The primary element that affects employee engagement and happiness is communication. In other words, your organization will suffer from poor internal communication.
We’ll discuss why communication is important in the future, as well as ways to enhance internal communication inside a company.
Why is internal communication important?
Internal communication is all about how you communicate knowledge and assets across your whole business, from top management to staff members.
Internal communication, when done correctly, may promote participation and collaboration and make the fundamental goals, principles, and tactics of your business more clear. Your organization will be more effective and productive the better you are able to do this.
Effective internal communication results in the following:
- Higher productivity
- Increased employee engagement
- Improved morale
- Increased efficiency
- Greater collaboration
- Fewer mistakes
- Better customer service
7 Tips to improve your internal communication strategy
Internal communications support effective leadership by making decisions, goals, and strategies clear, as well as by providing staff with the tools and resources they need to accomplish their best work. However, communication between middle management and the executive suite frequently fails.
A startling 72% of workers don’t fully comprehend the strategy of their organization. Additionally, 39% of workers feel that there is not enough collaboration within their company.
Therefore, how can businesses close the communication gap?
To improve your internal communication strategy and successfully engage your workforce, use the following advice.
1. Assess your current communication strategy
Understanding what you are doing at this very moment is necessary before you can develop or enhance your communication techniques. How would you describe your present communication approach? What are your present objectives and goals?
Examine the channels of communication you use to engage with your staff. In addition to collaboration tools or platforms, this may also include email, chat, memos, town hall meetings, one-on-one sessions, training, presentations, onboarding, and newsletters. How successful have these techniques been? What could be done better?
As you analyze your approach, give some thought to the criteria you’ll employ to gauge its effectiveness. These could include data on employee engagement, comments, and the use of communication technologies by employees.
2. Ask employees for feedback
Top-down internal communication is not ideal. Ask your staff for feedback, then act on it.
Understanding the experiences and perspectives of your employees can be done effectively through feedback. Additionally, it’s a quick but efficient approach to offer your staff a voice. Employees are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work when they believe their voice is acknowledged at work.
Create feedback loops as part of your daily operations. Make providing and receiving feedback a routine aspect of your culture, and it will spread naturally. Include the criteria and expectations for feedback in your communication strategy as you implement it.
Asking yourself the following questions can help you as you create these standards:
- Who provides criticism?
- How is criticism gathered?
- When and how will you react?
- What aims does feedback pursue?
You may establish clear expectations and improve the way your managers and staff offer and receive feedback by providing clear answers to these questions.
3. Establish communication best practices and norms
The culture of your business is heavily influenced by how it communicates. To guarantee that communication is efficient, sincere, and engaging at all levels, actively design your communication processes.
You must develop standards and best practices for internal communication in order to achieve this.
What, for instance, does your hiring procedure entail? Make sure you have a procedure in place for new hires so that everyone is on the same page from the start and gets the training and information they require to be successful in their new position.
By creating a common language to standardize internal jargon and terminology, cross-functional communication can be improved. When integrating team members into a project and when onboarding new staff, be sure to discuss this common terminology.
Define expectations and appropriate channels for information sharing within the organization as well. This covers how to communicate with executives, how to publish firm news on social media, and how to interact with coworkers.
4. Foster open communication
Open communication promotes information exchange, teamwork, and feedback. Encourage communication by implementing channels that make it simple for staff members to interact and communicate.
Set a good example. A lack of honest and open communication, according to 33% of workers, has the biggest detrimental effect on staff morale. Never avoid asking employees for feedback or having difficult talks. Respectfully and promptly respond to criticism. Employees will feel more at ease cooperating with one another and sharing openly with you when they observe you modeling open communication, and they feel appreciated and trusted.
5. Be transparent
Transparency fosters trust between workers and employers, which raises performance and employee engagement. Employees may feel apprehensive about the future, unsure of their duties, and unsure of the motivations behind important strategies or decisions if management is not transparent with them.
Transparency requires keeping your staff informed. 74% of workers feel they are missing out on important company news and information.
There are a few approaches to bridging that gap:
Send out written updates (such as memos and newsletters) and hold frequent meetings with your staff, such as town halls once a quarter.
Organizational procedures and operations should be documented and made readily available to all personnel.
Recognize your mistakes and celebrate corporate (and employee) victories.
Honesty and respect are fundamental to transparency. Your team will reward you with higher engagement and more effective communication when you lead with honesty.
6. Use visuals
Visual information is processed by the human brain more quickly and easily than written information. Data and information visualization help simplify and communicate complicated concepts, lessen misunderstanding and erroneous communication, and facilitate links between data and processes.
There are several ways to include graphics in your communication pieces. Include visuals like org charts in your onboarding materials, map out team or business procedures, and use interactive flowcharts to make benefits policy simpler.
7. Reinforce your company culture
Share the company mission, goals, and vision with all employees to promote your corporate culture.
Share updates on the company’s performance and progress toward its goals, bring up the company’s strategy and goals during one-on-one meetings and performance reviews, and link the company’s vision to that of the employees and the team.
You will help connect your employees to your mission, contextualize their responsibilities within the organization, and engage them more effectively when you communicate frequently and openly about corporate goals and initiatives.
Internal communication is considerably more than just the bosses’ quarterly newsletters or the way HR communicates policy messages. It is the way everyone works together, interacts with one another, and communicates within your company. It affects everything from productivity, efficiency, and your bottom line to employee engagement and morale.
Your internal communication strategy can advance your company by reducing organizational silos, fostering greater confidence between managers and staff, and more.
