It's just as crucial how you express a message as it is what you're communicating. Its importance cannot be ignored, not even in internal communications. In these changing times, your company's culture can provide a significant strategic edge. However, if employees are to comprehend and act on your culture – aims, values, and practices – they must be effectively transferred using best practices. As a result, it's critical to concentrate not only on what you're saying but also on how you're saying it.
It's time to apply new techniques in 2021 that will help you strengthen your internal communications strategy and connect, engage, and motivate your staff.
Internal communications strategies: Set your goals
What do you hope internal communications will accomplish for your team and company? How are you going to get there? What is the current state of affairs, and what has to be improved? How quickly do you want to achieve your objectives?
You should focus on creating an internal communications strategy and/or plan based on your responses to these types of questions before doing anything else. It's entirely up to you how you arrange it; make it as simple or as complex, general or specific as you'd like. A well-thought-out approach should keep you on track and increase your efficiency when it comes to achieving internal communications success. It will, at the very least, give you an idea of where to begin.
Your staff is busy; therefore, the last thing they need is an inconvenient and tense internal communication system. Fortunately, a growing focus on best practices in internal communications has resulted in a slew of software solutions that make it quick and pleasant. Keep it that way if you want your staff to participate and enjoy themselves.
Sharing of information
Effective information sharing is one of the few things that will make your firm more productive.
Support staff, for example, can share their daily experiences with customers with the rest of the organization, adding to their collective knowledge. As a result, they won't have to reinvent the wheel to adopt a solution when comparable consumer concerns happen in the future. Similarly, sales teams with exceptional awareness of the subtleties of each product would close a considerably higher number of agreements.
Your staff can save their documented experiences in Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. Genuine knowledge sharing, on the other hand, occurs when you share documents through internal communication platforms like AgilityPortal. Then your employees can engage in debates on various applications of the knowledge you've gained.
Make use of the appropriate communication tools
Your staff is busy; therefore, the last thing they need is an inconvenient and tense internal communication system. Fortunately, a growing focus on best practices in internal communications has resulted in a slew of software solutions that make it quick and pleasant. Keep it that way if you want your staff to participate and enjoy themselves.
Internal communication best practices can be aided by using the following tools:
Chat software like AgilityPortal and Microsoft Teams.
Using cloud technology to share information and documents.
Using a single platform to manage all of your email, calendars, documents, and other tasks.
Make internal communications enjoyable
Gone is the idea that work is called that for a purpose and that it isn't supposed to be enjoyable. Indeed, according to a PGi survey from 2013, 88 percent of millennials desire to work in a "fun and social work atmosphere." Similarly, 90 percent of Generation Z values workplaces that allow for human interaction. Productivity and enjoyment during work can go hand in hand, and internal interactions are no exception.
For instance, AgilityPortal offers a Social Portal where team members may post news stories and funny TikTok videos. It's a pleasant method for employees to let off steam while also fostering collaboration and teamwork.
Use analytics
The ability to quantify and see how the company's intranet is performing can improve your remote team's performance and productivity. You can use the data to implement changes and find out what needs to be done. Performance indicators can be used to measure your remote team collaboration and engagement. Thus, you should select an intranet software that provides real-time analytics like AgilityPortal.
Stay focused on your goals
It's great to communicate particular, targeted information, but it can mean overlooking your company's larger goals, mission, and other cultural elements. Be sure to communicate large ideas so that employees are mindful of them in addition to day-to-day issues. To keep your staff focused on the larger picture, include your vision in emails, social posts, video calls, and internal newsletters. After all, they're vital for your organization's success.
Allow comments and suggestions
Feedback is critical to the survival and development of any business. Of course, this includes customer feedback, but it also includes employee feedback.
What good is thinking or an idea if it never gets expressed? Whether it's about the workplace, the current product, prospective future products, or the firm as a whole, make sure your staff has a way to give feedback and discuss ideas. A dedicated channel within your company's intranet software or a cloud-based service can be used to get feedback from employees. Without these channels, excellent ideas and constructive feedback may go unnoticed, which is something no organization can afford to lose.
Encourage the use of social media
You may think that "social media has no place in the workplace." But what if we told you that in some ways, it should be encouraged? The inclusion of social media platform within an intranet can encourage your employees to post images. They can tag their colleagues. It can help your remote team to stay motivated. For example, AgilityPortal's social media features allow you to comment, tag, mention, and share posts. It can work as a magic tool to enhance your remote team's productivity.
Conclusion
Despite the obvious benefits of a digital workplace, many businesses have failed to implement an effective strategy. Workplace culture is the most significant barrier to digital change.
This is why employee engagement is so important in helping to drive change, where listening to and acting on employee feedback is critical.
Employees prefer a single platform for real-time conversations and information in their digital workplace. They also believe that having a single platform will improve their daily productivity and workflow.