Revisiting your internal communication tool
Optimizing an organization’s internal communication is not an easy task. Just a few messages sent once every 3 weeks to employees; internal communication that aims to be healthy and effective must be constant, controlled, and above all well prepared. So, the tools you will use will play an essential role in this mission, which is certainly delicate but fortunately not impossible!
And that is why this article exists: This article revolves around providing you advice to assist you to choose your future tool and make sure that your organization has a controlled and effective internal communication ✊
Identifying your needs: An unavoidable first step
Are you determined to take your internal communication to the next level and are already reviewing all existing communication tools? Let us see! Adopting a tool for no specific reason is the best way to make it ineffective. Your first initiative should be the analysis of your organization's needs. Ask yourself the right questions❓: What are your communication needs? Do you need a platform to make exchange with your employees quickly? To make weekly action reviews. Make sure that each of your employees has seen the word of the president?
Identifying the answers to these questions will help you know what your organization needs. The goal is not to equip you with a more "modern" tool or simply labeled "collaborative", but to find the solutions that will precisely meet your needs.
Access to Content: A key element
Now that you know where the problem is, it's time to move on to the next step: choosing and implementing tools. From this point of view, internal communication is not to be outdone: the multiplication of collaborative tools in recent years such as chatops, the Corporate Social Network, or the Digital Workplace has offered organizations new ways to communicate with their employees. These tools allow a centralization of the content produced by the company, which is an excellent point that should not be overlooked because if producing a lot of content regularly is a good thing, offering simplified access to this content to your employees is even better.
Your information must be easily accessible, regardless of the tool you use. Otherwise, the information will be dispersed and dispersed internal communication will ultimately be ineffective because it will be uncontrolled.
Communicating content regularly via a single tool is therefore an important first step. However, beware! While these tools are indeed effective, it will not be enough to just keep adding more and more content to them for changes to make themselves felt. Why not? On the one hand because over-information is not communication and on the other hand because the goal is not to send content to your employees but to establish a lasting dialogue with them.
Two-way communication
Many organizations misunderstand that internal communication is only based on the top to down transmission of information, i.e. from top management to other employees. This is not wrong (the primary goal is to inform, let's not forget this) but let's be clear: this is not enough. Do you regularly share content to your employees? Very well, but what do they think of these regular publications? Is the published content relevant to them? Do they feel fully involved in the life of the company thanks to this communication?
To get the answers to these questions, your organization must be able to bring information from the field. Knowing what your employees think about your organization's communication will allow you to get valuable feedback on your organization's communication and thus improvement. You will, therefore, need to take this into account when making your decisions.
We hope that you enjoyed this article and that it will give you some clues in the choice of your next tool! Don't forget: while tools do indeed play an important role in the effectiveness of internal communication, a good knowledge of your organization's needs and culture are the first steps towards enhanced communication.
No one knows your organization better than you and your people: identify its needs, analyze the different tools on the market, make sure your people have simple and unique access to important information, and take some time to collect their feedback. Your internal communication, and therefore your company, will come out stronger!
See you soon with new articles!
Comments