Large organizations often have at least one employee, if not an entire team, dedicated to communicating internally. Your company may not be big enough to accommodate or require that, but your internal communication is still important. No matter your size, employees are an important group of stakeholders and ambassadors.
In fact, internal communication researcher Rita Men, Ph.D., says employees are brand advocates more than ever before. How they feel about work and what they say publicly can be perceived as more credible than a company’s official external statements. In the context of platforms like Glassdoor, this makes a lot of sense.
Men also says that employee engagement is driven by four groups of organizational factors:
(1) work environment such as job resources, characteristics, pay, benefits
(2) organizational leadership such as CEO credibility, leaders’ communication and supervisory style
(3) organizational communication factors such as an open, caring communication climate and effective channels
(4) organizational culture driven by positive qualities like transparency, integrity, participation, supportiveness and innovation
Internal communication plays a role in all of those, not only No. 3. Stephen Kramer, co-founder of workplace platform WorkJam, says everything starts with effective internal communication, and that when people have tools to “share ideas, give and receive feedback, set goals and celebrate progress, corporate cultures blossom.”
In my own experience, signs you need to improve your internal communication might be:
Lack of awareness of organizational objectives
Internal email overload
Different departments or team members doubling up on work without realizing it
No one seems able to keep up with all that’s going on within and peripheral to your organization
Employees gatekeeping information
An extra lively office grapevine
If you’re noticing some of these, you may want to give your internal strategy some attention.
Here are some tips to get you started:
Create opportunities for employees to get involved
There’s lots of room to be creative on this one, based on your size and where you identify opportunities that appeal to your team. The extraverts among us might appreciate a monthly on-the-clock happy hour. Affinity or employee resource groups can be a good tool for helping everyone feel supported, and cross-departmental internal work groups focused on innovation, planning fun activities or another focus area you identify, are other possibilities.
Whatever you decide, make participation optional instead of making assignments. This creates opportunities for people to plug in where they’re genuinely passionate.
Make information easy to access
Do all employees know where to access items like your org chart, strategic plan, mission and guiding principles, and employee handbook? You don’t have to have a complicated setup for this. Use Dropbox, or a shared folder on any platform your team already uses - the transparency is the important part. Also consider the nature of your employees’ jobs and what they can access easily. If they aren’t provided computers or work in a manufacturing environment, your approach should look different, like perhaps, a notebook or bulletin board in the breakroom that could include a QR code to find more information.
Create pathways for feedback - and actually take some of the suggestions
Again, many different ways to do this - employee focus groups, surveys, an anonymous form for ideas.
Whatever you choose, try to actually implement some of the suggestions. You don’t have to use them all, but you’ll glean much more respect from your team by not only listening, but taking action.
Create guidelines on how the team should communicate with each other
Spoiler alert: all-company emails aren’t it. Think about clear, simple processes for keeping your team informed and helping them communicate with each other effectively. Emphasize that any new guidelines are intended to make communication more intentional and impactful, not to stifle it. Some ideas:
Consider an internal newsletter - The larger your team, the more helpful a regular, scheduled form of communication is. This platform can include team member recognition, company updates, industry content, fun or quirky items you know the team would enjoy … possibilities are endless to create something informative your team will look forward to receiving. Let everyone be involved through submitting content (and encourage them to use the newsletter as their all-company communication tool vs. emailing the entire company list).
Review your staff meeting structure - While we all love to hate meetings, they’re the platform for a lot of workplace information sharing. Take a look at how effective your meeting structure is for keeping everyone informed. Maybe you meet monthly and it’s not enough; maybe you meet weekly and there’s not enough new info to warrant it. Maybe your company is too big for regular ‘all staffs’ to make sense. Get some feedback from your team on how to use your meetings to facilitate maximum clarity.
Create a platform for the fun stuff - Laughing at work is important, as are the things that make your workplace feel like a community. Don’t discourage socializing and fun, but it’s a good idea to have a platform for it that doesn’t distract from your work. There are many options for social platforms, or you could create something as simple as a ‘fun’ channel in a project management system you use. Consider a policy covering decorum to keep your fun safe for work, which could be a prime opportunity to cover guidelines for public sites and social media as well.
Treat your team as a priority group when distributing information
You don’t want your employees finding out about key organizational updates from a news article. They should be one of the first groups you inform. They want to know and they probably have good feedback for you too. The suggestions above on guidelines for team communication can help give you the right channels and platforms to deliver information to your team.
Think carefully about who should lead any changes
Whether your efforts are led by a representative from HR, communications or just someone who takes the initiative, be sure the change agent has a good rapport within your organization.
Your team is one of your greatest assets, and increasingly, team members are your most meaningful brand ambassadors. Make sure they have good things to say. Every team is different, so the tactics that resonate most for you will vary. But you can never go wrong with transparency and compassion driving your efforts.