A robust internal communication plan is an integral part of daily operations. An effective internal communication strategy is a core part of every organization. You need to understand how to communicate with everyone in the company to fulfill business goals.
In most companies, clients and employees connect through carefully planned techniques. You’ll notice a significant increase in employee engagement if you apply the same standard of care in your internal communication plan. That is why you need an effective internal communications strategy.
What are Internal Communications?
Internal communications refer to conveying information, messages, and ideas within an organization, typically among its employees, teams, and various levels of management. It encompasses the exchange of information in multiple forms, including verbal, written, visual, and digital, to facilitate effective collaboration, alignment, and understanding within the organization.
In essence, internal communications involves:
- Sharing Information: Distributing news, updates, policies, procedures, and relevant data to employees and teams.
- Fostering Engagement: Encouraging active participation, feedback, and dialogue among employees to enhance their involvement in the organization’s activities.
- Promoting Alignment: Ensuring that employees have a clear understanding of the organization’s goals, mission, values, and business objectives and how their roles contribute to these.
- Facilitating Decision-Making: Providing employees and teams with the necessary information and insights to make informed decisions and solve problems effectively.
- Building Organizational Culture: Reinforcing the company culture and values through communication, which can include recognition of achievements, celebration of successes, and reinforcement of desired behaviors.
- Managing Change: Assisting employees in adapting to changes within the organization, whether they are related to policies, processes, technologies, or structural shifts.
- Improving Employee Relations: Enhancing relationships between employees, teams, and management by promoting transparency, trust, and open communication channels.
Successful internal communications are the cornerstone of organizational efficiency. It can result in heightened employee morale, employee satisfaction, enhanced productivity, more informed decision-making, employee engagement, and a heightened sense of camaraderie among team members. This element is a pivotal contributor to an organization’s triumph and is frequently regarded as a strategic undertaking necessitating meticulous planning, ongoing assessment, and enhancements.
What is an Internal Communication Plan?
An internal communication plan is a communications strategy that addresses the business goals for employee engagement and interaction and displays the required actions to reach them. Your internal communications strategy serves as a road map for success in internal communications evaluation. The following are essential components of an efficient internal communication plan:
- Mission, goals, and values of the company
- Important business messages
- Channels of Communication
- Responsibilities and processes for employees
- Marketing and communication strategies
This is all about how your employees get the information they require to carry out their responsibilities. This is why collecting and analyzing employee feedback should be an important part of your strategy.
The Advantages of an Internal Communication Plan
A workplace is significantly more productive when it is engaged with active communication. Your employees will be more involved in their job if you plan well for internal communications. There are multiple advantages to having effective internal communication strategies that contribute to your company’s overall success. These are some of them:
Helps to boost productivity:
When the employees connect, they effectively understand their responsibilities and priorities. This increases the productivity of the organizations, and the workforce becomes more productive.
Reduces errors and mistakes:
Employee errors are frequently caused by a lack of communication. Your business could lose money if you make a mistake. If you develop effective communication in your organization, this could prevent those mistakes and errors.
Helps to increase employee engagement:
Internal communication is a successful method of increasing employee engagement. Employees get engaged and motivated when an organization provides constant updates.
Improves workplace culture:
Employee interaction improves when departments and teams communicate. It allows employees to access all the information they require at any time.
Helps to understand the business goals:
Internal communication ensures that your entire company is on the same page. It helps to realize the business goal, vision, and strategy.
Increases leadership outcomes:
An internal communication strategy assists managers and leaders in improving leadership outcomes. It helps to understand how and when they should communicate with their staff.
An internal communication strategy shows how everyone in an organization fits and contributes to the overall strategy. It keeps them up to date on current projects, activities, and future goals.
LEARN ABOUT: Employee Experience Strategy
Best Ways to Develop an Internal Communication Plan
Internal communications plans are required for a variety of reasons. It explains how to communicate with one another in order to assist and realize the company’s goals. You can use a communication plan if you need to deliver a message to a group of people or an entire company. Let’s look at a step-by-step guide to developing an effective internal communication strategy that will improve employee communication.
