With the increasing complexity of today’s business landscape, effective communication within a company has become more important than ever before. It’s essential to have a well-thought-out strategy and plan in place to ensure your internal communications campaigns are successful. In this blog post, we will discuss the unique challenges of internal communications, the importance of strategy and planning, and tips for creating successful campaigns. By incorporating these insights, you can drive employee engagement, improve collaboration, and enhance overall business performance.

Unique Challenges of Internal Communications

Diverse Audiences

One of the main challenges in internal communications planning is catering to diverse audiences. Companies often have employees with different roles, responsibilities, and levels of authority. This makes it necessary to tailor your messaging to resonate with each group effectively. Understanding the needs, preferences, and expectations of various employee segments is crucial in crafting targeted and relevant content and it’s worth taking the time to map out audiences at the beginning of a campaign in order to maximise engagement throughout the campaign.

Information Overload

The digital era has brought an influx of information, making it increasingly difficult for employees to keep up with the constant stream of updates and announcements. Information overload can lead to disengagement and decreased productivity. Too often, the answer is to try a new channel but an effective internal communications strategy can help you find the right balance between providing essential information and avoiding overwhelming employees.

Remote and Hybrid Workforces

The rise of remote and hybrid workforces presents new challenges for internal communications planning. With employees spread across different locations and time zones, ensuring consistent and clear communication becomes more difficult. Remote workers may feel disconnected from their colleagues, leading to a sense of isolation and decreased engagement.

Rapidly Changing Business Environments

Today’s business world is characterized by constant change and evolution. As a result, internal comms must be agile and adaptable to keep employees informed about organisational changes, new initiatives, and shifting priorities. This requires a proactive and flexible approach to planning with a willingness to iterate on strategies when necessary. 

The Importance of Strategy and Planning

Aligning with Organisational Goals

A well-defined internal communications strategy is essential for aligning your efforts with the overall goals of your organisation. By setting clear objectives and KPIs, you can ensure that your communications campaigns contribute to driving business success. This alignment also helps to secure buy-in from leadership and other key stakeholders.

Enhancing Employee Engagement

Effective internal communications planning is critical for fostering employee engagement. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and committed to the success of the organisation. By delivering targeted and relevant content that resonates with each audience, you can create a strong sense of connection and purpose among your employees.

Facilitating Collaboration and Innovation

A strategic approach to internal communications planning can help break down silos, encourage cross-functional collaboration, and promote innovation within your organisation. By creating a culture of open communication, you empower employees to share ideas, provide feedback, and contribute to the company’s growth.

Managing Change and Crises

In times of change or crisis, a well-structured internal communications plan can help maintain stability and ensure that employees are informed, engaged, and supported. By providing timely and transparent updates, you can build trust, manage expectations, and guide your workforce through challenging times. Set time aside to create a template for crisis communications so you have it when you need it.

Tips for Creating Successful Internal Communications Campaigns

Develop a Comprehensive Strategy

To create a successful internal communications campaign, start by developing a comprehensive strategy that outlines your objectives, target audience, key messages, and desired outcomes. Ensure that your strategy aligns with the overall goals of your organisation and addresses the unique challenges of your internal communications landscape.

Use the Right Channels and Tools

Select the appropriate channels and tools for engaging with your audiences. Consider a mix of traditional channels (email, intranet, newsletters, townhalls) and modern tools (team collaboration platforms, social networks, mobile apps) to reach your diverse audience effectively. Make use of analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of each channel and adjust your approach as needed to optimize engagement and reach.

Personalise and Segment Communications

To increase the effectiveness of your messaging, personalise and segment your audience based on their needs and preferences. Create targeted content for different employee groups, considering factors such as job function, location, and seniority. This approach ensures that your messaging is relevant, engaging, and impactful. You can download our stakeholder mapping template here and adapt it to your needs.

Encourage Two-Way Communication

Successful internal communications campaigns foster two-way communication between employees and the organisation. Encourage feedback and open dialogue by providing channels for employees to ask questions, share ideas, and voice concerns. This not only helps to identify potential issues but also promotes a culture of transparency and trust.

Measure and Evaluate Success

Continuously measure the success of your campaigns by tracking key metrics, such as employee engagement, open rates, click-through rates, and feedback. Analyse this data to identify areas of improvement and refine your strategy for future campaigns.

