Corporate communications best practices for a successful year ahead
Frequent and effective communication is key to employee engagement. Learn 4 simple ways your intranet can help strengthen your communications strategy.
High levels of employee engagement will keep your organization on the right path, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. Engaged employees are up to 18% more productive and 23% more profitable, according to Gallup research.
Fortunately, engagement can be cultivated even with a remote workforce, through consistent and effective communications tactics. Here are four corporate communications strategies you can start implementing (or improving on) right now.
4 best practices for communicating on the intranet
1. Create a single source of truth
Your intranet needs to be a place where employees can be confident they’ll find current information that’s available in any browser, on any device, at any time. The purpose of your intranet is certainly to be agile, accessible, and consistent, but above all, it needs to be accurate.
Nothing is more confusing (and frustrating) for employees than getting different information from different sources about the same topic. Your intranet is the solution to that problem. It provides a space where information can be contained and maintained, and from which all employees can reference.
One of the easiest ways to achieve a single source of truth is to assign ownership. At some organizations it may be a dedicated team of community managers, while at others, it could be members of the HR or Corporate Communications teams. Either way, decide who can edit and update information on the intranet, and implement a process that involves regular review cycles to catch any discrepancies.
2. Publish news in a timely fashion
In order to provide accurate and truthful information, it also needs to be timely. Think of your intranet as a type of news service. Just like at a news service, the ones managing the intranet control the narrative.
Avoid information leaks and a rumour mill by updating posts with new information as soon as it becomes available. Word of mouth can be a good tactic for some things, but don’t rely on it to disseminate information across your employee base.
3. Communicate in an interactive and engaging way
One of the best things about workplace communications is that you can have fun with it. Thanks to memes, gifs, and the continued increase in video, communicating to your employees can not only be informative, but highly entertaining!
Thanks to the countless tools within your intranet, your communications can (and should) include multimedia features, as well as opportunities for social interaction, including commenting and liking.
Remember to keep communications short. You’ve heard the stats about attention spans these days. So, in short, don’t overwhelm people with more information than they need. Capture their attention using fun and interactive features, but for a deeper dive into the content, link to a separate page or knowledge base.
4. Create transparency with leader communications
Employees want to hear from their leaders. They want to know where the business is headed and how it’s going to get there. The more informed employees feel, the happier and more productive they become. So, as part of your internal communications plans, focus your efforts on meeting these needs.
Try implementing leader blogs or videos. Create a regular schedule in which different leaders within the organization address employees directly and answer FAQs, and then share these on your intranet’s home page.
It’s also important to encourage leaders to engage with employees on different posts. Not only will it encourage further engagement from the employee base, but it will demonstrate that the leadership team is truly invested in employee morale.
Next steps: Establishing your internal communications plans
You’ve likely already made valuable progress towards your internal communications goal. Regardless of what you were planning next, you’ve had to adapt to a new type of workplace and learn how to apply the tools you had to further your business goals.
It’s time for your organization to lean on its intranet (and its full workplace experience platform) like never before. The intranet serves as a one-stop shop for leadership blogging, employee chatter, company announcements, and so much more. As the primary tool for centralizing corporate communications and ensuring employees receive up-to-date news and information, it helps build a culture that cultivates transparency and engagement.
