Whether you have three or 300 team members, internal communications are critical to the success of your company.
Achieving corporate objectives cannot be done without ensuring all of your staff members are on board with what needs to be done and how it should be done; however, conveying pertinent company-wide messages to employees is just one side of the coin.
Employees must know which channels are available to them to relay their opinions, comments, and suggestions to upper management. Likewise, upper management should provide them with consistent support and encouragement in doing so.
Organize your internal communication channels in such a way that they allow for proper management of employee feedback.
Why are Internal Communication Channels Important?
The focal point of your internal communication plan should be your staff. How they get the information they need to do their jobs, as well as the tools they use to communicate with each other should be in direct connection with gathering and analyzing their feedback.
Internal communication best practices are those that give your employees a voice and make them feel as though you value their ideas. Depending on the size of your organization, you may or may not have an internal communication specialist or department in charge of making this communication happen. However, there should always be a unified action plan that includes employee feedback management, and then oversees its execution.
No matter how you choose to go about it, you will need a solid structure in place for your company’s internal communication channels. Apart from simplifying day-to-day tasks, especially for remote or hybrid teams, these channels should be the main touchpoints for employee feedback and its subsequent management.
At the very least, the tools you choose for your team’s internal communications should include a dedicated platform or space for deliverables, timetables and deadlines, project statuses, and a list of all personnel within the company’s hierarchy. Access to these elements is essential for all employees, regardless of the department or type of work they do.
By interlinking these elements in one place (or platform), you can easily direct people to a feedback section where they can refer to those elements as prompts for any comments or suggestions they may have, at any point during the year.
Audit Your Current Internal Communication Channels
The goal of all internal communication channels is to facilitate smooth interaction between your workers and your company. To have these channels work to their full potential, you must design them in such a way that employees want to engage with them.
Doing an audit of your current internal communication channels means taking a look at how your existing channels are doing. Gathering feedback on the channels your workers find useful — or, more markedly, which channels they do not use frequently — is what will inform your internal communication channel audit.
For example, many companies rely on their intranet for the bulk of their internal communication needs. Let’s say your company is one of them — though the following applies to any other channel you may currently use as your main one for internal comms.
The first step is to assess how many workers use the intranet at all. If you discover that only a handful of them do, you’ll need to reconsider how this particular channel fits (or doesn’t fit) into your team’s internal comms environment. Does it feel too outdated to use? Do the people in charge of updating it do so regularly? How easy is it to navigate?
To encourage workers to use the intranet (or your preferred internal comms channel), you may need to take time to redesign it. This redesign cannot happen overnight, so make sure to ask your staff what they would like to see improve.
Emails and newsletters can serve as reminders of where helpful resources can be found on the intranet, how to access personal profiles and give feedback, and other tidbits relevant to your team (more on that later).
Develop a Sound Employee Feedback System
To foster a work culture based on continuous feedback, you should motivate workers to express their opinions throughout the course of their career at your company.
Consider the many milestones and phases that each employee goes through during their “tenure.” Then, make a list of instances where their input provides you with relevant and objective insights into your operations.
The following are some recommended times to request feedback from an employee:
- At the end of the recruitment and onboarding process — which can easily be done through automation of HR processes
- At yearly or mid-year performance evaluation sessions
- During one-on-one meetings on a monthly basis
- Prior to or following company-wide reforms
Of course, you should inform all employees of when and how you will ask for their feedback. For example, consider the differences between a one-on-one session with a manager and a company-wide employee survey.
While the one-on-one meeting is better suited for more candid conversations between line managers and managees, during which you can implement something like the SBI feedback model, you may not be able to access all information given during these conversations.
However, rolling out occasional employee surveys via your company’s productivity or communication tool such as Slack or Teams may provide you with more specific and relevant inputs.
Proper Tools Lead to Employee Advocacy
Internal communication systems are just one part of a bigger picture. To truly engage, inspire, and motivate your employees, you need to invest in the best possible tools for their type of work. Engaged, inspired, and motivated employees are more likely to leave positive feedback more often, too.
For instance, using a solid internal communication platform like RingCentral App will result in increased productivity and engagement, which is what will drive positive comments across the board.
To capitalize on this effect, you may consider giving employees the opportunity to become company ambassadors, or even advisors on how to properly reap the benefits of company resources. Their role could be to speak about what works, and motivate others within the company to speak out about what doesn’t work.
Organizing your internal comms strategy around an employee advocacy program demonstrates to employees that you trust them to communicate company messaging and to present a favorable and trustworthy image to people outside of their immediate teams.
Work on Your Internal Newsletters
Internal newsletters are possibly the most effective way to disseminate the most recent and pertinent news to your entire workforce. Newsletters enable internal communications to include a variety of assets and updates — ranging from how to create a zip file to where and when to receive and send feedback.
Since people don’t have time to read walls of text, make your corporate newsletter more engaging and memorable by including photographs, infographics, or videos. Try to include topics that are actually relevant for your employees instead of tooting your own horn — they know better than anyone what company they work for, so a genuine approach is key.
Again, you can use newsletters to remind people when and where to leave feedback. For example, if you’ve recently distributed a company-wide survey, but didn’t get as many responses as you’d hoped, your newsletter can gently nudge them in that direction.
During requests for feedback, you can also use the newsletter to highlight staff successes or specific project accomplishments. This approach shows your workers you are aware of their contribution to corporate objectives, you commend them for it, and that you are ready to hear their comments as well.
Final Thoughts
Internal communications are the backbone of any company; organizing them to drive and manage employee feedback is an excellent approach to increase awareness of what needs to be improved, and where you’re already doing a good job. We hope this article has given you enough material to successfully organize your own internal communication channels for the purposes of proper employee feedback management.
