Internal communication (or internal comms) is an organisational function that enables the flow of information between teams, departments, and individuals. It looks at how messages are delivered, how they’re received, and how they’re acted upon. Getting this right can transform workplaces by powering engagement and productivity, and carefully crafting positive company cultures.
Building an effective internal comms strategy is as vital a part of workforce strategy as employer branding—and often works hand-in-hand with it. It’s about ensuring effective, seamless communication that’s always zeroed-in on organisational vision. And, when you nail it, it keeps teams well-informed, on-mission, and raring to go.
Let’s take a closer look at how internal communications helps and how you build a best practice strategy.
Why Is Internal Comms Important?
Internal comms is essential for one simple reason—because it connects every part of your organisation. If communication is unclear or inefficient, your people are more likely to become disengaged, frustrated, or disillusioned. But if it’s clear, transparent, and consistent, that communication is primed to build unity and purpose, helping your people feel at one with your company’s mission.
When internal comms is strong, employees understand what your goals are, what direction you’re headed in, and what part they play in the grand scheme of things. It can be like switching on a light in terms of motivation and job satisfaction—creating the “I know what I’m here to do” moment. The more employees get what the mission is, the more likely they are to be like, “I got this.”
These are just some of the reasons why investing time and energy into a comprehensive internal comms strategy pays off:
- Employee Engagement: When communication is crystal clear, your people are going to feel more involved, valued, and at one with your company. As a result, they’re going to be more engaged and motivated at work, putting their all into their everyday.
- Productivity: Employees who share the mission and vision spend less time asking questions and more time doing what they’re there to do. This reduces confusion and maximises productivity.
- Better Decision-Making: A well-informed employee is empowered to make decisions faster and with greater confidence, which is going to speed up your operations and make your business run more like a well-oiled machine.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how internal comms directly influences the health of your organisation. You could dive so much deeper into the positive impacts if offers to organisations—and if you want to, you should check out this great study.
Key Components of an Internal Comms Strategy
To create an internal comms strategy that really hits home with both your senior stakeholders and the entire organisation’s workforce, you’ll need to keep in mind a few key components. These components are going to guide how you plan, implement, and evaluate your communications, which will prevent you from veering off-course and keep your eye on the prize.
Goals
Not to teach granny to suck eggs, but you’d be surprised at how many people forget this vital component. Lay out clear objectives! What do you want to achieve from internal communication?
Is it about building better employee engagement, increasing productivity, or developing a more welcoming company culture? Defining these goals before you get going is going to keep your strategy—and the comms outputs it delivers—focused on the right outcomes.
Audience Research
Define your audience in all its segmented complexity. Internal communications speak to a lot of different audience segments— people in different teams, departments, and people with different needs, learning styles and challenges.
A great hack is to divide them into those segments, e.g., job roles, locations, and preferred communication channels, and then work out how you need to tailor your messages to the different needs of each. This will keep information formatted in ways that resonate with everyone.
Different Types of Internal Communication
An solid internal comms strategy needs to cover all kinds of different scenarios that spring up within working culture. So different internal communications approaches have been developed to make sure that’s possible. They include:
- Crisis Management: When the proverbial doo-doo hits the fan—be it an external event like the Covid-19 pandemic or an internal issue like a product recall or data breach—clear, decisive communication will make a big difference. Level-headed crisis communication planning keeps employees informed in real-time, stopping rumours in their tracks and making sure that everyone gets the same message. It’s the key to maintaining employee trust and avoiding panic in these situations.
- Change Management: There’s nothing so predictable as change in any organisation. Could be restructuring, a shift in strategy, or new technology implementation. Change management communication makes sure employees get why the change is happening, what it’s going to mean for them, and what they need to do about it. It cuts down on the grumbling factor and maximises people’s excitement about getting on-board with the change.
- Peer Communications: Internal comms doesn’t just flow top-down from leadership to employees; peer-to-peer communication is a massive part of building a collaborative culture. Companies who encourage open channels of communication between colleagues build a culture of knowledge-sharing, problem-solving, and relationship-building. You can support this through team chat tools, collaboration platforms, or internal social networks, and see how it drives productivity from the bottom up.