Analyzing The Current State of Internal Communication
Before creating an internal communication plan, it’s essential to know how successful your current internal communications are. Analyze it and see where you can make improvements. This can be achieved using a variety of tracking ways, including:
- How many of your internal communication goals have been met?
Make a note of your previous plan’s strengths and limitations. Figure out what you want to accomplish in the future.
- Design and conduct a survey for your company.
Conducting a survey is a simple and efficient technique to get your employee’s feedback. Before making any adjustments, analyze what is actually working and what is not.
With an extensive collection of questions, QuestionPro takes a unique approach to surveying employee experience. You’ll receive a 360-degree view of your company this way. This is a great way to collect their feedback.
- Check the results over different periods.
A time frame will help you analyze the current situation. Create a chart of information over different time periods and check the result.
Defining Goals
The next step is to choose the appropriate goals. The SMART strategy is one of the most influential and simple methods:
- Specific: Set your goals specifically. For example, it could be “What are the goals of your business?” or “Who is working to achieve them?”
- Measure: The goal must be measurable. To boost revenue, production, and teamwork, for example.
- Achieve: The goal should be achievable. It should be practical and based on your ability to grow your business.
- Relevant: Will the goals impact the company’s overall performance? You should avoid irrelevant goals unrelated to developing your effective plan.
- Time: What are the timelines for achieving each objective? Without a timescale, it will not affect the plan properly.
The Audience You Want to Reach
Knowing whom you’re trying to reach is essential. It ensures that only those who need to see it receive relevant content.
It would be best if you addressed your company’s different types of teams and departments for your plan. You can’t use the same language when speaking to all of them. When establishing the plan, all departments, teams, supervisors, and juniors should be taken into account.
Selecting The Appropriate Internal Communication Tool
It’s essential to choose the appropriate communication tool for your target audience. An intranet is one of the most widely used technologies for internal communications. The intranet is the ideal way to communicate to reach everyone in a business across many locations. Modern intranets can serve as your company’s digital hub. It integrates and combines multiple communication technologies such as:
- Instant messaging tool (Slack)
- Email (Gmail, Outlook Emails, and Calendar)
- Project management (Trello)
- Video Conference & Meeting (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams)
- Workspace Management (Google Drive)
Understanding and utilizing the communication tools successfully for internal communications are essential. Now might be a good time to start if you don’t already have an intranet yet.
Internal Communication Plan Measurement
After you’ve implemented your plan, it’s time to measure the results. It’s important to collect quantifiable data to determine the effectiveness of your internal communications. Analytics software will assist you in collecting quantifiable data.
There are different techniques to evaluate internal communications performance. Let’s take a look at some examples:
- Check your productivity. Is there any improvement?
- Are revenues increasing?
- Are errors and mistakes being made less frequently?
- Has employee retention continued to improve?
- Have you noticed any improvement in employee engagement?
- Were you successful in achieving a particular goal?
If you observe that your plan is not effective, then you have to determine what went wrong in your plan and what necessary actions you need to take to improve your internal communication plan.
The Best Practices for Corporate Culture
Creating an effective internal communication plan to nurture a positive corporate culture requires specific best practices tailored to culture-building efforts. Here are critical practices for integrating internal communications into your corporate culture strategy:
- Align with Cultural Values: Ensure your internal communication plan aligns with and reinforces your organization’s core values and cultural principles. Every message and communication effort should reflect and support these values.
- Leadership Commitment: Gain visible and vocal commitment from top leadership. When leaders actively participate in and endorse the communication plan, it sends a powerful signal about the importance of culture.
- Consistent Messaging: Maintain consistent messaging that reinforces cultural values and priorities. Consistency helps employees understand what the organization stands for and how they can contribute to the culture.
