Internal communications may be your organization’s most important level of communication. This article is a practical guide for using internal communication to give your teams a clear understanding of the top-level goals of the enterprise – and transforming your company’s efficiency and culture.
Missed deadlines, extended project timelines, ineffective management, and the resulting stresses on your business…
These are all symptoms of a larger problem.
And that problem could be internal communication.
Communication (or lack thereof) reflects on your employee satisfaction, efficiency, and therefore your organization’s revenue. Without an intentional approach to internal communication, people drift off in their own directions, and problems become intractable.
This article offers some ways to think about upgrading your internal communication so that everyone in the organization understands your business goals, making those goals surprisingly easier to reach.
Table of Contents:
- What Is Effective Internal Communication?
- The Challenges of Internal Communications
- 10 Tips for Effective Internal Communication
- Internal Communication Success is Intentional, Not Lucks
What Is Effective Internal Communication?
Internal communication – once known as “employee” communication – is the term used for the processes that involve sharing company information with the people inside your organization. Effective internal communication happens when the information is flowing in a timely, transparent manner, using multiple mediums (technology, documents, verbal communication, etc.), and is accessible by everyone. In today’s workplace, teams may consist of employees or contractors, or a combination of both. Team members may be in multiple locations and different time zones. Regardless, it’s critical to have information flow in a way that always moves the organization forward.
Whether your team is small or large, better internal communication helps you reach goals and deadlines faster while maintaining morale (seriously).
Research shows that employees and other team members work harder and are happier when they understand how their work fits into the key objectives of the whole. This is the whole idea behind OKRs – objectives and key results, and the companies who use them (for example, Google and Intel) are the ones currently running the business world.
And research shows that better morale keeps your teams engaged, resulting in up to 21% more profitability.
Here are areas of your business where communications improvement is extremely helpful:
- Strategic focus
- Revenue goals
- Systems
- Client onboarding
- Sales
- Client feedback
However, the truth is that communicating well comes with a few challenges. So you need to know these roadblocks first to handle them well.
The Challenges of Internal Communications
Your approach to internal communication cannot be “set it and forget it.” Internal communication systems are dynamic systems that need to be adjusted from time to time, like most of your other business systems.
Many enterprises make the mistake of communicating well for a limited time (say, at the beginning of the year) and then falling off. When this happens, employees lose confidence in the company’s sincerity about making them full partners in the work. It’s hard to win back that confidence.
Another common problem in internal communications is a lack of specificity and clarity – in other words, vagueness.
When your SOPs (standard operating procedures), weekly calls, and feedback reports don’t provide detail and context, your teams will produce uneven, or unwanted, results.
To avoid that, here are ways to improve clarity with your team:
- Set objectives and outcomes together (especially in meetings)
- Get specific (with questions, expectations, etc.)
- Keep words concise (in your emails, texts, etc.)
- Track and share results
Here are other challenges in team communication and their solutions:
- Scattered notes and action items → store notes inside one project management folder. Make sure people know where to go for reference.
- Low-quality meetings → only hold meetings that have a clear purpose. Create agendas and strict time limit for meeting.
Deviation from goals → track your key performance indicators (KPIs) and set objectives and key results (OKRs). Then use them consistently to guide your projects, and boldly and transparently adjust them as projects evolve.
10 Tips For Effective Internal Communication
Here are 10 ways to make internal communication better in your business.
1 – Set Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations on projects, deadlines, behavior, and communication is the right place to start. Team members help develop these expectations so that they are aligned with them.
But having clear expectations is just the beginning — you should continually revisit your expectations. (See the section on OKRs and KPIs, below – objectives and key results as well as key performance indicators – vital tactics for managing internal communication)
The reason why is simple…people forget expectations. It’s only natural.
Trainings, meetings, and SOPs are opportunities to declare and reinforce your expectations. Then, test how well your team understands them and track their alignment as you go along.
Let’s now delve deeper into what SOPs are and how they help with internal communication.
2 – SOPs Are Key Internal Communications Tools
Standard operating procedures give step-by-step breakdowns of action items.
A great SOP can take a completely new person from knowing nothing to knowing everything about their role in your business (like magic!).
You can create SOPs around onboarding, automation, hiring, training, sales, marketing, admin tasks, etc.
When you have clear SOPs, team members tend to do better on tasks. SOPs also save you from answering the same questions repeatedly, making things more streamlined.
3 – Create OKRs And KPIs to Guide Internal Communications
Outcomes and key results are related to SOPs and KPIs but are not the same thing. Setting OKRs is a process that involves every single person on the team – and ties each team member’s objectives directly to their department’s objectives, and then to the company’s objectives. Team members are actively engaged in creating their OKRs and they can see everybody else’s OKRs, including those of their managers. They can then see with crystal clarity where they fit in, and will understand what they have to do – and by when – to have their contribution count for the team.
This single practice has proven to be highly motivating.
4 – Make Internal Communications Updates Routine
KPIs and OKRs are dynamic measures. Even SOPs should be adjusted as necessary.
Used together, these tools create and maintain a personalized connection with your team members, whether they’re employees or contractors.
