Internal Communications: Why’s It Important & How To Develop An Effective Strategy
Does your boss frequently communicate with you and provide constructive feedback to advance your skills? Effective dialogue between an employer and employee is an essential element of any companies’ workplace culture. You don’t have to be informing employees on a new process or announcing a new event. Instead, you can enhance team communications by facilitating general discussions and aligning business objectives with everyday communication to encourage employees to work together towards a common goal. It’s found that only 23% of executives say that their companies are excellent at aligning employees’ goals with corporate purposes.
Here is why internal communication in your workplace is essential and how you can implement an effective internal communications strategy to advance operations, enhance productivity and achieve business objectives.
Internal Communication Keeps Employees Informed
The first and foremost reason is that internal communications are essential for businesses to keep workers informed on activities and workplace updates. It’s found that 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news. If employees are unaware of upcoming events or changes to the business, it won’t be easy to perform to their full capabilities. It’s nice staying up to date on news and ‘in the loop’ on everyday situations. This transcends into how we like to be treated in the office.
Ongoing Communication Can Motive Employees
Having efficient internal communication in your business also keeps workers involved and interested in the work. This is important to the success of companies.
Workers have to be interested in the work they are undertaking. It should be expected for your business to have a two-way conversation structure implemented in their internal communication strategy. This is crucial as it makes workers feel like they are being heard and that their opinions and knowledge are valued. We can all agree, feeling valued motivates us to work harder. This connection between worker and employer increases productivity and collaboration and drives business and revenue growth through building an engaging employee community. 39% of surveyed employees believe that people in their organization don’t collaborate enough. This is very important to the success of businesses.
Communication Creates a Positive Workplace Culture
Internal communications build a positive company culture that involves workers in a positive work environment. Employers can feel a part of the business they work for are less likely to search for another job. Creating a positive working environment where employees feel included throughout daily internal communications leads to higher productivity and employee motivation as they think incorporated and valued in the workplace.
Internal Communication Provides Employees With Helpful Feedback
If employers are communicating effectively with employees, this enables feedback and discussion. This can benefit your company by assuring your workers are improving and not making the same errors. This also assists workers in creating meaningful work. Communication between an employee and employer also keeps people calm in times of crisis. It is crucial for workers to be kept in the loop during challenging times and when change happens.
Internal Communication Can Reduce Employee Turnover
Without communication, when working from home, workers often panic and are likely to search for work elsewhere if they don’t feel valued. If workers are not being communicated to frequently, they will form assumptions, possibly even dramatize the situation resulting in further workplace issues. Keeping employers in the dark will never end well.
Now that you know the importance of internal communications within a business, what can you do to ensure ongoing communications? You can implement an effective internal communications strategy that fosters internal and external business values.
How To Develop an Effective Internal Communications Strategy?
Here are some helpful steps you can take to create and implement a new internal communications strategy.
1. Plan
It would help if you planned precisely what your business wants to get out of its communications strategy. You can ask yourself what do you want internal communications to do for your team and company? How will you get there? And what needs improvement? .
Before starting your internal communications strategy, you should plan exactly how you want to improve your communication between your employers and employees.
2. Analyze Current Communication Channels
Forming your communications strategy is more effective when you examine your current channels. It is recommended that you develop a list of all methods used for internal communications before your new plan. That way, you can learn from these and find new ways to advance your communication processes. After this assessment, you can decide whether you keep it, improve it, or replace it.
3. Adopt Engaging Tools
Present your new communications strategy to workers through engaging tools. To ensure your new internal communications strategy is effective, you require the right communication tools. There are many tools and new software programs that make employees engaged with the strategic plan. A 2013 survey by PGI found that 88% of millennials want to work in a fun and friendly work environment. These strategic communications can include fun and engaging communications and activities to make the workplace enjoyable.
4. Communicate Your New Plan
Once you have decided on a new internal communications plan, it’s essential to express your strategic plan to employees in a few ways and one that is visual way. This is because 65% of workers are visual learners, and conveying information to your workers through visuals increases the likeliness of them absorbing the content and being genuinely interested.
Now you know what internal communications is, why it’s essential, and how to implement a new strategy into your workplace. Internal communication can benefit both the employer and employee, encourage workplace motivation, facilitate a positive culture, and advance productivity. If you already have a good internal communication in place, there is always something that you can do to improve it and make employees feel even more valued so review your current strategy and adopt some new approaches that reinforce your business goals and objectives.