Best Practices for Internal Communication Part 1

The new norm of the workplace includes team members who are now working in isolation, removed from their usual working environment and detached from their established communication channels.

Now, individuals, who have been interacting together with the support of their leaders and staff, are now spread across different locations, situations and even mindsets. This makes the role of internal communications more significant than ever.

How do you create and refine your internal communication strategy?

Strategise on key messages

What are your goals for your team during this time? What challenges are they facing now? What are the opportunities to maximise and gaps to overcome? Create your key messages around your goals.

Establish metrics

Select indicators that measure the progress of your internal comms efforts. Will it be productivity numbers? Safety and incident reporting? Training? Attendance or participation? New ideas and recommendations? Use regularly timed intervals to measure progress and gather feedback.

Share facts

Anchor your communication to facts, statistics and research. This makes your key messages credible and trustworthy. It also gives authority to the voice behind your internal comms and fosters compliance to directives given to your team members.

Call to action

Drive your communication towards a call to action. With every message you release, what do you want your team to do? Deliver it simply, clearly and concisely and avoid any words, phrases or ideas that can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback.

Select your tools

Using private podcasts is a great tool to add to your internal comms strategy. When you use private podcasts the resources needed, such as money, effort and time can be used more efficiently and with results far better than memos, circulars and other traditional internal communications.