Successful companies revisit them continuously, on a schedule, meeting with team members one-on-one, especially for ongoing tasks. Meetings allow everyone involved to ask questions, and to give and receive updates and feedback. Managers also can track with precision what each of their team members is doing – all along the way (this is crucial!).
Those regular meetings might cover topics such as:
- What they’ve done
- Where their roadblocks are
- What they have questions on
- How on track are they with KPIs and OKRs
Without meetings, there is usually a disconnect between where you think a team member is on a task and where they actually are.
5 – Leverage A Team Communications Tool
There are many communication platforms today for teams to use to stay in sync.
These range from project management-specific and chat-based tools to a mixture of both.
You can use these platforms to improve how your team communicates thanks to a plethora of features:
- Tasks and due dates
- Group and individual chats
- Video conferencing
- File sharing
- Note-taking
- App integrations
- Text and email capabilities
- Company directories
- Calendars
Using these features consistently is a surefire way to make internal communication better. Training team members on how these apps work and holding them accountable to use them is essential (Conduct training sessions on your chosen communication platform).
Here are 8 team communication platforms to consider and some of their features:
- Asana – tasks, calendars, templates, reporting (I use this with my team)
- Trello – project management using pipelines
- Slack – chat communication, team video, and integrations
- Hubspot – calendars, contact records, file storage, pipelines
- Workplace – group work features, instant messaging, knowledge libraries, and more
- Microsoft Teams – activity feeds, calendar, file sharing, and usage reports
- Basecamp – milestone tracking, tasks, idea management, activity dashboard
- Monday.com – A project management CRM that includes tasks, templates, reporting, activity feed
6 – Encourage Transparency Across the Enterprise
Whether in meetings, documents, or communication platforms, be transparent at every level of the enterprise.
Being honest about what’s happening at every stage ensures everyone is on the same page. It eliminates confusion and assumptions. It also makes team members genuine stakeholders.
Here are a few ways to keep transparency at the forefront:
- Explain the true reasons behind decisions
- Ask and address burning questions
- Lead by example
- Welcome team feedback
- Use analytics for tracking performance
Tracking team progress with analytics and KPIs is pivotal to transparency and aligning all team members with your organization’s goals. Let’s look further into it.
7 – Track Analytics And Communicate Your Numbers Internally
Success with your business’s goals starts with regular and objective communication on how close you are to the goal at any given point.
For this to happen, transparency about your objectives and your indicators for key results are crucial.
Start by setting key performance indicators with each team:
- How much does my team need to do each day/week/month to reach our goal (quantity-wise)
- How fast does my team have to perform specific tasks
- What results does my team have to achieve in x amount of days/weeks/months
Once your OKRs get set, you can track progress using analytics.
A CRM (customer relationship management) or project management tool helps track your numbers (honestly, they are both life savers).
Here’s a scenario involving using OKRs to reach a goal:
Say you’re looking to generate 10 appointments from your email list of 8,000 recipients next month. How many emails would your email marketing specialist need to send per week to generate that number of meetings? By understanding your numbers, the team member can construct and schedule the right outputs to get you in front of enough prospects to meet your goal. You can further have secondary OKRs for open rates, reply rates, clickthrough rates, etc.
OKRs and analytics keep the end goal and weekly expectations top of mind.
8 – Use Visual Aids And Encourage Note-Taking in Meetings
We all absorb information differently.
Images, videos, and data visuals are helpful ways to communicate information to almost everybody.
You can incorporate visual aids into:
- Presentations
- Training content
- Reports
Additionally, frequent meetings can generate lots of information, so encourage detailed note-taking.
Consider recording your meetings so team members can revisit them later. (Past recorded sessions also help with training future team members)
Another best practice is emailing post-call summaries to everyone. A post-call summary is a simple bullet-point list of what happened in a meeting, sent out to attendees as well as those who couldn’t make it.
9 – Encourage All Questions And Utilize Feedback
Better internal communication happens when people are encouraged to engage with company information. Keep an open line of communication with team members, and continuously encourage questions.
Inspire questions and feedback in meetings especially, since that allows for quicker answers. Consider rewarding questions and feedback, too.
10 – Keep Workflows And SOPs Up-To-Date
Changes happen constantly in business, meaning if your SOPs aren’t updated almost continuously, they’re very quickly outdated.
Keeping your information assets up to date helps avoid problems like wrong tasks or compliance issues (depending on your industry), and will save everyone a ton of time.
Newer team members will also have smoother training and onboarding experiences. When you find top talent, they expect a well-organized employee onboarding process.
Internal Communication Success is Intentional, Not Luck
Better internal communication is multi-faceted. It involves technology, written communication, and human-to-human contact to improve business outcomes.
At The Allyson Group, we help business owners like you create content for better internal communications – and therefore better business outcomes. We help you develop a content strategy from A-Z so you can communicate clearly with internal, as well as external, stakeholders.
We released our Marketers Pro Plan in 2023, a content bundle that lets you choose how much content you need each month – and this content can be customized for audiences both inside and outside your enterprise. Learn more at our Marketer’s Pro Plan page.
