Engaged employees are firstly happy to be at work. Because they’re so excited, they usually give their best, which leads to higher productivity. These employees also end up staying longer at your company — which is every employer's dream.
The good news is that this dream can become a reality when you optimize your internal communication strategy. Too many organizations invest so much in their external communications that their internal communications suffer.
When employees aren't on the same communication wavelength as the company, it’s difficult to achieve business goals.
The better news is that achieving effective communication in the workplace isn't complicated. In fact, the solutions are so straightforward that it’s surprising that many businesses aren't implementing them.
We share nine of those solutions below. But before we reveal them, let's discuss why improving your internal communication matters.
Why is it so important to improve your internal communication?
Improving internal communication is critical because the quality of communication in your work environment reflects its overall health.
If communication is ineffective in your organization, people miss out on important information, projects are delayed, and employees become stressed. All of these lead to low morale and decreased productivity.
According to Grammarly's 2024 State of Business Communication report, poor communication results in 51% of workers reporting increased stress, 41% reporting that it decreases productivity, and 35% reporting that it decreases work satisfaction.
Effective communication does the complete opposite. It enables employees to:
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Understand the big picture and how they fit in
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Find meaning in their work and become more productive
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Become willing to share ideas that foster innovation
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Trust leadership and remain loyal
A good internal communication strategy doesn't just benefit employees. Business leaders also gain valuable insights into employee sentiment, engagement levels, and potential roadblocks to productivity.
For these reasons, it’s essential to constantly work on your internal communications plan. Below, we discuss how to do this.
9 Strategies to enhance your internal communication
As mentioned earlier, optimizing your internal communication isn't that complicated. You first need to evaluate your current communication practices and identify areas that need improvement.
Second, keep in mind that your internal audience isn’t too different from your external audience. Employees are also people who value clear, authentic communication that speaks to their needs and concerns.
Here are nine ways you can meet those demands:
1. Start at the top
Every major organizational change, including comms strategy, begins at the top. Leaders need to set the standards they demand from employees. For this to happen, your internal communication strategy must be clearly outlined.
That way, upper management can quickly understand and support your key messaging goals and relevant business objectives.
This message also needs to be emphasized during onboarding. Inform and educate new hires on the protocols for sharing, storing, and handling internal communications across multiple channels.
To make it really stick, have leaders participate in active listening courses or workshops that support their development of empathetic communication and team-building skills.
2. Understand how employees communicate
Your internal (employees) and external (customers) audience aren’t that different. Both audiences include people who feel things and have preferences.
So, just as you would for different audience segments, you need to understand how different employees communicate.
Find out how different employees or departments prefer to communicate and respond to their needs. For instance, IT may prefer Slack for project notifications, while the customer experience team might rely heavily on emails.
When surveying your team’s communication preferences, don’t just ask about their preferred communications channels — dig deeper to uncover potential barriers.
For instance, less tech-savvy employees may avoid virtual meetings because they’re uncertain how to set up a teleconference call.
By understanding and addressing employees’ communication needs, you make them feel valued. Employees who feel valued are highly engaged and productive.
3. Make stand-ups work for your team
A stand-up is a short, daily meeting to discuss progress and identify blockers. It ensures the entire company is on the same page.
Stand-ups can help you improve your internal communication, but you need to make it work for you. This means it doesn’t have to be every day if your business doesn’t require it. Meetings can quickly become a burden if they’re held too frequently. So, you have to find a balance.
In these meetings, encourage team members to share their thoughts and opinions. Listen to their complaints and recommendations. Ask them what they feel about the company and the work given to them.
If your staff members know that they can express their opinions without being judged, you’ll get honest answers. These types of answers can inform your internal communication plan.
4. Foster a diverse and inclusive environment
Speaking of expressing oneself without feeling judged, this is what happens in a diverse and inclusive workplace.
Create a company culture in which employees feel safe to share their opinions, regardless of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.
To achieve a cultural transformation in the workplace, set up cultural meetings where employees can share their stories and learn about different cultural traditions, values, and perspectives.
Also, provide diversity training that can teach people to be more accepting of each other. This will enhance communication between people with different backgrounds and beliefs.
5. Don’t forget 1-on-1’s
Public meetings are crucial for improving internal communication, but having 1-on-1 sessions with employees strengthens it more.
These private meetings allow employees to speak freely about personal concerns and career aspirations. You see, no matter how welcoming your workplace is, there are certain topics people would rather discuss in private.
Some employees also prefer to share their thoughts privately, so scheduling one-on-ones is a way to accommodate those needs.
Advise managers to schedule private meetings frequently. This can be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, depending on what works for you. But the timing of the meetings should never be so far apart that employees feel disconnected or unsupported.
6. Avoid communication overload
Think about the amount of communication you receive daily: emails from brands, periodic notifications from messaging apps and social media, and even text messages. It’s a lot.
Employees experience this, too. Therefore, you must avoid overcommunicating — this is a fundamental internal comms best practice, and it applies to candidate communication when taking on new hires too.
To avoid communication overload, designate channels for specific types of messages and establish guidelines for their use.
For example, key messages that require urgent attention can be sent through instant messaging platforms, while routine company-wide announcements can go through email or the company intranet.
Separating internal communications this way can improve open rates and engagement, which is what you want.
7. Keep employees in the loop
Trust is the foundation of a successful internal communication strategy. You build trust by being open and honest.
That means you need to include everyone in communications. Inform employees about the good and not-so-good news about the company. This way, they hear important news directly from leadership rather than through the grapevine.
Say the business is having financial difficulties; loop in employees. This shows that you trust them enough to share sensitive information and prepare them for potential changes. It also gives them a sense of responsibility to help turn things around.
Transparency, however, isn’t just about sharing critical updates. It also means involving team members in operational improvements, such as inviting department representatives to contribute ideas to streamline the recruitment process that affects them.
You can’t go wrong with this level of transparency and open dialogue between management and staff members.
8. Be consistent
If you want employees to take your internal communication plan seriously, you must be consistent. You can’t promise frontline employees weekly updates or monthly training and fail to deliver.
If they perceive your communication as unreliable, they’ll stop checking in for new content. This will cause a major setback to your strategy, making it much harder to get people on board.
So, show employees that your new internal comms strategy is here to stay by being consistent.
How do you do that? Start small. Commit to a content schedule you know is manageable for the people delivering it. Then you can add more items to your content once your calendar is up and running.
Additionally, you can alleviate the burden of content creation by enlisting the help of employees. Encourage team members to share their expertise and experiences through blog posts, videos, or presentations for the company intranet.
With everyone on board, it’s much easier to maintain a steady flow of engaging and relevant internal content.
9. Track your internal comms KPIs
Without measuring your internal communication efforts, you won't know if you're making progress or need to adjust your communication approach.
Start by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your communication goals. Here are some metrics worth tracking:
- Email open and click-through rates
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Intranet engagement levels
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Employee feedback survey responses
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Meeting attendance and participation rates
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Employee retention numbers
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Internal content engagement statistics
Don't just collect data — analyze it regularly and share actionable insights with your team. This transparency helps everyone understand what's working and what needs to be improved
The bottom line
How information is dispersed can impact your organizational goals. When employees can quickly find what they need, work is done on time and correctly.
This is why improving your internal communication strategy is vital. Now, there are many ways to do this, but the tips shared above are good starting points.
