8 Best Practices for Effective Internal Communications

Why internal communications matter

Reaching internal communications success is critical to the survival of any organization — not least because good internal communication promotes employee engagement, which is key to increasing employee retention. The Microsoft 2022 Work Trend Index reveals that 43% of employees are somewhat or extremely likely to consider changing jobs in 2023. A recent survey report from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicates that over 40% of US workers are actively searching for a new job right now.

 

Employee engagement has a lot to do with this trend. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report, employees who lack engagement and feel a disconnect with company culture annually cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. Another study indicates that employees who feel engaged are 87% less likely to leave their organization.

Using internal communication to keep employees up to date with both their current work and developments in the organization as a whole increases employee engagement and job satisfaction. An internal comms strategy that uses communications best practices reduces communication overload and helps encourage cross departmental communication. This is in turn promotes business process efficiency and increases productivity.

Having an internal communications strategy that stresses communications best practices is therefore extremely important.

Internal communications best practices

What are these internal communications best practices? They include the following:

1. Assess your existing internal communications

Key to developing an effective internal communications strategy is knowing how well or otherwise your internal communication processes currently perform. Track key metrics such as email opening rates that will enable you to assess whether you are currently achieving effective communication with your existing suite of communication tools. Solicit feedback from internal stakeholders to determine which internal communications tools are most commonly used — and how they are being used for internal comms.

2. Develop your internal communications strategy

The results of the previous assessment will help you in creating an internal communication strategy (if you don’t already have one) or tweaking your existing internal communications strategy to keep it more in line with communications best practices. Consider your business objectives, and how internal communications best needs to serve your organization in terms of employee communications, cross departmental communication, and facilitating internal communication activities such as managing remote workers.

3. Create an internal communications committee

Putting a dedicated committee in place for internal comms ensures that you’ll have a leadership team running point on the dissemination of company news, policies and internal messages — at both formal and informal levels. This internal communications best practice has a major strategic advantage, in that internal stakeholders will know who to reach out to, if they have questions or issues.

4. Provide two-way channels for feedback

Effective internal communications involves listening, as well as putting out information. So, part of your internal communications strategy should be creating channels that enable employees and internal stakeholders to express their views on how your internal communications tools are performing, and how your internal communications initiatives are being received. It’s an internal communications best practice to provide channels for anonymous feedback, to encourage employees to speak freely.

 

5. Ensure that internal communications filter through to all levels

Employees who miss important announcements or updates may feel “out of the loop” and become disgruntled as a result. So another internal communications best practice is to provide mechanisms for distributing information throughout the organization, and in a timely manner. Internal communications tools like dashboards with real-time updates, push notifications and alerts are useful in this regard.

6. Avoid communication overload

Communication overload can be just as damaging to internal communications success as Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). While it’s helpful to provide consistent communication to inform employees of what’s happening around them, it’s important to strike a balance so that your workers are not being consistently bombarded with announcements, internal messages and updates.

7. Track and measure your progress

You should use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor the progress of your internal communications initiatives, and the performance of your internal communications tools. Some key metrics to consider might include newsletter or email opening rates, numbers of likes and shares for blogs and social media posts, event attendance figures for in person team meetings, and employee retention rates. 

8. Choose a robust and integrated internal communications platform

 In order to reach internal communications success and put all of these internal communications best practices into effect, you’ll need an easy-to-use internal comms technology solution with integrated tools and a range of features comprehensive enough to meet all your employee communication requirements.

You will also need to partner with an internal communications technology provider with the resources and expertise to enable you to effectively implement your internal communication strategy. This provider also needs to be in tune with the unique circumstances, objectives and requirements of your business.

Claromentis is an intranet solution and internal communication platform with a difference. We’ve been in the intranet business for over 20 years and know exactly what tools organizations need to support their teams. We’ve built company intranets for every industry including financial, education and healthcare.

All our apps are easy to access from your integrated digital workspace, making it a one-stop-shop for sharing information, collaboration and internal communications. Our intranet content management system and design tools make it easy to build an engaging intranet, with no need for technical know-how. Simply drag & drop widgets onto your intranet pages – such as activity feeds and project dashboards – then add your own colors, fonts and styling. Plus, you can easily update your intranet branding as many times as you like, to increase employee engagement and keep the employee experience fresh.

Our intranet software is full of social, collaborative, and enterprise-level business apps for collaboration, task management, and employment, that you can use to implement your internal communications strategy. Our intranet and mobile app work in harmony with our e-learning, e-forms, automated workflows, and project management features, providing teams with an integrated digital workplace to call home. We’re constantly improving our software too, with new apps, features, and enhancements added with every release.

To learn more about how Claromentis can help your organization put internal communications best practices into full effect, book a demo with our experts.