- Onboarding: When someone new joins your company, the onboarding process is pretty much the first experiences they have with your internal comms. It’s about making them feel welcomed, informed, and connected right from the start. More than just telling them what the company culture is, onboarding proves it with great tech, great materials, and enjoyable induction sessions.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): DEI initiatives are all about empathic, impactful communication that disperse the balance of cultural power. They promote inclusion for all, push diversity policies to the front, and ensure that every employee feels heard and valued. Transparent communication around DEI builds wider engagement and a sense of belonging that goes beyond the boundaries of background and personal identity.
- Employee Recognition: When you recognise employee achievements, both big or small, you boost morale and make work feel good. So an employee recognition strategy is a massive part of internal comms, whether you deliver it through special recognition events, gift cards, experiential rewards, or milestone celebrations.
- Health and Wellbeing Communication: There’s a sense of support that comes from an employer that has a health and wellbeing strategy. Communication around mental health, wellness programs, and work-life balance helps employees feel like the care they put into the work is being reflected back at them. This includes informations about available resources and encouragements to prioritise health.
- Team Building and Engagement: Beyond the cheesy images that spring to mind from TV shows like The Office, team building activity can build real camaraderie that results in better productivity. So low-stakes social events like quizzes, organised lunches, book clubs, and DEI networks are an important part of internal comms.
Communication Channels
So how do you communicate internally? What are the channels available to you? Traditionally, internal comms has been delivered by four formal overarching categories of channels—electronic, print, face-to-face, and workspace (e.g., window stickers or floor decals).
Today, there are quite a few channels to choose from, and they’re only getting more expansive as technology advances. A good mix of traditional and digital will be the most effective as it’ll help to make sure you reach everyone regardless of their circumstances, background, or location.
Some key channels to consider:
- Email: Obvious much? Well, email‘s still valid because it gives you the perfect platform for formal updates, announcements, and detailed information. Just go easy on how many you schedule, as email fatigue is real! Also, get your comms agency to pretty them up so they’re a treat for people to open.
- Intranet: This is really the central hub for all internal communications. You can house everything from policy documents to company news, events, and collaborative spaces for teams here. So get your agency to build one with amazing UX and design, so that your people want to use it.
- Instant Messaging: Platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat are amazing for real-time communication. They enable fast, informal exchanges, keeping teams connected in relaxed and accessible ways. You can share documents in them and quickly get feedback. They just keep things running at such a great pace.
- Video Calls: Video conferencing tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have revolutionised internal comms in bigger, global businesses especially. But also for remote, hybrid, and nationwide teams too. You can use them for webinars, presentations, or just for quick project check-ins. Most of our clients here at Chezz use Teams but, honestly, we kinda can’t stand it and much prefer Zoom, so take that as you will when investing in a platform.
- Social Media and Internal Networks: These platforms mimic the style of public social media but are specifically for internal use. Networks like Yammer or Workplace by Facebook encourage informal communication, idea sharing, and community. But they can also be hotbeds of dissent, so consider the bigger impact before you invest.
Content Planning with Agency Solutions
Content planning is probably going to be your main headache in internal communications strategy, just because there’s so much to do. A communications agency like Chezz can help in that respect, by giving you specialised content solutions to keep internal comms flowing regularly. This also helps you tap into the creativity, innovation, and strategic capability typical of comms agencies, taking off some of the burden off you in terms of delivery.
Agencies typically offer a range of content solutions designed to reach employees right across your organisation—from the shop floor to the c-suite. And they will tend to make sure those messages fall right in the pocket with your employer brand messaging strategy to keep things super consistent.
Here are some key content solutions you should expect from the best internal comms agencies:
Tailored Internal Campaigns
An internal comms agency can help you put together targeted, thematic internal campaigns that hit the mark with specific employee groups. Whether it’s a wellness initiative, a sustainability campaign, or an effort to raise awareness around company values, a great agency can deliver creative content that makes participation a no-brainer. These campaigns should include a mix of materials—from newsletters, posters, and digital signage to internal social media-style posts, and videos.
Video Production and Multimedia Content
Video kills it on engagement, whether it’s for an internal or external audience. Get your agency to deliver high-end video content that makes your key messages sing—leadership updates, training content, employee success stories, etc. And don’t forget to ask them about multimedia content, like infographics and interactive materials that simplify complex information and make it more accessible for your people.