Leverage Storytelling and Visuals

Engage your employees with compelling storytelling and visuals. Share success stories, case studies, and employee experiences to create an emotional connection with your audience. Use visuals, such as infographics, videos, and images, to make your content more engaging and memorable.

Train and Support Internal Communicators

Invest in the professional development of your internal communicators by providing training, resources, and support. This will help them stay current with best practices, improve their communication skills, and ensure the success of your internal communications campaigns. Get in touch if you would like to find out more about how our consultants can help.

Conclusion

A successful internal communication plan is an effective expression of your company’s values and overall strategy whether it’s for the entire company or simply a part. It contains the elements of a solid understanding of the situation, a clearly defined set of actionable goals, a set means of delivery, and measurability. When you make time to set it up, making sure you’re informed by employee data, it can become an effective tool in your arsenal.

The post Mastering Internal Communications Planning: Strategy, Challenges, and Success appeared first on ICPlan.

Once again, we want to At ICPlan we’re on a mission to see the latest shifts and trends when it comes the pitfalls and barriers to planning across the Corporate Comms function. We have collaborated with author and consultant, Liam FitzPatrick, to develop a comprehensive 2022 updated study on the issues that influence the way organisations plan communications.

On that note, we’ve launched the 2022 survey aimed at communicators from across the spectrum – from internal to external. We want to hear how they plan and are asking them to take just a few minutes to tell us what influences and affects their approach to planning.

You can take the anonymous survey here: Planning in Communications Survey

Better Planning in Communications: The Necessity of Study

As communicators, for us to be able to navigate the challenges we all face in terms of planning in communications, it’s critical that we continue to understand what the common barriers and roadblocks are. The survey we have created will only take ten minutes of your time but will still cover a lot of key areas of interest. These include what kind of planning takes place in your organisation at the moment, what planning approach you apply to individual projects, and even what factors help or harm implementation. Finally, we also explore who you involve in the development of your comms plans and ultimate sign-off.

It’s not just for internal communicators exclusively. We also want to incorporate the views and experiences of every kind of comms professional from across the diverse comms spectrum. Do internal communicators view and approach strategy in the same way as those in media relations or public affairs? How tightly integrated—or disparate—are these plans? Is there overlap in the utilization of tools? Do comms teams in a company strive for consistency in their messaging?

We Learn and Grow Together 

Please also note that this research project is also open to communicators from around the world. In fact, we are hoping to get a more diverse global perspective on planning in communications. We are interested in learning how comms professionals across the world view, approach, and deal with the problems we all face as a community and a profession.

What’s in it for YOU?

We will be carefully analysing the collected data and publishing the report early next year. Respondents who want to receive a copy of the research report can leave their email address at the end of the questionnaire. Additionally, we are also making a donation of $1 for each completed survey to Befrienders International (the international charity that provides confidential support to people in emotional crisis or distress).

The world still continues to change a great deal as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, yet the challenges of effective communication planning remain. In seeking to understand what the current status is and what continues to need to be improved in terms of planning, we believe that we can make a lasting impact for the communications profession.

You can take the anonymous survey here: Planning in Communications Survey

The post Our 2022 Planning in Communications Survey is Open appeared first on ICPlan.

I can’t remember where the conversation started but it eventually reached the point of “well how many communicators really take planning seriously?”

Throughout the Spring of 2020, I’d been chatting on Zoom with Dan and Maddy of ICPlan. We’re old friends and been sharing the highs and lows of lockdowns, home schooling and debating what the new world would look like for us; them as communication software providers and me as an advisor on good practice in communications teams.

So, we thought we’d ask our friends and contacts to fill in a survey. It seemed to resonate with many people – the questionnaire got shared around the world and eventually, hundreds of practitioners from every communications sub-discipline took part. And in the second half of 2020 we started sharing the raw results in a series of 1:1 conversations and virtual discussion groups with experienced professionals.

You can download the full report here:
Communications Planning Report 2021

No masterplan

The most striking message was that many communicators do not have a masterplan for what they are trying to activate with their operations. They may have specific timelines and tactics for individual projects but an overall view of why they exist and how to develop is not universal.

The people we spoke to linked this to another fact emerging from the data; people who plan are more likely to report having an educated set of internal stakeholders who appreciate what communications can do for them.

In short, if you work in an organisation that doesn’t value communications why bother thinking ahead or trying to implement a vision of reputation management or employee engagement? You’ll always be involved too late in the day to make a real difference on projects and getting leaders to engage with messaging will be a struggle.

