Many companies are brilliant at communicating with the outside world, but not so good when it comes to communicating with their own employees. They can tell their own story successfully externally – sharing their vision, initiatives, triumphs and goals with the wider world. They do so using different mediums and channels. But when they need to communicate with their own people for whatever reason it falls well short.
Sometimes internal communication is overlooked because the assumption is that people who work for a particular company will just know what’s going on and there’s no need to specifically tell them. But guess what? Your employees aren’t mind readers!
Companies with strong internal cultures are extremely good at communicating vision, goals, good news and even bad news with employees to ensure that everyone is well informed so they can be a unified, cohesive team with the same hopes and aspirations wanting to make the company a success.
If you’re not sure where to start with changing up your internal communications, try some of these:
Ban email
Email communication has its benefits, but the downsides far outweigh them. People feel overwhelmed by email and for good reason – overloaded inboxes kill productivity and cost businesses billions of dollars globally every year.
Encourage and incentivize your employees to not send emails, but to look at using other communications channels to communicate internally instead.
Encourage face-to-face talks
One of the problems with email is that people might send a message to someone who is sitting right near them, and then go backwards and forwards, wasting time before they reach a conclusion. The time spent emailing might double, or triple, the time it would have taken if they’d just talked about the issue face-to-face.
Employees should be encouraged to speak to their colleagues more instead of using email. When colleagues aren’t in the same physical location, picking up the phone or organizing a meeting over Skype or other videoconferencing software is just as effective.
Try DeskAlerts
Another way to bypass the email system but be sure that everyone in the company gets important news is to try DeskAlerts – an internal communications solution that sends pop-up notifications direct to employee desktops in a way that cannot be ignored or minimized, and is guaranteed to be seen.
These messages appear on employee screens even if they are on standby or screensaver mode and can be used to deliver information on any topic, and can even be sent in video format.
Use a variety of channels
Don’t just pick one channel for communicating, try different channels. When you run external communications campaigns you don’t just pick one channel and stick with it… and the same applies to internal comms. Like any communication campaigns you often need to reinforce your key messages several times, across several mediums, in order for them to resonate.