FAQ

This is one we get at cocktail parties a lot. Internal communications are how a company or organization shares news, information and culture with its employees.

You’ve seen Mad Men or Bewitched? We’re like an ad agency, except instead of directing ads at consumers or customers, our audience is the employee population of large companies.

Same thing as internal communications, if they’re directed at employees. Sometimes however people use the term to refer to external communications from corporate, such as public relations or marketing efforts.

Employees are an important audience because they’re the people charged with delivering on the brand promise. If they’re not in the loop, they’re not equipped to deliver to your customers. By helping employees see how their individual roles support leadership’s vision, we can build employee engagement and the company’s success.

There are many channels available for reaching employees, including intranets, digital publications, printed communications, manager toolkits, video, digital monitors, internal social media, employee apps, direct mail to their homes, environmental signage in the workplace and more. Ideally, there will be an internal communications strategy that establishes messaging, audiences, channels, calendarizations and other strategic considerations.

This question has a million possible answers, depending on your specific company challenges, workforce and culture. Often, one of the best ways to improve internal communications is to do less of it. For instance, if employees are receiving tons of all-company emails that are wall-to-wall copy, if they get several different newsletters from different parts of the organization and if the intranet is clogged with outdated content, they’re probably not paying much attention to any of it.

You’ll find a lot of ideas for engaging communications on this site, and you’ll find a ton of tips in our Best Practices one pagers on the Resources page, but our SEO guy says we also need to answer this question directly. Our short answer is that your internal communications should be developed with the same level of strategic thinking and creative content as your external branding. Also, providing a steady flow of fresh and interesting content helps keep employees engaged. For instance, if the intranet is the same every time they visit, with no new content, they aren’t likely to engage with the intranet very often.

Major change can make employees anxious and stressed, especially if they feel in the dark about what exactly is changing and when. Employee acceptance for the change will be increased if they’re given solid information about how the change will be achieved, how it will impact them, and the positive outcomes of the change for the company.

There will be many logistical elements to a successful change management strategy that fall outside communications but doing a good job of communicating the change to employees is a vital part of successful change.

When preparing for a major organizational change or one that will be disruptive to employees, we counsel our clients to communicate as much as they can as soon as they can to employees. Let them know the business reasons for the change, keep them in the loop on timing, give them a go-to resource for reliable and current information, and say you don’t yet know the answer when you don’t. For more, we have several blogs and Best Practices one-pagers on this topic.