From Vision to Action: A Guide to Build Trust with a Strategic Internal Communications Plan
Effective internal communications stand as a cornerstone for organizational success. Often, the differences in expectations and motivations leave untasteful experiences for both employees and employers. Clarity in communication is the key to handling such difficult situations. It helps build trust, maintain openness among employees and management, and fosters a culture of transparency. In this article, we will explore what strategies can help master internal communications and how you can implement those for employee engagement and unprecedented success.
Organizations’ approach to communications
87% of employees value transparency in the organization. — Slack
It guarantees six times more job satisfaction and makes employees willing to collaborate for the success of their organizations. — Source
Most organizations choose to focus on internal communications after an incident or as a part of a change management exercise. It makes them adopt a reactive approach to internal communication, which leads to missed opportunities and disengaged audiences. The communication team members also experience ad-hoc tasks as frantic and chaotic, ultimately resulting in compromised quality output. From the perspective of the recipient, the recipient consistently interprets such actions as defensive maneuvers. Communication lapses invariably result in employee confusion and frustration.
However, if an organization adopts a proactive communication approach; all the internal stakeholders, including employees and partners, feel connected to the organization. Employees understand their roles and expectations better. Partners are prepared for any upcoming challenge or opportunity that awaits.
Moving from a Reactive to a Proactive Communication Approach
At the heart of proactive internal communications, lies an internal communications plan. Serving as a roadmap, it delineates periodic projections for employing tactics, channels, and activities aimed at engaging the audience. The plan serves as a documented guide for planned activities, providing direction to efforts and fostering coordination among team members and stakeholders. It is essential for promoting organizational cohesion, facilitating collaboration, harnessing opportunities, and driving success in today’s dynamic and fast-paced business environment. The effectiveness of your plan is gauged by the efficient utilization of channels and thoughtful messages for major events and important updates that will improve the degree of employee engagement.
So, how do you create an internal communication plan?
An internal communication plan can have several campaigns. It may address different groups of audiences. It will list the uses of various channels to communicate the message. It will have a timeline for each campaign, activity, and task. And it can get messy if things are not chalked out in advance. You can consider this article as a getting-started guide for creating an internal communication plan. Follow the instructions, examples, and templates shared in this article for creating an internal communication plan. Customize it as per the needs of your organization to get a more relevant and realistic draft.
I have divided this article into four parts. Each part is a stage where you will have something to review and reflect on the direction of your internal communication process for the upcoming period. The last part is included in my other article, ‘From Intentions to Impact: A Guide to Measure the Effectiveness of Internal Communications’ as it requires a detailed explanation.
PART 1: Determine the Vision
1. Assess the Current State:
Start with understanding the needs for communications. Research internally to get an overview of the situation, issues and challenges, and availability of channels. Note what resources and support are available to you, and what channels your employees are active on:
- Review the existing internal communication channels and their effectiveness. Revisit the past years’ internal communication activities and make notes on what went wrong and what went right to incorporate in this year’s plan.
- Conduct surveys or interviews with employees to understand their preferences and pain points.
2. Define Objectives:
As the basic principle of objectives in marketing goes, you need to know why you are doing what you doing. To a great extent, it defines the kind of tactics you are going to use to achieve the objective. For example: if you want to increase the awareness about diversity and inclusion within the organization, you can plan a campaign with a series of emails for employee information. However, if the objective is to increase the support for diversity and inclusion within the organization, you will have to plan several tactics. Such as training, and workshops set on behaviours to help employees understand the right way of reacting to different situations at work that foster a culture of inclusiveness among everyone.
Also, connect the objective with outcomes. Identify ways to make outcomes measurable. You can also align it with a SMART goal and document it. It will help in giving a focused direction when you will plan activities for internal communications.
3. Identify Target Audience:
Not all your campaigns need to target all the employees, you can segment your audience into different categories for different campaigns and ensure the message is sent to a relevant group. For example, you might want to inform about a new bonus policy to all employees. But if you want to spread awareness about the benefits of maternity coverage in the insurance policy, you will target only women employees
- Segment employees based on departments, locations, relevance, or roles.
