Three reasons your internal comms is broken – and how to fix it
Internal comms isn’t complicated, but when it’s broken it’s a problem for everyone. Whether you’re the head of the company or the most junior member of staff, poor communication is frustrating at best and, at worst, leads to costly mistakes and a high staff turnover because everyone’s, well, rather unengaged and unmotivated.
You might sense a lack of trust in management or find people don’t respond to much. There might be duplication between departments and possibly even your customers are getting annoyed because your business isn’t behaving like a well-oiled machine. The state of your internal comms really does have a big influence on the success of your organisation.
So, why might your internal communication be broken? Here are the three most common problems we see:
● There is a hierarchical top-down approach to communication. You might hold town halls, have an intranet site and regularly send out newsletters, but if your approach to comms is ‘what shall we tell people?’ not ‘what do they want to hear from us?’ there’s a good chance you’re leaving your employees feeling you don’t care what they think.
● Your business has grown but your internal comms hasn’t kept pace. This is a particular problem for small businesses. Everything’s growing so fast you don’t realise the style of communication that was so efficient when you were a small team no longer works now you have multiple teams on different sites.
● Not using the right tools for your business. These days you might have many comms channels. Your employees get bombarded from all quarters and, as a result, they either feel overwhelmed or they switch off completely. You’ve mistaken having lots of snazzy comms channels for good communication.
How, then, do you fix what’s gone wrong? It might be a cliché, but all of the above can be sorted out if you focus on quality not quantity. Good internal communication is about how you tell people things – understanding your audience, choosing the right comms channels, sharing the right content to the right people at the right time. But it’s also about listening – creating genuine opportunities for feedback and idea sharing. To help you along we’ve come up with a few tips:
● Do a comms audit. We love a comms audit at Cosy Meerkat and we’ve done them for a lot of clients – do take a look at some of our other blogs if you want to know more about what they involve. Why do we think they’re so important? Because until you know the current state of things in your organisation you won’t be able to figure out a plan of improvement. Be brave, ask the right questions and remember it’s not about what individuals could do better, it’s about the systems and processes that need improving.
● Lead by example. As with all good business practice, leadership is key to good internal communication. Leaders establish the tone, the culture you want to create and set a precedent for the rest of the business. It’s not just those at the very top either, your middle management is incredibly important. One of the issues we often see is that while internal comms might be everyone’s problem, not everyone thinks it’s their job. You might need to train your managers and show them how to use the tools at their disposal effectively. You might need to provide mentors so they can see the benefits good communication brings. However you choose to do it, your managers and leaders are crucial to the success of your internal comms strategy, so make sure they’re involved early in your plans and that they have a chance to feed back too.
● Develop a clear strategic narrative and be authentic when it comes to your values. There are some people who don’t think the story behind your business has any impact on the bottom line. But for customers and employees, this is becoming a really important thing. Customers want to buy from brands that reflect their view of the world and employees want to work for companies that share their values. Communicate your strategic narrative well, embed your values into the heart of how the organisation is run and your employees will understand why what they do is important to the organisation’s mission – and that will make them more likely to want to come into work in the morning. Reflecting what’s inside outside, is a great mindset to have.
● Give your employees a voice. This is the listening part of good communication. And it does rely on colleagues feeling they have psychological safety – that they won’t be penalised for sharing their view – and knowing that their opinions and ideas will be acted upon. A lot of organisations choose to survey people either annually or, depending on what needs to be asked, quarterly or monthly. Other options include face-to-face Q&A sessions or what Engage for Success calls ‘big conversations,’ where the whole organisation discusses a topic in small groups, feedback and ideas are then collected and the conversation develops in response to the ideas put forward.
Fixing your internal comms isn’t an overnight process and is often done best when HR/IT/IC and even leadership is aligned and working together. It’s for this reason that we’d also recommend you take a look at Engage for Success, as it’s an initiative we’re big fans of and we wholeheartedly support what they’re trying to do. It’s a great resource of evidence, case studies and information about how to effectively engage your employees. And if you ever do feel like you need outside support, we’re always happy to listen.