Employee Stories and Case Studies
There’s a school of thought—OK so, basically, it’s what we think here at Chezz—that suggests internal and external employer brand comms are starting to blur. Employee stories are a great example, because they work as both attraction and retention tools. Team up with your employer brand colleagues and look at how you can share employee stories between you for both internal and external promotion. From short-form videos to podcasts to downloadable case studies.
Event Communication and Promotion
Internal events like regular town halls, training sessions, and workshops can either be a pleasure or a chore for your people. A great comms agency will help make sure they hit the mark internally by looking, sounding, and working beautifully. Ask them about designing invitations, crafting event-related content for newsletters, putting together your internal event signage, and even producing post-event recap videos or social media posts to keep that momentum going!
Surveys, Polls, and Feedback Mechanisms
It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it, as the old saying goes. Well, when asking your people to take part in employee feedback, an agency can help to boost engagement by delivering feedback mechanisms that really pop. From creating survey templates and conducting focus groups to drafting your employee satisfaction polls, an agency can help refine your internal comms strategy over time, so that it keeps on delivering.
Digital Content and Intranet Design
Look, we’ve seen some pretty bad intranets, let alone the content that’s shared on them. And, no, we wouldn’t want the wider world to see that stuff either. Joking aside, if you want people to be as motivated to work as your customers are to buy, then you need to give them platforms and content that’s every bit as attractive as that you’d externalise. Create a content-rich space that makes people’s everyday working lives not just easier, but more pleasurable, and you’ll be onto a productivity boosting winner.
Content Audits and Strategy Optimisation
Agencies are experts at conducting content audits to review existing communications. We do them all the time here at Chezz. And by that, we don’t just mean saying “here’s what’s good about this and here’s what’s bad about that.” You can actually run content through content quality checkers to see if it matches the kind of content people look up in their own spare time. This will help to inform not just how you speak to your internal audience, but what you tell them too—your topic strategy, in other words.
Steps to Develop an Internal Comms Strategy
Now that you understand what goes into a strong internal comms strategy, let’s wrap by summarising the steps you need to take to get it moving. Here’s a straightforward approach to creating a strategy that should work for any kind of organisation of any size.
1. Define Your Objectives
Start by determining what you want to achieve with your internal comms strategy. Are you looking to improve cross-departmental collaboration or reduce misunderstandings within teams for example? Knowing this will guide all the decisions you make about content, channels, and tactics.
2. Analyse Your Current Communication
Before you can get better, you need to know how well you’re already doing. Take stock of your existing communication methods, tools, and strategies. What’s working? What isn’t? Ask employees for feedback to learn of any gaps or challenges they face in receiving internal comms.
3. Identify Your Audience
As we already said, not all employees have the same needs or communication preferences. Segment your workforce by factors like role, location, and preferred channels of communication. This will help you draft messages that hit home with different groups, making your strategy inclusive and comprehensive.
4. Choose the Right Channels
Picking the right communication channels is all about considering the size of your company, its culture, and its comms needs. Will email cut it in a factory, for instance? Probably not. Are instant messaging tools the way to go? Don’t be afraid to use a mix of digital and traditional methods so that you reach everyone.
5. Develop a Content Plan
Once you’ve mapped out your strategy, put together a proper content plan that outlines what messages you’ll send, how often, and through which channels. Make sure your messaging is consistent with your employer brand tone. With agency support, take advantage of bespoke campaigns, multimedia content, employee stories, and feedback mechanisms that add depth to your comms.
6. Implement and Communicate
With everything in place, roll out your shiny new strategy. Be sure to communicate the new approach to employees so they know what’s changing, why it matters, and how it’s going to make work a better place. Keep the communication lines open throughout the process.
7. Evaluate and Adjust
Last of all, remember that your internal comms strategy isn’t static. Keep assessing how well it’s doing and gather ongoing feedback from employees through surveys, polls, and focus groups. An agency can help you to track key metrics and recommend how you act on them to keep your internal comms tip top for the long term.
Now, we’re not saying that following these steps to the letter is going to turn your workplace into a communications utopia. There’s barely a day goes by in a large organisation where there isn’t some seemingly massive communications issue to deal with. What this strategy will do, however, is make sure you’re prepared for every outcome and have the right ideas, technology, materials, and messaging to face whatever comes your way head-on.
Reach out if you’d like any support in your journey to internal comms best practice.