- Two-Way Communication: Promote two-way communication channels where employees can provide feedback, ask questions, and share ideas related to the culture. Act on this feedback to demonstrate that their voices are heard.
- Clear Communication Channels: Establish clear and accessible communication channels, such as an intranet, regular town hall meetings, and digital platforms, for sharing information and updates about culture-building initiatives.
- Training and Education: Offer training and educational initiatives that assist employees in comprehending and internalizing the organization’s cultural values. It can include workshops, seminars, and online resources.
- Recognition and Rewards: Implement recognition and reward systems that acknowledge employees who exemplify the desired cultural behaviors and values. Recognize and celebrate cultural champions.
- Measurement and Assessment: Create a set of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge how well your internal communication plan fosters the desired organizational culture. Regularly review and adjust the program based on data.
- Employee Participation: Involve employees in culture-building initiatives and decision-making. Encourage their active participation in shaping the culture and provide opportunities for them to contribute ideas.
- Diversity and Inclusion: Ensure that your communication plan addresses diversity and inclusion. Cultivate an organizational culture prioritizing embracing diversity, promoting equity, fostering inclusion, and ensuring these principles are communicated across all company levels.
By integrating these best practices into your internal communication plan, you can effectively promote and nurture a corporate culture that reflects your organization’s values and supports its long-term success.
How QuestionPro Helps to Improve Internal Communication Plan
QuestionPro is a survey and feedback platform that can help to improve internal communication plans in various ways. Here are some ways in which QuestionPro can help enhance internal communications within an organization:
Employee Surveys:
QuestionPro allows you to create and distribute surveys to your employees. Surveys can be employed to collect input regarding your organization’s existing state of internal communications. This feedback can serve as a valuable resource for pinpointing areas in need of enhancement as well as recognizing those who are performing effectively.
Pulse Surveys:
Conduct regular pulse surveys to gauge employee sentiment and gather real-time feedback on internal communication efforts. It helps in quickly identifying and addressing any issues or concerns.
Feedback Loops:
Establish feedback loops using QuestionPro’s survey tools. It can include post-meeting or post-training surveys to assess the effectiveness of internal communication events. By collecting feedback, you can make data-driven improvements to your communication strategy.
Segmentation:
Segment your employee population based on different criteria (e.g., departments, roles, tenure) to understand how communication needs vary across the organization. You can customize your communication strategy to address the unique requirements of various groups.
Anonymous Feedback:
Allow employees to provide anonymous feedback through QuestionPro surveys. It can encourage more honest responses, leading to a better understanding of employee concerns and suggestions.
Communication Channel Assessment:
Use surveys to assess the effectiveness of different communication channels (e.g., email, intranet, team meetings, chat apps). It helps optimize the use of media that works best for your employees.
Content Relevance:
Evaluate the relevance and usefulness of internal communications content. Surveys can help determine if employees find the information provided valuable and if gaps in the content need to be addressed.
Benchmarking:
Compare your internal communications effort with industry benchmarks or best practices. QuestionPro can provide access to benchmarking data to help you understand how your organization stacks up.
Employee Engagement:
Assess employee engagement levels through surveys and link them to the quality of internal communications. Engaged employees are more likely to be active and effective communicators.
Report and Analytics:
QuestionPro offers robust reporting and analytics tools that allow you to visualize survey data, track trends, and make informed decisions about your internal communication strategy.
QuestionPro can enhance internal communication plans by providing tools to collect feedback, measure effectiveness, and make data-driven improvements. Regularly gathering insights from employees helps organizations adapt their communication strategies to meet the evolving needs of their workforce, leading to better engagement and overall performance.
Conclusion
An internal communications plan is required to achieve the successful growth of the company. It must maintain regular communication with its employees. Determine which method best suits your goals. Testing frequently is the best way to accomplish this.
This requires the proper technologies. Employee experience surveys will provide insights that will help you develop an internal communication plan and a better business.
Learn more about QuestionPro Workforce and how to collect continuous employee feedback to create a better impact in your organization.
