For an organization to achieve successful growth it needs to communicate and engage with its employees on a regular basis. A well-crafted internal communication plan is the only way that can keep employees informed regarding the ongoing initiatives and make futuristic goals that fit in with the business objective and create desired business outcomes. However, creating an internal communication plan may seem daunting, but with clear planning, you can easily promote key messages, impact employee engagement, and improve productivity across the workplace.
According to Harvard Business Review, 71% of executives with 500 employees or more feel that internal collaboration and engagement are one of the most important factors for a company’s success.
Furthermore, a strong organization that makes unified efforts towards meeting common business goals can only be achieved by implementing a successful internal communication plan integrated with an intranet platform. Regardless of the company size, an efficient internal communication plan can deliver cutting-edge solutions both to the employees and from the customer service front. Therefore, modern intranets can be seamlessly used as a hub for any business with the ability to integrate with various communication tools.
This article articulates what successful internal communication planning looks like and how it can help organizations by providing informed decisions, acknowledging knowledge sharing and empowering employee retention. If you are wondering how to create an internal communication plan, we got you covered. We have compiled a 7-step strategy that will enhance collaboration and better engage employees.
Internal Communication Planning:
If we must clearly define what is internal communication planning? In simple words, an internal communication plan is a blueprint that guides you through a roadmap of tasks required to run the day-to-day operations smoothly to achieve your business goals. It is a calculated strategy to share information, collaborate with employees and create a productive environment. This can successfully be implemented using intuitive and user-friendly communication tools and one digital solution that holds the key is adapting the modern intranet.
In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute has observed that employee productivity increased by 20-25% among organizations that have implemented well-designed internal communication plans using robust modern intranet tools.
Moreover, if we look at the Internal communication best practices, it is all about how employees are staying connected and keeping informed with every relevant content that shows the ways employees or teams can transfer information properly and compare results based on timeframes. For instance, using the Saketa intranet while planning your internal communication strategy will enable you to create social reactions via surveys etc. Therefore, this measures content hit points and such insights will create a difference in audience segments for your internal emails, and messages, and tailors them in an engaging way.
An effective internal communication discloses information that includes key elements such as:
- Organization’s current objective, mission, and values
- Driving key business deliverables and building cohesive action plans.
- Focus on primary communication channels and publish up-to-date content creation.
- Analyze employee feedback and leverage staff responsibilities.
- Set up external marketing and promotional plan keeping track of the deadlines and project status.
7 ways to Improve Internal Communication Plan for Business Growth:
The landscape for internal communication methods is ever-changing and presently in the mid of a profound shift. With technology advancements, it becomes a necessity for companies to speed up their unprecedented level of innovation and conduct daily operations. However, without well-designed internal communication tactics, it may lead to miscommunication and increases the chances of staff churn as well as adversely impacting productivity.
On the other side, this poor communication structure can also end up affecting customer experience. Therefore, incorporating internal communication planning ensures that employees are receiving the relevant information needed to perform daily activities and analyze how customers are well-communicated with ongoing initiatives, events, and future plans.
If you are thinking to build an effective internal communication plan from scratch, then we have outlined 7 key steps required to enhance your internal communication strategy and learn how communication is done right.
Here are the following key steps you can follow to gain an effective internal communication plan:
1. Evaluate performance with the current framework:
To build a successful internal communication plan, first, it is important to understand what the success level of the existing internal communication framework is. And what are the areas that need improvement? This can be done through various tracking methods, but it gets easier when integrated with an intranet solution. Companies who are interacting and collaborating with their employees feel obstructed to provide essential information and can effortlessly use intranet communication channels that facilitate teams in achieving the set objectives.
To start with organizations can use metrics and set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success level of the existing internal communication plan. These indicators set a benchmark of internal communication success which may include the following:
- Monitoring interaction and ratings such as the email open rate, click-through rate, shares, tags etc.,)
- Review daily insights of target audience reactions, and surveys via intranet analytics.
