Decoding: 6 examples of internal communication strategies

Internal communication, understood as all communication actions directed towards the organization's stakeholders, is one of the pillars of the company.

A good internal communication strategy is indeed a powerful factor of cohesion, motivation and productivity for the employees.

However, according to an OpinionWay study for INside, a third of the employees questioned feel poorly informed within their company, and 20% of them even say they do not have the necessary information to do their job.

Mozzaik365 deciphers here 6 concrete examples of internal communication strategies to remedy this major problem.

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Why implement a real internal communication strategy?

Would you consider launching an external communication campaign without a precise target, clear objective, an ad hoc plan, a well-defined schedule and KPIs to measure its success? Probably not.

Like external corporate communication, internal communication cannot be improvised, at the risk of losing effectiveness.

As far as internal communication is concerned, it is therefore a question of having clear objectives (training, informing, motivating, federating, building loyalty, etc.), a specific audience (all employees, managers, field teams, new arrivals during theonboarding process, etc.) and designing a campaign using coherent levers( internalnewsletter, information meeting, intranet announcement, event, etc.).

The key to building a solid internal communications strategy ? Putting in place a real communication plan. To guide you in drafting it, use our internal communication plan template.

With this foundation in place, let's look at some examples of internal communication strategies tailored to different objectives.

Example of an internal communication strategy to improve the employer brand

To be effective, internal communication must have three dimensions. While it can of course be top-down (from the hierarchy to employees), it must also be bottom-up (from employees to management) and transversal (from employees to their peers).

This last form of internal communication is particularly expected by employees. In fact, according to the OpinionWay study for INside mentioned above, half of the employees surveyed feel frustrated at not being able to participate in the circulation of information within their company.

Here are several features that will help you alleviate this problem and increase talent satisfaction with your organization:

• Set up a corporate social network within your organization. Yammer, Microsoft's social network, allows you to create discussions and communities of interest (environment, sports, innovation, etc.). This will turn your employees into real information relays, generate links between them and reinforce their sense of belonging to the organization.
• Invite talents to become your internal ambassadors by creating content for the company's intranet . Interested employees can, for example, write blog posts about the company's CSR projects or its QWL (Quality of Life at Work) initiatives. In this respect, the Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace offers a "Contribution Help" module that allows users to edit texts simply thanks to a predefined template. The ideal way to get involved in the life of the organization.
• Employees can also be excellent external ambassadors. The "Social Networking Wall" feature of Mozzaik365's Digital Workplace is an interesting lever to deploy an employee advocacy strategy.Employee Advocacy. This component allows you to centralize publications from different social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), react to them and share them on your personal account, all without leaving the Digital Workplace. The result is a particularly beneficial influence on the employer brand.
• Finally, consider stimulating internal bottom-up communication. To do this, use a suggestion box and/or a survey tool to collect the opinions of the company's stakeholders. This Feedback will allow the hierarchy to take a fresh look at many situations and to improve some tension points. Here again, the Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace offers an ad hoc module. The "Ideas box" and "Poll" components of our digital workspace (ENT) allow employees to share their points of view and even vote for the most relevant proposals. A democratic process that generates commitment and satisfaction for employees.

📌 To take it a step further, find out how to build a strong company culture.

Example of an internal communication strategy to support change

According to Mckinsey, 70% of change projects fail, mainly due to employee resistance and lack of management support.

Fortunately, a good internal communication strategy can get employees on board and facilitate the transformation. Here are a few avenues to explore:  

• Give meaning to the change by explaining the ins and outs through adapted content. A summary newsletter , a detailed blog article, an infographic posted in the company's corridors, an information meeting or a webinar: it's up to you to choose the format(s) that will best suit your audience.
• Set up a question box so that you can quickly respond to employees' doubts and fears. This will prevent a decrease in employee motivation and commitment.
• Create a document base available to everyone to ensure an equal level of information to the different stakeholders. This library could contain video tutorials, a summary of the major milestones of the change project, posters to be printed for the office or team meeting materials. It can also be stored on a SharePoint site and shared on a Teams channel or on each employee's personalDashboard.

