Internal communication is important in every organization, large and small. Sharing information, news, advice, directives and celebrating success and achievements help to form a cohesive team environment where everyone is working together towards the same common goal.
There are many different tools and channels for communicating internally. One of the most popular methods is an internal newsletter, which can help to break down internal information “silos” and let everyone across the company find out what’s happening in other areas.
Table of contents
Best practice for company newsletter creation
Company newsletter ideas to boost readership
Introduce a new channel for creating and sending your employee newsletter
Best practice for company newsletter creation
Whether you’re starting an internal newsletter from scratch, or you have one you want to give a makeover, there are some internal newsletter best practices you should be including in the one in your company.
The basic principles of any good communications apply to creating an internal newsletter: all articles for the employee newsletter must be timely, engaging, well-written, clear, concise, and be relevant to the readership. Your newsletter should also be visually appealing and well-designed. Include photos and graphics, and don’t be afraid to adopt a less formal tone of writing where appropriate.
Company newsletter ideas to boost readership
Employees want to read about interesting topics, share ideas about issues affecting the company, find out what work their colleagues are doing and be kept in the loop about important company news.
Getting the right mix of content can ensure you have an engaging newsletter that employees look forward to reading whenever it arrives in their inboxes. If it seems daunting to come up with great content ideas, we’ve got suggestions for the best newsletter ideas for workplaces.
Consider adding these corporate newsletter ideas to the mix:
1. Message from the CEO
This is a place where your CEO can share important news about the organization to employees, including milestones, new policies, new products or projects, and other significant announcements.
In many organizations, particularly large ones, employees don’t get a chance to interact one-on-one with their CEO very often, and sometimes not at all. Giving your CEO a platform in the employee newsletter is a great way for employees to connect with the CEO.
This can be a regular feature of your company newsletter content – or it might be semi-regular. Writing a regular column for the CEO shouldn’t become a millstone for the communications team. If there’s nothing of note for the CEO to say, don’t write a column just for the sake of it. It will only diminish the impact of the CEO having a section in the newsletter and employees may tune out to the more important messages.
2. Profile employees
This is a great way for employees to “put a name to a face”. They may pass a particular colleague in the halls or the lunchroom but not know who they are. Or in large organizations across different geographic regions, they may talk to a colleague on the phone or Skype them but not really know them beyond that.
How your profile an employee is up to you. You could ask them about their current work, professional achievements and career/employment history. Or you could make it more personal and focus on who they are and what they do when they’re not at work.
3. Industry-related news
Regardless of the industry, your organization operates in, there will always be things happening in the industry that will affect you or affect your competitors. Your internal newsletter is a great place to share industry news such as regulatory changes, compliance challenges, innovation, and other issues.
4. Profile teams and the work they do
Break down silos by writing articles that feature specific work teams within the organization, explaining to colleagues in other areas who they are, what work they do, what their current projects or focus are and what services and/or expertise they have to offer if people in other parts of the company need it.
5. Top 10 lists
This is a way to be creative and engage employees. A list of the top 10 greatest anything can include tips for work-related activities or even the top 10 places to get coffee around the neighborhood the head office is located in, or top 10 places to get lunch, top 10 cafes that are good for a business meeting with clients and so on.
6. Opinion pieces by subject matter experts in your organization
Newspapers, magazines, and online publications often run op-eds – opinion editorials – where someone opines on a subject they are familiar with. Your senior managers and technical experts will most definitely have opinions on issues and topics facing your company and industry. Invite them to contribute an opinion piece on a topic of interest for your internal newsletter, or help them to write it.
7. Highlight customer case studies
Whatever industry you’re in, whether its healthcare, tech, manufacturing, legal, you will most likely have customers or other stakeholders who rely on your organization.
You can showcase case studies about how your organization has helped other organizations or individuals to solve specific problems. This helps to show your employees that the work the organization does is meaningful and is possibly one of the most useful employee newsletter topics to illustrate your work.
8. Surveys and polls
With an online newsletter, it’s easy to include a regular online survey or poll for employees to fill in on any topic of interest and then publish the results in the next newsletter.
9. Learning and professional development
When employees have the opportunity to undertake learning and professional development activities in the course of their employment, it’s great for their personal growth, but it can also be an opportunity for the organization at large.
Encourage those employees who have participated in these activities to share what they learned with their colleagues to foster a culture of knowledge exchange.
10. Recent media coverage
The communications team will always be familiar with any recent media coverage featuring the organization. But most employees won’t necessarily have read or seen any articles or TV coverage. You can have a regular section outlining your recent media successes and include links to online articles and video stories.
11. Promote corporate events
The newsletter is a great place to give advance notice of upcoming corporate events so that you can get them into peoples’ diaries and boost attendance. You could create a “what’s on” calendar to inform people what’s planned over the coming months so that they don’t schedule any conflicts.
12. Health and wellbeing resources and tips
Whether it’s sharing information about your corporate health and wellbeing programs, tools and other resources or providing advice to employees about how to remain healthy and active at work, the newsletter is a great place to share this information.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been important for organizations to share this information with their employees in as many ways as possible to help people understand hygiene and safety protocols, access mental health and wellbeing programs while working remotely, vaccine information and more.
13. Share photos of employees
An internal newsletter should be people-centric. A great way to do this is to include photographs of your employees… think of it as like the social pages from a newspaper. Take pictures of employees at social events, training activities, launches and other initiatives, or even just include photos of them “in action” doing their work. This is a great way to reinforce your corporate culture in a visual way.
Want more internal newsletter ideas? Read this article.
Introduce a new channel for creating and sending your employee newsletter
Once you’ve decided on your good newsletter topics and written your content, you need to evaluate the delivery method. If you have been struggling with open rates on your employee newsletters, it might be time to rethink sending them by email. One of the major reasons newsletters don’t get read is that they are often lost in overcrowded inboxes.
With DeskAlerts you can create employee newsletters directly from within the system and they will be sent directly to employees’ computers or mobile phones as alert notifications. You can still send via email or even broadcast by SMS notifications if you’d like to do that as well.
DeskAlerts is an intrusive internal communications tool, and to that end, you can be sure your newsletters will be seen by ensuring the settings are checked to continue to remind the staff member that there is a new newsletter to read, which will continue to appear on their screens until they have read it. You can also insist on a reading acknowledgment.
DeskAlerts’ powerful statistics module will let you know who has seen the newsletter and who hasn’t – right down to the device that they accessed it from.
Learn more about DeakAlerts for internal communications.
This article was originally published in 2019, but updated in 2021 with more information.
