When employees understand, believe in, and feel represented by an organisation’s core values, loyalty will be a key factor affecting their decisions and actions; a focused internal communication strategy and plan goes a long way to engage and keep the workforce connected.

Here are a few steps to get started on developing a communication plan for 2021 that addresses business priorities and the communication needs of various stakeholder groups to create an empowering, inspiring and engaging workplace.

Key steps to developing an internal communication strategy

1. Identify SMART communication objectives that support your business priorities.

Example:

Communication Objective 1: Build trust in leadership and ensure that they are seen as visionaries who will steer the course to success.

Communication Objective 2: Increase employee understanding of how their day to day activities help to achieve strategic priorities and fulfil the organisational Mission.

2. Develop clear strategies, specific tactics and a tangible timeline to support communication objectives.

Strategies are methods or approaches for achieving your objectives, whilst tactics are the specific actions that will help to deliver on your strategies.

3. Identify key stakeholders

Identify the key stakeholder groups and the different ways they impact the business priorities.

For example, as we all know the front-line employees have the potential to impact the brand in unimaginable ways through being customer-centric, flexible and going the extra mile; however, the teams working behind the scenes setting the right processes, project managing and sharing the right information, developing customer experience programs and so on are also equally important to deliver on the priorities.

Deep dive into how the communication needs of different stakeholder groups differ with respect to the business priorities and subsequent IC activities, what do they need to perform their responsibilities better, whether they have a communication role to carry out and what would help them to ace their communication and so on and weave the solutions into the communication plan.

After identifying key stakeholders and their communication requirement, identify the channels most suited for each category. For example, it is more effective to do a quick face to face with groups like project teams or call centre employees who do not have the luxury to go through every piece of written communication in a timely way.

4. Develop communication tactics that address all segments of your target audience.

Identify different internal audiences within the workforce and adapt your communication tactics to suit different segments. For this it is important to be familiar with the organisation and the various divisions and departments, understanding employee tasks and roles within each department and the communication channels they have access to.

Some communication channels surely work better for some groups than for others, and a deep analysis of the different needs can help you determine which audience fits which tool better.

For example, face to face communication from team leader would work best for technical support teams who are always on the run to fix logged technical issues and they may not have the luxury of scanning the intranet every morning. Same goes for on-site workers who are away from their desks for major part of the day. So, it would be best to set up a team leader communication system, and populate the framework with fresh, summarised content every week.

Strategy, Tactics & Stakeholders5. Tracking and Measurement

Start with the question what does success look like and how will you know when the goals have been met?

First, return to your strategy of identifying the communication objective you established initially, and compare where you were to where you are now.

Did you follow the time frame you set? What has changed since then? And finally, did the changes bring about the intended benefits?

Some of the measurements that you can utilise to analyse the success of the communication plan/ activity maybe outside the internal communications department.

For eg: Lesser customer complaints as evidenced by the Call Centre Report could be an indicator for the communication objective of improving awareness of brand behaviours amongst employees. So it’s a great idea to discuss the key metrics, reporting mechanisms and processes used by stakeholder departments to discover how it can be adopted for measuring the success of internal communications in an organisation.

The value of an informed employee who is aligned with the organisational priorities cannot be overstated. They are engaged, adept at processing information and charting paths for success, and they have the line of sight that explains how their role connects to the overall vision.

Regardless of whether you are communicating an upcoming merger to dispel uncertainties, connecting offices separated by continents, or just connecting employees across different levels and departments for an upcoming campaign, the right communications strategy can help things run seamlessly and keep employees up to speed on everything they need to know to carry out their responsibilities.

When employees are informed, everybody wins. So make sure the internal communication plan is in place, has the buy in of key stakeholders, is approved, signed off and ready for implementation in the new year!

 

Need a hand with internal communications?

We help with internal communication strategy, content planning, content development for various internal channels like intranet, newsletters, C Suite communication, HR messages, employee communication and internal campaigns. Outsource your internal communications and save time, money and get access to professional talent in the field. For internal communication outsourcing, please reach out to:

Email: info@commsimpact.ae / WhatsApp: 052 530 8771