Inner Communications: Planning the Strategy

Many firms focus on communicating for their outside audiences; segmenting markets, researching, developing tactics and messages. This same care and focus needs to be turned inside to produce an internal communications strategy. Effective internal communication planning empowers small and large organizations to make a process of information distribution as a means of addressing organizational problems. Before inner communications preparation can begin some basic questions must be replied.

— What’s the state of the business? Ask questions. Do some research. One kind of research will be to take a survey. How’s your company doing? What do your employees consider the company? Some may be surprised by how much employees care and desire to make their workplaces. You may also uncover perceptions or some difficult truths. These records can help lay a basis for what messages are conveyed and how they may be conveyed.

This is where the culture they want to represent the future of the business can be defined by a company. Most firms have an external mission statement. The statement might give attention to customer service, continuous learning, quality, or striving to be the largest business in the market having the most sales, but to be the best business together with the highest satisfaction ratings.

Inner communication targets must be measurable, and will change over time as goals are achieved or priorities change. As an example, a business’s fiscal situation could be its biggest concern. One aim might be to reduce spending. How do everyone help decrease spending? This backed up by management behavior, needs to be communicated through multiple channels, multiple times, and after that quantified, and then progress reported to staff.

Pick your marketing mix. Internal communication channels or approaches include: employee to employee, supervisor to employee, small meetings, large meetings, personal letter or memo, video, email, bulletin board, specific occasion, and newsletter. Nevertheless, this can depend on the individual organization. Some companies may make Leadership Communication use of them all, but not effectively. As the saying goes, “content is king.” One of the worst things a business can do is talk a whole lot, but not actually say anything at all.

With an effective internal communications strategy in place a company will likely be able ease change initiatives, develop awareness of firm goals, and to address staff concerns. By answering a few fundamental questions companies can begin communicating more effectively with team members and truly create an organization greater compared to the sum of its parts.