Example of an internal communication strategy to engage your employees

Did you know? According to the Gallup organization, engagement at work could reduce absenteeism by 81% and reduce turnover by 18% to 43%. In addition, employee enthusiasm and involvement would increase productivity by 18% and increase consumer loyalty by 10%.

So, in a nutshell, it's critical to build or maintain your talent's commitment. Here's how:

• Use your corporate social network (e.g. Microsoft Yammer) to create communities in which employees can share and get involved. Your employees will thus be able to cultivate their interests together and develop a real "esprit de corps", which is conducive to greater commitment within the organization. Better still, offer the most passionate talents the opportunity to lead a group that is important to them (waste recycling, technology watch, etc.). Fully involved in the life of the company, they will also communicate their enthusiasm to their peers!
• Organize internal events and social moments to facilitate interactions between colleagues and create an exciting group dynamic. The Event Manager component of the Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace can help you in this process. This module allows you to target each event according to the user's profile and to make them appear directly on each collaborator's personalDashboard to generate more registrations. Thanks to this tool, you can, for example, push a Team Building operation to new arrivals during the Onboarding process.

🚀 To go further on this topic, find out why employee engagement drives productivity

Example of an internal communication strategy to disseminate cybersecurity best practices

Cybersecurity is a major issue for all organizations, especially in the context of digital transformation and the adoption of hybrid work.

According to a barometer conducted by OpinionWay for CESIN, in 2021, more than one out of two companies surveyed claims to have been the victim of one to three successful cyberattacks. As a result, 21% of respondents have experienced a slowdown in production and 14% have had their information compromised.

Faced with the threat of cyber attacks, it is therefore imperative to inform and train the organization's stakeholders in good cybersecurity practices. To do this:

• Create a digital documentation center dedicated to this topic. A Teams channel will be ideal since it will allow you to centralize and make available to employees all the necessary materials (informative videos hosted on Microsoft Stream, useful links, a special cybersecurity checklist edited with Tasks or List, etc.). Employees will also be able to share their best practices and even report possible threats to the company (a phishing campaign in progress for example).
• Automate cybersecurity training for new hires during the Onboarding of newcomers. For example, you can integrate a learning module into their formalized onboarding path using Microsoft Tasks. This way, new hires will know when to attend the course, can access it via a link attached to the roster, and can confirm that they've taken it by checking a box.
• Include security reminders in your organization's newsletter and intranet. Over time, good habits tend to get lost. It is therefore important to make regular "reminders" in order to invite employees to maintain their vigilance, but also in order to inform them of ongoing threats.

🚧 To go further, discover the best cybersecurity practices to pass on to your employees

Example of an internal communication strategy to make your organization's intranet indispensable

According to the OpinionWay study for INside mentioned at the beginning of this article, the intranet comes in second place (after the corporate social network) of the media that employees would like to have within their organization.

However, the adoption of this internal communication tool is not always easy. A generic intranet, with too little information or with information that is poorly prioritized and unsuitable, is likely to meet with the disdain of employees.

To make your intranet indispensable, it is therefore necessary to deploy a real internal communication strategy:

• Create an annual internal communication plan to feed your intranet with relevant and contextual content throughout the year.
• Distribute publications in a format that is adapted to the target audience and the objective sought. For example, a short video, viewable on a smartphone, will capture the attention of field teams while effectively conveying a specific message.
• Target the recipients of your posts to avoid drowning employees in a mass of useless information. For this, for example, use the features  of the Mozzaik365 Digital Workplace to target your audience, allowing to personalize the spaces and the information flows according to the audience or the themes. Thanks to the latter, you will be able to address the right message to the right person at the right time.
• Finally, and always with the perspective of fighting against "infobesity" and capturing the attention of employees, invite them to personalize their information flow. The Mozzaik365 ENT stands out again on this point. Indeed, it allows each employee to subscribe to their favorite themes thanks to the "My feeds" or "My news" features.

🛵 The originality of your content could also make your intranet a must-have. Here are 4 original ideas for your internal communication