Why is Internal Communication Important for Your Business?

Communication in general is important, but if you're running a business and you want the business to thrive and go smoothly, you should make internal communication a top priority.

Internal communications allow processes to work as they should, and if there's a gap somewhere, the entire business will feel it.

So, let's discuss the crucial role internal communication plays and the other major factors to consider in making this a large part of your organizational culture.

What Is Internal Communication?

Internal communication is every bit of communication that happens inside of the business, between all the employees, not involving external factors.

So, essentially, it's the employee communication of one company, i.e. employee communications that happen over your company's communication channels.

What's the Role of Internal Communications in Business?

With internal communications, you have an effective flow of information in your organization. It comes with many advantages because it promotes important things.

It's the essence of all collaboration tools, and it promotes collaboration because the team works together to get, share, and create information in the business.

It also boosts morale by making your workplace a positive environment. Because of it, you have improved productivity due to fewer errors.

Internal communications are a key part of change management. Imagine if something changed in the structure of the organization and nobody informed anyone.

The organizational structure is strengthened through internally communicating the vision and values of the company. Also, it helps support the leadership.

With open internal communication and effective strategies in place, you can encourage employee feedback. It's one of the best feedback mechanisms.

With good communication, it's easier to manage crises that can occur during certain projects, changes, turnovers, etc.

What Is Effective Internal Communication?

It's fairly easy to understand if there's efficient internal communication or not. Effective means that you're getting the right information, ideas, and correct messages in the organization.

This also means that these messages are clear and concise. So, communication needs to be clear and simple, so that anybody would be able to understand.

Any information should be communicated in a timely manner so that everybody stays informed of all company news and other important things.

There should be consistency, but it should also be a two-way communication. This is a trait of strong internal communication within an organization.

Good internal communication also relies on relevance. If it's irrelevant, there's no need to communicate it. This means you should share function-responsible communication, i.e. things relevant to the job of your employees.

Be as transparent as possible because honesty is incredibly important when communicating inside a team or company. If you can't do something, let people know so they can help you.

You should use various channels. Most communication channels people rely on are chats and emails, but there are other tools that use visual aids that can help.

Good Internal Communications Strategies to Consider

Communication plan: It's an excellent internal communications strategy if you come up with a communication plan that you'll adhere to. There are a few things to keep in mind.

Create good clear objectives, i.e. what's the purpose of you even communicating this message, then identify the key message you want to convey, and then choose the right channel.

Use of technology: There are tools that can help with effective internal communications like Slack, Teams, Zoom, etc. Also, you can use a company intranet for internal communication purposes.

Two-way communication: When you have good feedback mechanisms, you can perform surveys and Q&A sessions. Also, regular check-ins are great.

Be transparent: When aiming for internal communications success, you need to be transparent and include transparency in your company culture.

Communication tailoring: Solid internal communication involves choosing a target audience and using multiple formats to make it easy for others to understand.

Employee engagement: Interactive platforms like the ones we mentioned foster employee engagement. Also, when you publicly recognize employees for their contributions, you promote their engagement.

Choosing the Right Internal Communication Strategy

When you're choosing from these internal communication strategies you need to think about the specific needs of your employees. If it's an enterprise, internal communications teams should be more segmented.

It largely depends on the roles of the internal communicators. Apart from the internal communicators, you also need to maintain external communication.

Setting up a team of internal communicators for corporate communication might be a good approach if you have a global team. With a global workforce, you need to have different points of contact for different teams.

How to Enhance Team Collaboration?

You can enhance team collaboration and boost engagement by providing tools that allow instant messaging and setting of goals and objectives. These valuable tools like Bitrix24 have a lot of advantages.

You can schedule calls with internal communicators and external business partners by just sending the link to the call. You can even set up calendar events and configure your personal calendar.

It's really a valuable tool for collaboration, especially because you have the ability to configure favorite calendars, send invitations by email, and configure access permissions to calendars.

Apart from tech, it's good to schedule regular meetings with different departments aligning employees with their responsibilities so you can improve their employee journey.

Boost Your Employees' Morale

Have your employees understand the company strategy and the business goals, but don't do it through company events only. Make the organization's goals clear by delivering messages using corporate communications.

Make the employee experience incredible by providing recognitions specific to the job function. It's one of the good internal strategies to promote accurate communication.

Provide support for every internal communicator to facilitate company communications easily. These are your frontline employees, and they would benefit from the support.

Make the work environment as positive as possible to engage employees and improve their employee experience. It's also going to boost your employee retention.

Communication for Streamlined Decisions

Your internal communication plan should include clear and concise messaging so that all information is clearly communicated. Effective communication skills include timely updates.

Also, it's about inclusivity, where inclusive decision-making takes place. Make sure mission control knows about the large decisions. You can go face-to-face for these decisions.

Facilitating two-way dialogue between different departments and on a leadership level, face-to-face is a great way to get the business leaders involved in the effective internal communications plan.

It's also important to maintain feedback loops for improved employee communications, but also between the executive team and the employees.

It should be part of the organization's culture, and it can even help some major players determine the key performance indicators and evaluate them more easily.

When you put it all together, you get informed decisions. There's no need to make rash ones where you don't know what's been done by the other teams or how it's done. You make informed decisions and improve the business.

Increasing Productivity With Internal Communication

How do you increase productivity with internal communications? Well, the more people know the processes and what's going on, the more likely they are to work more efficiently.

The best way to increase productivity is by using efficient channels for internal communications. Don't communicate all the things using email. You'll find more employee engagement through instant messaging.