Educating stakeholders

In contrast, communications teams that can align with organisational goals and strategies find they are more likely to be consulted and appreciated by their peers in the organisation.

The message seems to be that if you want to be valued you need to educate your stakeholders about what you can do; and you need to be educated yourself about the strategic goals and plans of your organisation.

Initially, this feels like a fairly obvious statement, but the data suggests that it’s a message that as many as four in ten communicators need to hear.

And it’s an observation that is reinforced by the finding that barely half of communications plans include anything much about audience insight or evaluation let alone links to detail about underlying business goals. However, the probability that many practitioners were still concerned with tactics rather than results did not entirely surprise our expert consultees.

They said that the profession still has a way to go to catch up with other professional disciplines in working to a structured plan.

Size matters

The research also found that size of team seems to matter in how people approach planning.

We found that the smallest and the largest teams seem to be better at planning and being aligned with each other. For the former it is probably a matter of living in a simpler world and for the latter it’s a question of necessity.

Yet mid-sized teams seem to struggle to gather intelligence, get involved in projects at an early stage or align communications.

Five key questions

After listening to the views and experiences of senior communications leaders it seems that there are five essential questions to test how planful a comms team is. There may be more but the consensus from our research is that the most universal issues are covered in these five questions:

• Do we have a master vision of communications that is aligned to business or organisational goals?
• Is there a clear methodology for planning communications – and does it involve our internal stakeholders?
• Have we a governance process which tracks the plan, keeps messages, audiences and projects aligned, and reflects on successes and failures?
• Have we the skills and mindset of planners who can engage with stakeholders, cope with change and overcome inevitable barriers?
• Is our planning driven by data, insight, evaluation and tracking?
Please download the report – we hope it proves useful to making your communications operation more effective.

And of course, if you need help to make your communications more planful get in touch!

You can download the full report here:
Communications Planning Report 2021

The post If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there appeared first on ICPlan.

The State of Wellbeing Internal Communications

The idea of wellbeing in the workplace is something that has risen in prominence in recent years. Many companies have implemented programs under the work-life balance banner. Some offer subsidised gym memberships or even have gyms in their building, others offer yoga classes—all focused on helping employees be fit and healthy.

What is often left in the backburner is mental health. In fact, a report by the PRCA found that over 57% of comms professionals are hesitant when it comes to mental health issues when crafting wellbeing internal communication plans and communications. It’s a troubling statistic when you consider a study by Bustle revealed that one out of every four Americans suffers from anxiety at work.

The Situation Today

While COVID-19 is a disease that affects physical health, the crisis surrounding it has uncovered a whole spate of mental health issues. Many are affected by what is being called the trauma response that COVID-19 has brought out. That is not even considering those who have pre-existing conditions. Apart from deep feelings of depression and anxiety, many have started to report what is essentially a trauma response that can be likened to PTSD, more commonly associated with wars or natural catastrophes.

A lot of this is due to the rapid shift that people have had to make in order to comply with government-mandated lockdowns and home quarantine measures. The isolation, need to be distant from other people, and inability to go beyond the confines of one’s home has been taking its toll. Many companies scrambled to set themselves up remotely, and now – many weeks and months into the crisis – some are now starting to roll out initiatives meant to address the mental health needs of their employees.

Cisco has been leading the way in this regard with a lot of its wellbeing internal communications efforts starting to recognise the mental health issues that COVID-19 is causing. Thus far, much of their work has revolved around improving the quality of the work from home experience—which can be anxiety-inducing given the variances in reliability when it comes to home connections, family situations and even available technologies.

Wellbeing Internal Communications and the Role of Human Resources

There used to be a clear distinction when it came to who led on employee mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Human Resource departments would design and implement the programs and initiatives, and comms would handle the internal communications.

With many now thrust in a remote setting, HR is now one step removed from employees. With the deeper experience and expertise of the technologies that enable communication and collaboration remotely, HR practitioners now – more than ever – need to work closely with comms to be effective.

The Challenges of Crisis and Wellbeing Internal Communications Response

It isn’t just the physical distance that’s a problem. Equally difficult is the lack of precedent given the scale and scope of the global reaction to the COVID-19 threat. All of the policies that previously supported a strong human resources culture within a company are being turned on its head. While most employees can apply for leave, receive benefits and support with a now-fully online system, how will they be able to effectively operate in the new world we are entering? This is why companies like Salesforce are launching new services to help companies safely open their doors and reinvent their day-to-day operational models as the workplace continues to react to the spread and containment of coronavirus.