- Customize messages to resonate with the unique needs and interests of each group.
Consider the following table as an example to document your analysis from the findings of the above:
PART 2: Prepare for Action
Planning the communications action calendar
This is a critical step as it will define the activities you wish to plan, the frequency at which you will use each channel, the type of content, and the team members responsible at each stage.
4. Choice of channel:
Your organization might have several channels in place for employees to connect, collaborate, and communicate. For planning campaigns ensure you are using the right channel to share the message. Consider the following for this purpose:
a. Email: Effective for delivering formal announcements, updates to a broad audience, and newsletters.
b. Intranet: Ideal for hosting company news, policies, documents, resources, employee and team information, and interactive content accessible to all employees.
c. Meetings and Town Halls: Great for facilitating two-way communication, fostering employee engagement, and addressing questions or concerns.
d. Collaboration Platforms (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams): Suitable tool for real-time messaging, team collaboration, and informal communication.
e. Digital Signage: Useful for displaying important announcements, updates in high-traffic areas within office premises, and reminders. Create videos to be displayed in common areas such as the cafeteria, lift, lobby, reception, etc.
f. Employee Apps: Mobile apps dedicated to internal communication, providing access to company news, documents, and social features.
For some campaigns, you might want to utilize a mix of channels. This depends highly on the what is the objective of the campaign and how actively the audience is engaging with the channel.
5. Content creation:
Your message is the front end of your campaign that defines the recipient’s attitude towards the entire campaign. To get the right reaction, verify facts, set the right tone, and include complete information in your message. Your content format should be easy to digest for the audience. Based on activities, create an editorial calendar to define the format, add timelines on when to start the content creation process, and which team members will be involved in the process.
6. Defining the timelines:
In your activities, there might be several team members involved. You would require budget and content approvals from senior executives as well. Define timelines considering the scope for to-and-fro between team members. Whether you involve internal teams or agencies for content creation or take the help of AI tools, keep the scope for a review and approval process.
At this stage, your plan would look something like the following table:
PART 3: BONUS
Execution Tips
- Utilize a combination of channels such as the company intranet, email newsletters, team meetings, and a dedicated Slack channel (or other internal communicators like MS Teams) for real-time updates.
- Plan a content calendar for the upcoming quarter, aligning with key events or initiatives.
- Maintain a tone that reflects your organization’s friendly and inclusive culture.
- Use a mix of formal and informal language to connect with employees.
- Create visually appealing infographics illustrating the impact of sustainability initiatives.
- Incorporate images and videos featuring employees actively participating in corporate social responsibility activities.
- Send important updates during peak engagement times, such as the beginning or end of the workweek.
- Schedule town hall meetings at times convenient for all time zones if your company has a global presence.
Here is an example Internal Communications Calendar for you to help you understand better:
The above is just an example for your better understanding. You can use actual dates, activities, and channels that may vary based on your organizational needs and priorities. It is essential to regularly review and update the communication calendar to ensure alignment with organizational goals and employee needs.
PART 4: Measure Success
Communication is a two-way process. A message sent should be perceived in the same manner and intention as it was meant to be. Set KPIs while planning and measure each of them to evaluate the success of each activity and channel.
To understand in detail why it is important to measure and how to analyze success, please read my article ‘From Intentions to Impact: A Guide to Measure the Effectiveness of Internal Communications’.
End Note
The key to successful internal communication planning is to have a picture of all upcoming events during the year and a vision to convert them into opportunities to connect with and engage employees. For this, you will have to tailor communication strategies specific to the needs and culture of your company while leveraging a mix of communication channels and engaging content.
For internal communications, there is no one-plan-fits-all thing. But I am hoping my ideas will give you a starting point. Feel free to adopt them to get started with your internal communication plan. You can further customize the templates to stay organized and gain more from your internal communication efforts. Let me know in the comments if you have more to add.