Also, don't ruin your employee experience by providing too much unnecessary information. Make it part of the company culture to avoid doing this. This should be part of your internal communication plan.

Task management tools are great for both the employee experience, tracking key performance indicators, and improving your communications strategy.

Error Reduction With Internal Communications

There are goals and objectives that need to be communicated. You also need to communicate standard operating procedures like guidelines. Also, because there are internal comms tools, you can use your mobile device to fix errors on the go.

We don't encourage you to work when you don't have to, but you will help reach the organization's goals and objectives through your mobile device and an internet connection.

You can incorporate training and development so people understand their tasks, and you need to perform regular audits to correct potential issues. Also, make sure you encourage a culture of curiosity.

Internal Communication for Conflict Resolution

When you have internal comms, i.e. channels where people can express their concerns and not use video calls, because not everybody is willing to voice their concerns on video, you improve employee experience.

But, you also provide a much larger probability for conflict resolution. A great internal communications strategy also implements fair policies, and issues get addressed promptly.

Strong Organizational Culture Through Effective Internal Communication

Internal communications align with the company's values through consistent messaging. There are also engagement activities to promote company culture.

Leaders should set an example of the culture they desire in their employees. This is a great foundation for internal communications. It can also be good for public relations.

Organizational culture is not only about what you're doing within an organization, it should also be about having credible ambassadors externally.

Effective Internal Communication for More Employee Engagement

We've already mentioned that internal communications, in order to be as effective as possible, need to go through interactive platforms because they encourage employee engagement.

As part of your internal communications strategy, you should ask your employees to provide regular updates and be involved in the news, this should be one of the business goals.

Also, encourage your employees to get involved in different company initiatives. Make a platform for that involvement, i.e. organize different initiatives. This is also going to be good for your organization's reputation.

Internal Communication Strategy for Improving Customer Service

A big part of internal communications is sharing the feedback of the customers among the team. This is valuable insight to everybody because it's easy to determine what can be improved.

Make sure you provide training on best practices for customer service. Also, encourage cross-department collaboration and make the protocols for customer service as clear as possible.

Fostering Innovation

Why is internal communication important? Because it fosters innovation. Internal communications help innovate. Once you provide a platform where employees can develop ideas, you get innovation.

Internal communications work through the acknowledgment of employees and their ideas. Creating physical or virtual spaces where people can collaborate and be creative encourages experimentation and learning.

Risk Reduction and Compliance

How does risk reduction happen through internal communications? Well, when you communicate clear policies and provide regular training, there's not much room for making mistakes.

Although, sometimes, we need to continue monitoring and reporting issues so that there's transparency in our internal communication.

Leadership and Management Improvement

Apart from everyone having transparent and honest internal communications, you should evaluate the skills of communication of your leadership team.

Internal communications coming from your leadership team must be professional. Also, while you're improving communication between leaders and employees, a good piece of advice is to help the leadership become more visible and accessible to employees.

Tech for Internal Communication

We talked about internal communication platforms and other tech, but there are many ways you can communicate now. You can use platforms like the ones we mentioned.

But, you can also use intranet systems that provide a platform for sharing everything in one place. There are also mobile solutions that help you reach out to your global workforce if they're working remotely.

Finally, there are analytics tools that can help you measure the effectiveness of your communication.

Setting Up Effective Internal Communication Channels

For an effective internal communication strategy, you need to set up effective channels. This involves having a multi-channel approach where you're using email, intranet, meetings, and chat.

Also, think about which channel you're using for what. If an issue has urgency, don't use email to contact someone internally, use an instant message so the issue can be solved as soon as possible.

It's important to provide training for employees using the channels, and, as always, there should be a feedback system where your employees are allowed to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the channels.

Measure How Effective Communication Is

We've discussed how important feedback is, and it's one of the most important things in measuring the effectiveness of your communication strategies.

Also, you can track metrics of engagement like the number of times an email was opened, the meeting attendance, and the use of the intranet. Performance indicators are another way to measure effectiveness.

Finally, it's a good idea to get some insight by conducting regular reviews of how effective the communication was.

Why Feedback Is Important?

There are several reasons why feedback is really important. It helps you improve the processes you have. There's always room for improvement. It also makes employees feel involved and valued.

Feedback is important because you get to communicate better and easier, and it can improve how you communicate. But, it also builds trust between you and your colleagues.

Train Your Employees In Effective Communication

There are tons of workshops and seminars available for effective communication. You can also create your own to make it more authentic to the culture of your company.

It's always good to provide online course access so people can learn at their own pace. You can even make some sessions with role-playing exercises to practice communication.

Encourage Open Communication and Transparency

The dialogue between management and employees should rely on an open-door policy and honest communication. No secrecy in the workplace, especially within the management team.

Avoid Common Mistakes in Internal Communication

Don't send too much information even if it's all important, make sure to segment it into pieces that you'll serve in a timely manner.

Be clear about what you want to communicate, and don't ignore the feedback. If you ignore the feedback, your employees won't take you seriously.

Finally, maintain consistency when communicating with your employees. Don't drop a promising announcement and then shut your office doors for a few months before the next good announcement.

Employees should have insight into both good and bad things happening within the company.

Conclusion

Internal communication can make your business. Communication is the foundation of doing business, but internal communication keeps the business going. No internal communication leads to decisions that are bad for business and can break it, especially if something is miscommunicated. So, make sure you promote the internal communication culture in your company and see how your business thrives.