6 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Internal Communication

Successful companies don’t just communicate well with the outside world, they also communicate well within their organization.

Employees are the backbone of any business. Keeping employees engaged is a key way to ensure your business goes from strength-to-strength. Organizations who focus on keeping their employees informed and engaged are often the ones who have an advantage over their competition.

This is what you can learn from companies who communicating effectively internally.

1. Becoming an employer of choice

Companies that continuously convey their values to staff and don’t just pay lip-service to them often lead the pack and become an employer of choice, attracting the best job seekers.

2. Keeping the best employees

If your organization has managed to recruit top talent, that’s one hurdle. The next one is keeping them. Employees decide to leave an employer for many different reasons – but it isn’t just things like salary and rewards that get your best employees to stay.

Research has shown time and time again that employees who feel like they are kept in the dark often have poor morale, they’ll be going to work for your competition who know how to make them feel valued.

3. Your internal communications can shape your external image

Organizations without an effective internal communications strategy risk having a workforce that isn’t cohesive.  When employees are misinformed and ignorant about the organization’s direction and their part in it, to the outside world it looks as though the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

If your company looks like a shambles while your competitors are running like well-oiled machines, all singing from the same songbook, it’s time to reevaluate what you’re doing.  Customers expect you to deliver on your brand’s promise, and internal communications will help shape your ability to do so.                                                                                             

4. When staff are prepared to go above and beyond

Companies with great internal communication have staff who are ready to go the extra mile to achieve and keep internal and external clients and stakeholders happy. This increased productivity has a flow-on effect to improved efficiency and profitability.  Customers expect you to deliver on your brand’s promise, and

5. Building trust with the community

If your competitors have a reputation within the community of being reliable and trustworthy, you can just about bet that it’s because their employees are modeling behaviours that are being communicated internally via excellent employee engagement.

6. Sticking together in a crisis

If a crisis befalls a business, it can quickly snowball and worsen as a result of rumors, misinformation, panic and disgruntled employees speaking out of turn. Engaged employees who are kept informed every step of the way through a crisis are more likely to be loyal and thus will help to contain your crisis so you can move on from it and repair.  A toxic workplace culture will only make your crisis worse.

Keeping your employees informed in a timely manner is critical – whether it's good news or bad news, they want to hear from the company first before they hear about it somewhere else.