Internal Communication Best Practices You Should Be Doing
Your internal communications strategy is about more than crafting the perfect subject lines for your emails. If you want your business to thrive, you need a well-thought-out, company-wide internal comms plan. It is critical to ensure transparency and effective communication.
If you feel like you don’t have a plan, or if the one you have is somewhat disjointed and unstructured, this is the guide you need.
Here, we’ll cover seven essential best practices you should implement and follow right now to perfect your comms. You can also enhance your employee experience, and supercharge your overall performance.
Why is effective internal communication so important?
Communicating—and collaborating—effectively across your company has a wide range of benefits, including:
- Boosted employee engagement: If our colleagues and managers are effective in their communication with us, we feel happier and more engaged at work. A thorough internal communication plan can improve employee morale and create a stronger corporate culture.
- Reduced misinformation: Mistakes are easily made. With a clear strategy in place for communicating information to teams, you can minimize the chance of error.
- Improved productivity: When we understand the task at hand, we can get on with it quickly and efficiently. Now that a lot of us are working from home or hybrid, it’s more important than ever for our productivity that internal comms are effective.
- Increased collaboration: From cross-departmental communication to effective, smaller-scale teamwork, consistent communication helps employees collaborate better.
8 internal communication best practices you should implement today
As we have seen, internal communication best practices help ensure you have a motivated and informed workforce. An initial investment in workforce engagement management software can help to boost your staff’s commitment and efficiency, which in turn has a positive ripple effect on your internal communications.
However, you’ll need to go one step further to ensure your internal comms are as effective as possible – let’s take a look at the following best practices.
- Embrace cloud communications
If you’re still using onsite hardware for your internal communications, your business may quickly lag behind. Cloud communication platforms like 8×8 offer far more flexibility and scalability as you can unify all of your internal communication, from video meetings to instant messaging, on one platform.
Tip: Your internal communication practices should also prioritize security, since many internal messages contain sensitive information. Be sure to choose a platform that offers end-to-end encryption and make sure you regularly update your software and any devices using it.
- Develop a style guide
Whether it’s internal newsletters, a blog post sharing company news, or informal communication over employee apps, you should have and encourage a clear and consistent tone and style in all your internal communication channels. A style guide that outlines the tone and language that should be used will ensure consistency.
Tip: Remember, your internal communication strategy should reflect your company culture. A strong company culture creates engaged employees, so make sure this resonates in your style guide.
- Prioritize training
Every business should have a standardized part of onboarding and training that covers internal communication best practices. Your procedures, from data protection to email etiquette, should all be covered and every member of staff should be on the same page.
Tip: Even if you run initial training for new staff, regular training sessions can keep everyone refreshed on your internal communications strategy. This is especially important if you bring in new internal communication software that employees may be unfamiliar with.
- Invest in remote solutions
Effective corporate communication means ensuring the entire company, including remote workers, is able to access your internal communication tools and communicate with colleagues. Remote solutions like RealVNC can be incredibly useful for remote workers, especially for IT teams who may need to provide quick technical assistance to a distributed workforce.
Tip: Look out for remote solutions that have plenty of integrations available. Think about what internal communication apps you’re already using and see if potential remote software can integrate seamlessly with it before investing.
- Segment content
Not every internal communication needs to be company-wide. We are all already receiving far too many emails and this information overload can make us miss important updates and messages.
That’s why it’s vital that you segment the content that you share with your employees. Staff should be categorized according to roles and responsibilities and only sent internal communications relevant to them.
Tip: Use communication tools that include analytics to better understand engagement levels. Platforms that offer analytics tools can help you see open rates, the best times of day to send emails, and which teams or departments are the most and least responsive to your comms.
- Create a centralized, shared repository
One of the main goals of any company’s internal communications plan should be to streamline information sharing and avoid misinformation. This is where a shared repository comes in handy.
By creating a shared, digital space, perhaps in your company intranet, where important documents, procedures, FAQs, and templates are stored, you can reduce the need to ask questions and ensure there’s a single source of truth for important content. This can include everything from guides to templates and even content on specific topics such as 5G vs 4G.
Tip: While anyone should be able to view and upload documents to your shared repository, it’s helpful to designate moderators who can conduct regular audits of content and ensure employee needs are being met. You may also need to set specific permissions and roles, particularly if sensitive data is stored in the repository.
- Encourage feedback
Your internal communication plan should not be static. Instead, it should be consistently reviewed and updated, which is why employee feedback is essential. Setting up feedback channels, ideally through your unified communications platform can help you refine your comms strategies. Make opportunities to provide feedback easy and clear and be sure to show your staff that you’ve acted on it.
Tip: Some employees may not feel comfortable giving feedback directly to their managers so consider creating surveys that allow for anonymous feedback. These can then be handled by your internal communications teams and presented at regular reviews of your strategy.
- Enhance Engagement Through Data-Intelligent Platforms
The backbone of progressive internal communication lies in the integration of data-intelligent workforce engagement platforms. A strategic investment in these tools can lead to heightened employee engagement and efficiency, positively impacting the overall communication flow.
Tip: Use intelligence tools and platforms that allow management to make data-driven decisions that ensure equity of outcomes for employees.
Conclusion: The power of effective communication
Businesses put a lot of time and energy into perfecting their outward communication. How do we talk to customers? Clients? Stakeholders? Internal communication best practices shouldn’t fall by the wayside.
Your business’s cohesion and success are powered by its internal communications. By leveraging the best practices above, you can create engaged and informed employees across your company.
