to senior stakeholders your main priority?
• Or do you want to encourage collaboration between teams?

Once you have identified your organisation’s goals for its internal communications, you can build out the strategy around how best to reach them.

Pick your platforms

As with all communications, it is important to pick the platforms you use to interact and share content strategically. Whether you choose one or several, the platform needs to fit the content you want to share. For example, will you be relying heavily on video or will it be mainly short text posts that you use to share news?

It helps to choose a platform that either employees are already on, such as Yammer and Sharepoint. Otherwise, make sure to do some research beforehand to find one that works for your particular organisation, which everyone will consistently use. As well as internal email newsletters and existing social media, there are many dedicated internal comms software packages on the market but make sure to pick one as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. Read more on auditing your approach here. 

Software in this sector is seeing a lot of modernisation at the moment. For example, we worked with Workvivo, on the launch of the first platform to combine internal comms with employee engagement, which helps boost morale, participation and productivity. 

Draft a content plan

When it comes to clear implementation of any communications strategy, planning is key!

You will likely be managing competing messages, content and news from a variety of personnel and departments. We recommend creating a clear process, outlining how you will source all relevant content including copy, images and video; your proposed schedule and timeline; and how you will publish, engage and share. Outline how you will encourage buy-in from all personnel, from C-level to intern.

Content calendars are a vital step to this process – read more about how to create them here.

Be creative

Once you have your processes in place, you can start threading through some creativity. Experiment with short video clips, get employees speaking to camera, start a weekly blog series — whatever works for your organisation. Make sure to choose ‘ambassadors’ from each team — this will help engage employees and give them a sense of ownership and community. Encourage feedback, monitor your analytics and don’t be afraid to adjust the plan based on the results.

Most important of all, make sure the tone-of-voice stays true to your workspace culture so it always reads as authentic.

For more information on how to start your organisation’s internal communications strategy, email ciara@springboardcommunications.ie.