The Do’s and Don’ts of Creating an Internal Comms Strategy

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: having a strong internal comms strategy is paramount to higher employee engagement – and, by extension, better business performance. Here’s the WLM guide to creating a great internal comms strategy.

Research continues to highlight the importance of internal comms, with Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report finding that nearly 83% of UK employees are either disengaged or have doubts about their employer. This costs the UK up to ￡70 billion per year in lost productivity.

Having strong internal comms in place can help to protect your company’s culture and performance, keeping teams informed, connected, engaged and motivated. However, knowing how to implement a successful internal comms strategy can feel a little like a minefield.?

Here are some basic do’s and don’ts to help you smash your comms strategy.

DO

Ensure you have a dedicated internal comms team

If you’re part of an organisation with over 1,000 employees, creating effective internal comms content is going to need more than a one-person team. Once you’ve assembled your internal comms team, define roles which will complement the smooth running of the strategy. Remember to ensure the whole team understands the core principles of your comms strategy.?

People from outside the comms team can provide useful sources of information as to their own team’s wins, as well as other activity among their colleagues to help you put together a strong internal comms team.

Do your research

Reflection on past activity is key to future growth. Take an objective look at the internal comms efforts you currently have in place. Do your comms meet your objectives? How do you know if they are? How much engagement are you getting from employees? Are the right messages getting through and, more importantly, are they sticking?

If you find that your internal email open rate is low or intranet visits are lacklustre, it might be time to change things up. The best way to understand where or how you’re missing the mark is by asking your colleagues directly.?

By finding out what their pain points are and what could be better, you embrace the importance of internal communication. Set up working groups, run staff surveys and organise focus sessions to find out what people in the company think of your internal comms. To achieve a rounded view, make sure the group members straddle different levels and teams of the company.?

Define your objectives?

We talk a lot about SMART objectives over at WLM HQ – and for good reason! SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant and Time-bound) objectives can be really useful to help you gain a clear picture of what you’re looking for out of your new and improved internal comms strategy. Because after all, how do you know what is effective without first defining what ‘effective’ looks like?

Objectives could be anything from improving your employees’ transparency perception results on your next employee engagement survey to improving newsletter or email readership. Use your research findings to help inform areas of focus for your internal comms strategy.?

Measure your performance

Without putting metrics in place, it’s impossible to know what comms content is working and what isn’t. Working in the dark also takes away the satisfaction of seeing your hard work pay off! There are lots of tools out there to help you measure analytics, including ContactMonkey, Workvivo and Unily. Whichever software you use to deliver your internal comms campaign, there are usually analytics options available to help you track things like click-through rates, read time, traffic to internal pages, internal comms survey results and programme or event sign-ups.?

DON’T

Depend on a single communication channel

Depending on the nature of your company, it’s unlikely that employees across the board will all have access to the same communication channel. Shop floor or factory workers, for example, are less likely to see content on your company’s intranet, while van drivers probably won’t have a lot of time to read through your company newsletter while on the road.?

Internal comms apps, like Haiilo or Talkfreely can be a great solution to this. They allow you to reach your colleagues across various communication channels, encouraging a sense of unity and connectedness regardless of job roles or locations.?

Forget to make it fun!?

Even if you work in a corporate-heavy environment, it doesn’t mean the way you communicate with your colleagues has to be dry or matter-of-fact.

Think about the sort of content that catches your eye; what kind of posts make you sit up and stop scrolling, and how can you replicate this in your own comms strategy? Perhaps it’s a quick Q&A with someone in the company, a light-hearted poll, some interesting stats, a brand storytelling video or a punchy weekly round-up of company news. Your research and objective-setting should help guide you in this area, too.?

Alienate your audience

Remember, audiences engage with content that provides value – whether it’s entertaining, informative, educational or inspiring. While we appreciate that certain company updates have to be communicated – though they may not always be the most engaging! – there are ways to make the content more attractive. Cut out unnecessary jargon, and feature some page-popping visuals to make ‘heavy’ content more digestible.??