- Facilitate relevant content and share among focus groups via employee portal, dashboards etc.,
2. Map out internal collaboration tools:
There are so many communication tools that can be used. But one of the most commonly used tools for internal communication is the intranet which sets the right tone for employees to easily collaborate and engage. Intranet is a perfect communication channel that helps identify your target audience and share relevant information across the employee portal, forums and dashboard.
For Instance, an intranet software platform with social, collaborative, enterprise-level business applications and mobile device integration such as e-learning, automated workflows, project management, and e-forms that foster productivity, internal collaboration, and employee engagement.
3. Make content creation intuitive:
How often do you bounce off a content post over a website page if it does not gauge your attention? Audiences read content that captures their attention within 15 seconds and this same for internal communication too.
An internal communication plan should be transparent and direct using the right tone. The content whether it is posts, newsletters, emails and articles should be concise, easily readable and mainly relevant to the industry. Therefore, with the use of intranet organizations can publish intuitive content right from blogs to emailers ensuring the layout is visually appealing using graphical elements that can easily connect and encourage employee engagement.
4. Populate your communication calendar:
Timing is the most crucial aspect while delivering internal communication, for example, if plan to publish an important post or newsletter out by Friday which has a high chance of open rate but instead you share it Monday morning when employees are getting ready for the work week and are less likely to get the engagement. In such cases, to publish internal and external news on time organizations should start using an automated scheduler system.
Scheduling internal communication across the workplace is designed to help employers follow an organized workflow system that encourages employees to collaborate and join portals such as “People Directory Forum”. These portals ensure employees get easy access to important information, news and announcements about upcoming events, projects, accomplishments etc. Therefore, if you establish a balanced and consistent timetable for your communication, it will help you better analyze the performance metrics and focus on other engagement activities.
5. Unify engagement with employee intranet:
We so far understood that a successful internal communication plan can promote and boost employee advocacy. Using an intranet platform in your internal communication tactics can encourage two-way communication and enhance productivity and social features can help employees to directly collaborate with the management by giving feedback and insights via social intranet or popularly known as employee intranet.
This type of effective internal communication offers a collection of insights to supercharge an organization’s strategy for the future of work and level up engagement for a well-performing workforce.
6. Leverage open door policy:
Empowering employees to share their feedback regarding their opinions and preference is one of the most effective ways to build a potential internal communication plan in the workplace. Organizations can implement an open-door policy by using social forums or different communication mediums where employers can provide a survey form to analyze the performance and work on the area of improvement. This type of policy is designed to eliminate barriers between the various levels of management. Therefore, deploying an open-door policy encourage employees to reveal their roadblocks and find solutions.
7. Measure your progress:
As we know KPIs and metrics are useful in assessing the performance of the current internal communication plan, it is also important to measure the success or monitor the levels of employee engagement through likes, shares, click-through rates, and comments. Measuring an internal communication plan by using an intranet analytics tool is a rolling task that will continue to develop as the business evolves. Furthermore, consistently evaluating data can build insightful and robust internal communication over time.
Wrapping up:
A winning internal communication planning involves multiple steps, strategy and consideration that is aligned with your current state of the communication ecosystem. In such a case, the right choice of internal communication tool is crucial to assess the success of whether the communication plan is a hit or flop. An intranet management system is a hub of all applications that can be easily accessible from your digital workplace, making a one-stop solution for collaborating, sharing relevant information, and most importantly keeping employees engaged and happy.
Additionally, using the above-listed 7-step strategy for an effective internal communication plan will help your workforce feel valued and in turn enhances their productivity and performance. If you would like to know more about how an intranet can support your newly structured internal communication strategy, go through our blog ways to plan a perfect content strategy with the intranet.
At Saketa, our intranet platform can be your go-to platform where your internal communication plan will engage your workforce with great ease, drive productivity and contribute to the company’s success
