Effective internal communication improves overall productivity, employee engagement, and employees’ overall attitude toward their company. Many companies state that they always keep regular contact with their employees. But, how to check it? What content can improve internal communication?
Content is an essential component of any company’s growth. It serves a variety of functions, including sales, promotion, and internal communication.
To be effective, it must adhere to not only the company’s internal policies but also general rules, stylistic and grammatical guidelines.
What Is Internal Communication?
Internal communication is regarded as communication between employees or departments within the same company. It can take many forms, including:
- Interviews;
- Employee/work councils;
- Meetings;
- Memos;
- Internal company blog;
- Team briefings, etc.
Why Are Internal Communications Important?
While communicating with employees is critical for your company, you should also track their engagement using various key performance indicators (KPIs). When it comes to employee engagement, analyzing data and measuring key performance indicators will help you understand:
- What the effectiveness of your content is;
- Whether your company’s communication style needs to be tweaked;
- How internal communication affects other areas of the business.
So, if your company lacks an internal communications strategy, now is the time to create one. If your business already has it, you are on the right track. However, to improve the situation and generate accurate reports, you must ensure that the key performance indicators listed below are accurately monitored.
Key Performance Indicators For Internal Communications To Monitor
Your company, like any other department, should monitor key performance indicators for internal communications regularly (on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis).
Furthermore, a more in-depth analysis should be performed each quarter to determine how KPIs relate to your company’s overall communications goals and whether changes are required. There are a few things you should track in your internal communication.
Maintain A Record Of Your Opening And Click Metrics
Internal communications should be measured in the same way that digital marketing teams measure marketing emails for their opening and click ratings. Tracking these metrics provides you with useful information, such as:
- The time when these messages work best;
- Topics and content lines that elicit the most interaction.
Knowing all of this information can help your company reach out to employees more effectively and increase the amount of information your organization learns.
Count The Number Of Views
When it comes to internal communications, you don't always want to feed employees only company news. Shared posts should include exceptional blog content (from the company’s and third-party blogs) or industry news.
In any event, your organization must track how many employees view and share this content with coworkers, colleagues, or on social media. It is an indication of how helpful or intriguing the content or information was to them.
How Do You Write Good Internal Communication?
We live in an era of surging, never-ending flow and exchange of information. Every minute, millions of messages with varying content are sent and received. At the same time, information exchange does not cease even during working hours.
Employees, for example, typically check their emails 36 times per hour, devoting valuable time to internal communication and resolving critical issues. However, not all of the company’s content for its employees is interesting.
Follow these simple tips to solve the issue and make communication as effective as possible.
Choose The Most Effective Internal Communication Channel
Each text communication element that is created must serve a specific purpose. However, for your message to reach your recipient, you must select the most convenient channel for your message delivery. It can be either a messenger, an e-mail, or an internal company blog.
The internal blog acts as a central information hub or a ‘virtual bulletin board’ for the company, allowing all employees to stay in the loop with what’s going on in and around the office. At the same time, the blog opens a new, transparent, two-way communication channel inside an organization, where everyone can ask a question and get the information they need to make faster and smarter decisions. The internal blog is intuitive and easy to use, so everyone can quickly get on board, which is one of the reasons why it works so well as an internal communication tool.
Ask Yourself A Few Questions
Before you begin writing text, you must first answer a few questions. First and foremost, specify what information you wish to convey to the internal audience. Determine what information is critical at this time.
Facilitate the process of information perception by structuring it in a logical order. Disclose a problem that is currently important to the company.
Setting The Tone
The right tone is one of your content’s success factors. In some cases, the informal tone can help you connect with your team and boost morale.
A more formal tone is effective in dealing with problems that require immediate resolution, poor performance, or immediate action from staff. It is critical that your content not only contains a call to action but also clearly describes the steps and measures required to achieve the set goals and objectives.
Make Your Content Memorable
After you have finished writing the necessary text material, take a few moments to thoroughly review it. Take note of the memorable tidbits. What might be overlooked in your message that is not particularly important?
What do you remember the most after reading the text? It will only take you a few minutes to assess how well your text is performing its target functions. You can make written content more memorable by using dots or short sentences. Avoid using long paragraphs.
Use Numbers To Support Your Ideas
Words can be powerful. Numbers, on the other hand, have a way of persuading people. Only when they recognize the “globality” of the situation or problem will they feel compelled to act and become more motivated. Metrics in the form of interest, graphs, and charts can be used to persuade employees to perform their tasks more effectively.
Communicate with your team, and emphasize metrics in your messages that reflect the current state of affairs and how much growth you anticipate over a set period of time. The figures provide additional motivation to employees, define a clearer framework and timeline, and thus make the goal attainable rather than speculative.
Company Transparency
Transparency of the company’s goals avoids excessive secrecy between the company’s head and its employees. To motivate your employees and help them understand their role in the overall operation of the company, keep them updated on everything by delivering information directly to them rather than through middle management.
Employees are motivated by trusting and transparent relationships, which allow them to have faith in management and work “for the benefit of everyone.”
Set Clear Expectations For Internal communication
What do you think will happen after the employee receives your message? He will either delete or respond to emails that do not require a response.
When you finish your written content, you should always indicate what you expect from the employee and his subsequent actions. This could be feedback, proof of purpose, or a brief explanation of the letter’s content (to see whether he understands the goal).
Conclusion
It is critical to assess the efficacy of your internal communication. Set a goal before sending out content, and then assess whether your goals were met after it was delivered. You also ask your employees which communication methods they prefer.
To be effective and receive feedback from the person reading it, the material must be good, which means that the content must be clear, concise, and reflect your point of view. Always ask yourself what your goal is before publishing anything. Make your written material easy to read and ensure that it meets your objectives so that employees can easily accept the main message.
Furthermore, use the metrics described above on a regular basis to see if communication has improved in terms of data exchange. Understanding which methods of communication with employees work best aids in the development of future content strategies.
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