How do you keep your internal communications fresh and relevant in a fast-paced and dynamic environment?

People managers are one of your most important communications channels, so prioritize them as an audience. Consider a secure intranet hub for managers that houses resources, trainings, deadlines, and support groups. Add a simple recurring email newsletter to remind them of important info to convey to teams. Schedule informal virtual meetings on relevant topics to keep them engaged and shoring up front-line communications.

Knowing your audience also means knowing their experience at any given time. For example, if I know there are multiple surveys open at one time for the same or overlapping audiences, I'll opt to gather feedback through a different channel or at a later time. Additionally, keeping tabs on an editorial calendar can help you gauge whether now is the best time to communicate, or whether your message is at risk of getting buried amid other content.

Your audience likely doesn't want to read the same thing repeatedly. So knowing the audience does not mean that you copy and paste. Rather, you must understand different nuances of their issues and explore them from various angles.

Sentiment is also important. Taking steps to understand how your audience is feeling about what you are communicating, or the environment more generally, should play a key role in ensuring internal communications hit the mark and don't appear tone deaf.

Understanding your audience is pivotal. Dive into their daily routines. Discover how they consume information amidst their tasks. Use direct feedback, it's gold. Tailor your messages, it's not one-size-fits-all. Remember, engaging communication is a two-way street. It's about dialogue, not monologue.

The best internal communication metrics are those which enable the tracking of changes in specific business performance measures concurrent to internal communication activities and initiatives. We need to go beyond click rates, open rates, and employee engagement scores, to metrics that actually demonstrate impact.

Employees often have crazy inboxes and might prefer to have less-urgent internal comms sent elsewhere. Slack is an easy way to send out low priority pings that employees can take their time in reviewing.

Channels shouldn't be boxes to tick, or where messages go to die. Spend the time to find out the channels and formats you key audiences like, the ones they hate, and the ones they aren't aware of. Then experiment. Lather and repeat.

Personalization and mobilization are ideal in a fast-paced environment, if you can do it. Invest in a CMS that allows some user customization (newsfeeds, info orientation), and make it mobile (tap into the new normal of connecting and consuming). And consider using your screen saver as a comms tool. For anyone using a laptop, it's a built-in billboard for important info (I'm looking at you, compliance training and performance reviews....)

There is huge value in a mix of channels and formats, but only if they are serving your strategic goals, and more importantly, if they are what your audience(s) want. If you do want to experiment, it is also not necessary to always use the tried and tested existing channels. You can mirror your audience's preferred external comms channel & format experience (e.g vertical video, messenger bots). There is an existing shorthand and framework there that allows you to jump in and deliver the message more quickly.

Brevity is essential. Clarity is critical If the message has a TL;DR then why do you need the whole message? Share the key info and a call to action. Add hyperlinks for detail and nuance.

There is a prevailing modern business narrative around failure as a fortifying learning experience on the path to eventual success. This Beckett quote gets bandied about a lot "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." And while there is certainly a huge amount of truth in that, the inherent learning opportunity in success often gets overlooked. There is often as much to learn from victory as there is from failure. So celebrate the wins and see what you can learn from them too.

Nothing is more truer. Celebrating successes of colleagues not just for their work, but also what they do professionally outside the organisation demonstrates just how open the business is, to colleagues being their authentic selves.