12 Tips on Creating Your Own Intranet Communications Plan

Internal communication is a crucial aspect of teamwork. That’s why every business manager should have a well-defined internal communication strategy that can propel the company towards success and enhance teamwork in various work conditions.  

What does an intranet communication plan mean? 

To deliver cutting-edge customer service, your company’s internal communication structure must incorporate every employee. Furthermore, the communication must be smooth, effective, and passed on promptly.

The best way to achieve this is to have a comprehensive internal communication guide that keeps workers updated on the company goals and initiatives. The guide must direct on the mission, timelines, implementers, and measures the progress as discussed in the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan below. 

Know your current internal communication status

Before you start working out on the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications channels, search out, and establish if your company has any communication strategies engaging remote teams that are working. Build on what you have or start from scratch. 

It is important to engage your key stakeholders in a brainstorming session to know where to start. Establish who will be responsible, what kind of effective communication they need, and how the information will be disseminated. You can engage your employees in focus group discussions and you will likely get important outcomes. 

Understand what communication tools are at your disposal

Knowing the tools you have will help you when setting up your business goals because you will know who shall use them, how they shall be used, and when they shall be used. HR assignment help experts say that you will know if you need to buy one if the one you already have does not have every required feature or functionality. 

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You may ask yourself questions like:

• Is every worker able to use the tool?

• Can the workers express themselves freely using the tool?

• Can it handle the quantity of information that needs to be disseminated? 

• Is the tool friendly to running surveys or polling?

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Write down your goals

Before you look into the team member’s needs, first look into what the business needs and, more specifically, why the business needs it. When the business becomes sustainable, the workers shall be sustainable. 

Next, look into what the workers need to communicate effectively. Ensure your goals are measurable, effective, and relatable to each worker. To get better results, have a definition of who your workers are and who are the influencers within your workforce.

Tackle the business challenge first

Your business goals must be addressed first before building your internal communications strategy. It is important to look into your business process modeling strategies to determine if they are working or not. Engage your team members in a high-level business goals building plan and have a solid and workable plan.

During your high-level key holders meeting, ensure the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan is your central guide. Address business issues like how good your customer service is, how effective is the HR as well as the marketing departments. 

Breakdown your teams into audiences 

Next, separate your team members into separate groups depending on how they consume information. Employee engagement audiences are different from key stakeholders. Team audiences are the consumers of information, while key stakeholders are those that influence the expected results. 

To achieve successful internal communications, look into the mindset of each audience in terms of their work. For example, the sales team has a selling mindset, while the accounting team has a balance sheet mindset. You need to keep the work profiles in mind before laying out the pointers.

Build your communication points

Next, build your internal communication strategy points that you want to disseminate to your audience list. It is relevant to stick to fewer points that can be easily consumed by the intended audiences. For each point, build several sub-points to support your main points. 

You can build your points by asking yourself questions like what, why, where, when, how, and who. Additionally, remember to have your points as simple as possible for a successful internal communication strategy. Sometimes it works better when you send your communication when least expected. 

Be relevant 

Your hard work in building strong communication points could go to waste if you are not relevant in your communication. Having communication points is different from having the right information.

To build relevant internal communications, look into the need of every audience, and let the communication inspiring. Remember to use a professional tone and do not let the workers feel like you are commanding them or pushing them too hard. The information must be informative as well as clear and engaging. 

Strategize for creating intranet communications plan

At this level, draw the strategy you will use in communicating your business goals as well as the most effective communications channels. If you pass on the message wrongly, your team members will not connect well with your messages and you might find it difficult to build trust both internally and externally. 

Your communication channel of choice must be able to deliver your intended message perfectly. Different channels can be used for different audiences like social media, video, chats, paper, emails, virtual meetings, and physical meetings. 

Have measurable progress

For best outcomes, design ways to help you understand how your employees feel about your effective communication strategy of choice. The bottom line is; you must be ready to adapt to a new strategy if the one in place is not working. 

You can know through active employee engagement in submitting feedback. Once in a while, send five-minute surveys online and let the employees send their feedback. You can also allow employees to write and submit which points they feel should be improved on or removed. Your internal communication strategies must be embraceable by the whole team at the individual and corporate level.  

Set timelines for each level of communication 

After settling on the most effective communications strategy for your business goals, set timelines on how the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications plan shall be communicated step by step progressively.  

You may have twelve months dived into three-month sections and which set of points shall be communicated in each. To kill monotony, you can adjust your communication channels keeping in mind the best channel applicable to each group.  

Be consistent

Consistency brings perfection. Without overdoing, have a consistent flow of information until your business goals stick into the mind of every worker. Apart from emails and social media communication, create internal monthly magazines or three-month periodicals and let the employees contribute to the columns.

The good thing with magazines is that the employees can keep perusing through whenever they have free time. It can even be more captivating if the internal magazines contain pictorials of the workers while on duty.  

Create a follow-up strategy 

Your workers must not be consumers of your internal communication strategies only. After they receive information, there should be channels of feedback. The follow-up strategy should be open and periodical to give ample time for the workers to digest the information they receive first. 

If you allow instant feedback, you will likely receive negative feedback all the time because there was no time to digest the information. During follow-ups, alert your workers about a week earlier so that they prepare psychologically and be ready to give their best and sincere feedback. 

Conclusion 

Evaluating a communication plan is an evolving process that will continuously grow as the organization progresses. Each strategic objective affects the methodologies which you adopt and will determine the performance of your company. Note, the purpose of internal communication is not merely to exchange content. Internal communication must also captivate, encourage, and energize as much as possible. 

Author Bio: Ashley Simmons is a professional journalist, editor and college paper writer. She has been working in a newspaper in Salt Lake City for four years and has assignments from leading online essay paper websites. She has expertise in writing custom essay papers and covers various subjects with great ease and delivers high-quality work, which has made her popular in the writing circle.

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