Policies and Procedures Need Reimagining and Communicating

It isn’t just a lack of accessibility to physical forms and locations that is the problem. In fact, it’s merely a signal that policies need to change at a fundamental level—and the associated procedures along with it. For one thing, HR practitioners now need to take advantage of online collaboration platforms like Microsoft SharePoint for things like contact tracing that they may need to implement as a result of their company’s crisis response plan.

This is also where internal communications efforts around wellbeing come in. It is a given that everything affected employees receive needs to be comprehensive and clear in terms of directions. This should be transmitted across as many channels as required to ensure all employees the communication is targeted towards actually receive it.

Internal Communications Channels for Wellbeing

Assessment of viable channels is already a critical component of effective communication planning. When it comes to wellbeing internal communications, it takes on a whole new level of importance. The first consideration you must make is in regard to understanding the accessibility of channels for your employees.

While you should have a primary channel of communication that’s feature-packed to cover collaboration, conferencing, and rich communication, it’s also equally critical to have a lower tech backup just in case. An example of this is how some companies have gone back to SMS notifications for truly critical comms from particular key departments like HR.

Identify Key Issues Requiring Wellbeing Internal Communications

The World Economic Forum has rightly tagged the current COVID-19 crisis as ‘the world’s biggest psychological experiment’. Although this has mainly manifested in often humorous social media posts as the weeks of isolation set in, there are deeper issues that need to be uncovered. Anxiety and depression are two of the biggest mental health concerns here. The symptoms of those two conditions are heavily exacerbated by the necessary strictures of global lockdowns.

On top of that, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have also identified several stress responses that employees potentially face. These include difficulty in sleeping or focusing, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, excessive worrying, and even insecurity when it comes to work and life. Knowing which ones effect your people over time is key to coming up with an effective, coordinated response.

In the 1990s, France led the way in providing for accessible psychological care in crisis situations by fielding the Cellule d’Urgence Médico-Psychologique (CUMPS) to provide counselling in high-stress situations. This is something that many companies should consider setting up on a smaller scale. Such a team within a company can then send out regular pulse surveys through wellbeing internal communications channels to get a gauge of specific conditions afflicting workers. 

Consider a Mental Health Response Plan

There are several things that a company can do to aid their employees during the course of the COVID-19 crisis when it comes to mental health. Perhaps one of the simplest is to provide guidance on the direction and measures the company is taking. As much as possible colleagues are looking for companies to be honest and upfront about what is being discussed and decided at a company level.

Another equally effective measure is to provide counselling—or at least connections to reputable counsellors—that your employees can actively reach out to. This can then be complemented by regular ‘check-ups’ via your comms channels. Some companies planning for the return to work post COVID-19 are restructuring work schedules to allow for more mental health breaks to avoid burnout. Whatever the response plan is, wellbeing internal communications will play a key factor in its effectiveness within the enterprise.

Carefully Plan and Execute Wellbeing Internal Communications

This is where comms really comes into its own. Provided a well designed HR plan, the responsibility next falls on IC to come up with the strategy of how to effectively communicate the plan. A platform like ICPlan is extremely useful in this regard because it is specifically built to do just that. The calendar is central to ICPlan and allows you to carefully plot out wellbeing internal communications with heatmap functionality giving you insights into what days you may have too many communications going to a particular audience.

It’s always important to make sure you are not over-communicating and helping give people the ability to absorb information in a useful and meaningful way.

Ensure you have regular check ins with human resources scheduled to ensure that you are both on the same page. More than ever, it’s equally important to track readership and understanding. Given how important mental health considerations are in the current crisis, it also helps to cycle out the same information—including any updates—as the weeks progress.

A Duty of Care

There isn’t one thing that makes for a perfect wellbeing internal communications plan—or a crisis response plan for that matter. There are many factors to consider that include how both your business and each individual employee is affected. What can be considered ‘best’ are those responses that come from a place of empathy and duty of care.

When it comes to internal communications for wellbeing, this is complemented by a clear plan for informing and ensuring that the communications are understood and actioned. With the remote set up many companies are having to implement, it’s critical that departments work more closely together for the common good given their specific remits and relevant expertise.

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