5 ways to increase employee engagement with your internal comms

You needn’t be a business guru to see the importance of effective comms within an organisation. But, even if you are a business guru, there’s still a good chance you’re underestimating its power.

Effective in-organisation communications increase employee engagement and satisfaction, reduce employee turnover, helps to develop a positive company image and, ultimately, help the company to succeed.

These days, the links between effective internal comms and job engagement is clearer than ever. One of the top reasons employees quit jobs is related to poor communications.

In organisations where employees feel connected, productivity increases by 20 to 25%.

It’s more crucial today than it’s ever been that businesses develop, and execute, effective comms strategies across their teams. How? Let’s find out.

Here are 5 easy ways you can increase employee engagement in your internal comms.

1. Be purposeful and listen

One key reason employees fail to engage with their company’s internal communications is bog standard info overload. 62% of emails in the average inbox are entirely irrelevant.

But it’s shockingly easy not to contribute to these nightmare inboxes. The secret lies in cultivating a genuine understanding of what your employees need, and want, to hear. Some misguided leadership teams think they can accurately predict what the people they’re writing to want to hear, without ever asking the question.

So, big tip: listen. Ask your teams about the types of news and content they actually want to see, and then deliver than content. With relevant, useful content comes increased employee engagement.

2. Think global, act local

Particularly in larger companies, local topics and themes will be of greater interest to teams than global ones.

For example, hearing about local achievements and insights from a regional manager (as opposed to a global CEO) can be an effective way to generate employee engagement and promote company-wide strategy.

Provide space for local leaders to become brand spokespeople. Establishing a good balance between delivering top-level news and locally-produced internal comms is an effective way to increase engagement by ensuring topics are relevant to employees.

3. Embrace exciting new internal comms channels

Choosing the most appropriate channel to deliver your internal comms is key to generating employee engagement.

Traditional internal comms channels, like emails and intranets, are often very text-focussed. That copy-heavy approach can miss the mark if you’re trying to up the excitement levels of your company updates.

Next time, why not branch out into new formats? Video is a good way to keep the format dynamic, engaging and relevant.

An effective way to increase internal comms engagement is to deliver updates through digestible mediums. Live, TV-style broadcasts do just that. They allow you to get important info disseminated across your entire organisation in a fresh format that enhances the experiences, encourages real-time discussion, and drastically increases employee engagement.

4. Empower your employees

Great comms leaders understand that a sense of purpose within a company really does matter to employees. To help keep workers engaged, it’s important to effectively demonstrate a clear link between their achievement and the wider successes of the business.

A simple way to do this is to highlight the successes of smaller teams to the whole company. Showcases a sales teams recent client wins, and profiling those involved to highlight individual achievement, is one way you might do this.

Ensuring your employees feel like part of the bigger picture is crucial to increase employee engagement with internal comms.

5. Create a dialogue

The best comms leaders understand the value of encouraging discussion and interaction between employees and management. An open, two-way dialogue encourages employees to get involved, feel connected to, and appreciated by, the company’s senior leadership.

Open up the conversation by providing opportunities for employees to give feedback and engage in discussion.

During in-person events, allow ample time for Q&As to introduce a more collaborative attitude. Or, if you’re planning on embracing live, online broadcasts, make use of the live Q&A features on platforms like Teams and Zoom to help engage employees from the far side of their computer screens.