You’re looking to communicate with your company’s employees but feel like your messages aren’t quite hitting the mark? And even when you write an email that’s super detailed and full of good intentions, you notice a total lack of response? (Except for Maryse from IT, who replies with her trusty cat emoji 🐈.)
Then it’s time to work on your internal communication strategy!
Here’s a brand-new guide from Letsignit to help you set up a killer internal communication strategy. Bonus: a list of 15 tools to make your job easier!
But before we go any further, let’s define what internal communication is.
And what impact does it have?
It’s estimated that 85% of employees feel more motivated, or even more engaged, when a company promotes open and fluid internal communication. Not too bad, right?
Some companies, like CMA CGM, have set up an internal training platform that includes training videos. A large amount of information can be shared with employees in a simple and educational way.
Upward communication can take several forms, such as suggestion boxes (physical or virtual), internal surveys (which can be anonymous), feedback meetings, etc.
And what about cross-functional communication?
Cross-functional communication is an excellent way to improve the flow of essential information, encourage smoother collaboration between different people, and therefore improve the overall productivity of the company.
For example, a company might adopt collaborative tools such as an intranet or instant messaging platforms. The result is usually more open and efficient communication.
To communicate effectively internally, start by structuring your exchanges well and making sure to find the right channels for different types of messages. You might use instant messaging for project updates, an internal newsletter to discuss major strategic objectives chosen by management, or even a Friday feedback happy hour session to discuss new ideas and get feedback on current strategies?
To define your goals, we recommend using the SMART method. By setting communication goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound, it will be easier to implement them and measure the results afterward.
Transparency is a key element in internal communication. Without it, it’s simply impossible to build a climate of trust. By promoting open and honest exchanges, employees feel valued and better informed, which improves their sense of belonging to the company. Greater transparency also helps prevent misunderstandings, facilitates collective decision-making, and strengthens team cohesion.
The 3-content rule should help you balance your internal communication. Here’s what it recommends:
Also, make sure to adapt your communications to the diversity of your employees (for example, avoiding using overly technical jargon that would make sense to one department but not another). Use visuals, avoid jargon, and communicate in a kind and respectful manner.
This will put you on the right track to engage employees in internal dialogue and build long-term loyalty.
Let’s look at the example of Swile, the French scale-up that has worked hard to establish smooth and effective internal communication.
For a company growing as fast as Swile (both nationally and internationally), it was essential to ensure all employees had access to the same level of information.
To achieve this, the company set up several systems:
To illustrate internal communication, let’s give another example that we find relevant: ours (yes, yes, we are modest! ).
At Letsignit, we’ve also worked hard on internal communication to streamline information sharing and maximize employee well-being.
Here’s what we’ve put in place:
Internal communication can take place at different touchpoints. Here are the internal communication tools we recommend you explore.
For quick and direct communication between employees. Whether it's for urgent matters, brief questions, or more casual discussions, instant messaging remains highly effective!
For sharing more official, sensitive, or detailed information, email remains a powerful communication channel.
Beyond the standardization of signatures offered by email signature solutions, it's also possible to share messages in the form of banners via your signature. This allows you to communicate internal messages non-intrusively and encourage employees to learn more by adding a call to action.
A company intranet is designed to centralize all the necessary information, resources, and tools for employees. It facilitates access to documents, internal news, and official communications.
Distributed regularly, the internal newsletter shares key information about the company, important updates, employee achievements, while improving the sense of belonging to the company community.
A section dedicated to explanatory videos or brief news clips can also help easily share information internally.
Videos, with their visual and auditory editing, offer a dynamic and engaging format that captures attention. They can be used for training, important announcements, or sharing company news. This type of content facilitates quick understanding and absorption of information, while making internal communication more attractive.
Surveys and internal polls are excellent tools for upward communication, allowing you to gauge employees' feelings on a particular topic.
Creating anonymous internal surveys/polls also allows you to explore more sensitive topics while ensuring confidentiality. This encourages more honest and transparent feedback, without fear of retaliation or judgment.
A very popular tool for conducting surveys is Typeform.
These platforms facilitate task management, responsibility distribution, and collaboration across teams on complex projects, while centralizing communication related to these projects.
Examples of such tools: Trello, Asana, Monday, Notion, etc.
This portal provides access to important HR information, such as pay slips, vacation days, benefits information, etc., and simplifies the management of all HR-related requests.
This space allows you to share real-time updates on the latest company news, whether it’s internal initiatives, commercial successes, or industry news.
It could take the form of a dynamic homepage, push notifications, or a blog section.
A corporate social network provides an opportunity to informally exchange on various topics, create communities, and allow a more relaxed sharing of information.
An Employee Resource Group (ERG) is a group created and led by employees with the aim of providing resources to support common initiatives (e.g., an ERG for supporting new parents). While not affiliated with or overseen by the parent company, ERGs can sometimes receive support from it.
Sharing information verbally can be another excellent way to communicate effectively. One advantage of podcasts is that they can be listened to anywhere and are generally less demanding in terms of production (compared to videos, for example).
It should be noted that a dedicated mobile app may not be possible for every company, as it requires a certain production budget ($$$). However, when the budget is available, a mobile app can be very useful.
It allows smooth communication between employees and makes it easier to access essential information from a phone. Employees can consult company updates, access shared resources, participate in real-time discussions, etc.
For such an app, there are no limits to the features. It all depends on what was planned during its creation.
Okay, we know, talking about "forums" sounds a bit old-fashioned. But remember that Reddit is a website based on a forum system and it works very well.
So, forums, we said, like internal FAQs, can allow employees to ask questions easily, share ideas, debate, etc. And in return, they can get quick answers, whether from colleagues or internal support teams.
To assess the effectiveness of your internal communication, several key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used. By defining those that seem most important to you, you'll be able to better measure the impact of your actions and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Here are some relevant examples of indicators:
To get a comprehensive view of the effectiveness of your internal communication, start by defining your objectives (which, we remind you, should be SMART). If, after analyzing your indicators, your objectives are not met, action is needed.
Then, establish a regular feedback system to gather employee opinions on the various communication channels used. These insights will be invaluable for identifying the necessary adjustments over time.
Data analysis from your communication tools is also essential. It will allow you to understand employee behavior, and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Internal and external communication, while distinct, complement each other to strengthen the overall effectiveness of a company.
We can agree that internal and external communication do not target the same audiences, and certainly not in the same way.
However, companies have everything to gain by harmonizing the messages and values conveyed by both internal and external communication.
It’s easy to imagine that a company that talks about kindness and respect with its clients, but interacts poorly with its employees, is likely to create strong dissonance among them. Similarly, a company that values innovation internally but seems overly conservative externally will struggle to attract new clients.
By aligning these messages, you’ll have all the tools to strengthen your reputation, attract new talent and clients, and maximize your company’s chances of success.
Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.
You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.
If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.
With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.
And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.
It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.
This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.
It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!
A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.
With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.
What is the user experience like for our employees?
In both cases:
In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.
With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.
Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:
Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.
If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.
As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:
As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.
If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.
As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:
As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.
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