Successful communication is critical for high performing teams. However, organizations still have a long way to go to build internal communications strategies that maximize engagement. Research from Gallagher & Co found 60% of companies don’t have a long-term internal communications strategy.
On top of that, the workplace is changing. A recent report from Gartner found 74% of organizations plan to shift employees to permanent remote work. Organizations need to land the right balance of communication to align teams, promote collaboration, and accelerate productivity.
So how can organizations inform and successfully engage employees with their internal communications strategy — all while navigating a remote or hybrid world? The answer is video. In this article, we’ll discuss how video can improve internal comms, share tips, and highlight insights from leaders to help you get started today.
Future-proof your internal communication strategy
Incorporating video is a great way to future-proof your comms strategy. Research with GlobalWebIndex found employees at businesses using video have greater confidence in their company’s performance and health. Still need some ideas? Check out a few important ways a video-first internal comms strategy can impact your team below.
1. Avoid creating more stress.
An alarming 1 out of 8 business professionals say their companies never communicate strategy updates. As a result, the lack of communication can make employees feel confused or even stressed. On top of that, many are juggling growing families, attending to medical needs, caring for other family members, all while managing their day-to-day tasks. When a company lacks an effective internal communications strategy, employee confidence levels take a hit.
2. Encourage more collaboration and ideas.
Only 41% of professionals say that in-person communication makes them feel like executives care. However, video can humanize relationships between employees and executive teams. Virtual meeting spaces can actually help employees feel more secure and provide a forum where they’re willing to share new ideas.
3. Help executives connect with employees.
Executives must be able to communicate in times of crisis or change to support their organization. “The number one job of a CEO is being really good at communications,” David Siegel, CEO at Meetup, said in a recent executive workplace communications workshop.
There are numerous organizational changes — like an acquisition or turnover in leadership — that require executives to communicate directly with their organization. To build an effective executive communications strategy, organizations should consider creating various forums for employees to ask questions or voice concerns to leaders.
9 tips on how to build a communications strategy
Employees who feel left out, uninformed, or unclear on their organization’s long-term goals can lose interest in their work. A patchy internal communications strategy doesn’t just take a hit to individual team members — one survey of 400 companies found that each organization lost $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees. Per year!
To build an effective communications strategy, start with defining your communication and business objectives and bring in live streaming and video to connect with employees. The end goal should be to keep your company aligned, engaged, and productive.
1. Define your internal communication objectives
According to Chris Zook, partner at Bain and Company, only 40% of employees know their company’s goals. A strong internal comms strategy begins with aligning the organization to the business objective. Iron out company goals and key performance metrics before communicating to the greater organization. Once you’re ready to send your message, strive to use video tools over email to make for a more dynamic experience.
2. Focus on the plan
When building your communications strategy, pour time and energy into the planning phase. Consider your objectives and desired outcomes as you build your content. Ask yourself: what do I want employees to learn or take away from the meeting?
Some guidelines to help understand how to plan meeting outcomes include:
- Awareness: This learning outcome focuses on communicating information, with no actionability or follow-up required from participants. Quarterly all-hands meetings, for example, may solely focus on creating awareness of sales goals and product roadmaps.
- Understanding: In this instance, employees walk away with a deeper comprehension of the material and message. Think new hire onboardings, where participants get up to speed on internal processes.
- Skill: This type of outcome involves the deepest level of learning, where employees will absorb functional tools, tips, and strategies that they can apply in their day to day work.
Julie Starr, Learning and Development Manager at Convene, Julie dives in deeper to these concepts below:
Want more corporate training insights? Watch the full panel discussion on-demand.
3. Develop a clear and concise message
You want to share your message in a way that makes a great impression for your team. Keep it short. Avoid text overload with minimal bullet points and words per line. As a general rule of thumb, presentation details should take up about 70% of your slides. This leaves the remaining space for images and other relevant content that encourages engagement.
Also plan for participation. Include live polls, chat, Q&A, and other engagement tools for an interactive experience. When employees are participating, they are listening.
4. Design meetings for participants
Make meetings more engaging and digestible with the REACH method. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, REACH is a method that repositions meetings through the perspective of the participant. For example, strive to conduct meetings into 20 minute intervals. Why? Research shows that intense focus with adult learners lasts up to 20 minutes.
Check out each letter of the REACH method means below:
- Recall – What will limit my audience from recalling the lesson?
- Effort – How much effort is needed to learn this content?
- Attention – How challenging will it be to retain focus?
- Cause- What cause or purpose do they have to learn?
- Humility – How humble are they as learners (and am I as an instructor)?
5. Increase communication cadence
Given the reality of remote and hybrid work, it’s likely your organization can benefit from increased meeting frequency to keep communication flowing. Consider increasing the cadence of your communication. And focus on shorter, single topic meetings so as not to overload employees.
6. Rethink executive presence
There’s a sharp disconnect between executives and leaders when it comes to effective communications. 54% of high – level execs say that they stream major company updates (like town halls and all hands) at least weekly. However, only 20% of employees agree.
When rapid and impactful periods of change take place, it’s okay to make unstructured touch points to check in with your teams.
While executive messages are critical, communication is more than relaying information. Good communication tools can help us feel more connected to people. And when it comes to corporate communication, building these connections is where video makes the biggest impact.
Learn how executives lean into new communications strategies with the Workplace Communications Workshop.
7. Adapt for the context
Organizations have been using video to cater to remote teams and improve meetings for years. However, more robust tools for producing, editing, and sharing video content has made it easier for teams to collaborate asynchronously and synchronously to drive productivity. Video learning offers employees greater control over when they learn to help them better absorb content.
When it comes to meeting engagement, many video tools have tracking data that can provide viewer behavioral insights. This data can include average view time, drop-off time, and other participation actions that can inform your video communication strategy. You’ll then be able to see what’s working and improve future video experiences.
Here are a few examples of how to communicate with teams in a engaging way using video:
- Use pre-recorded videos in addition to live video. The combination of live streaming and on-demand video for internal meetings helps elevate your messaging.
- Incorporate interactive tools to encourage feedback. This requires interactivity and directly increases engagement.
- Screen sharing step-by-step demos. This ensures that your team not only understands what is required of them, but that they understand the task at hand by going through the motions themselves.
- Create a library of video content. Don’t let your comms fall through the cracks! Leverage solutions that allow you to curate content and provide a hub for teams to stay in sync.
8. Continually refine your employee training program
Thinking about the context of your content is important, too. A successful internal communication strategy plans for every participant, no matter where they are. If you plan to build a library of video training content, be sure to cater to your audience.
And remember: the environment should not be a friction point in your strategy. Steve Hamaday, Virtual Training Manager at Axalta, experienced this first hand when his team began implementing live virtual trainings.
“Our content team’s primary responsibility is to develop training content for the physical classroom,” he says. “Because we take a different spin on training through our live virtual program, we have to ‘translate’ that content slightly to be more effective for our online participants.”
9. Always test your tech
Testing your tech is the final piece to an effective internal communication strategy. That is because this is the channel in which your message is being delivered. “You never want to start your event off and see people commenting, ‘I don’t have sound, I don’t have video, help!’” says David Haug, Senior Video Producer at Deloitte Global.
To avoid hiccups like that disrupt the experience, get in the habit of testing your video stream. This means checking the audio quality, video quality, and internet connection. Go through the motions as if it’s the actual day of. And consider having someone join as a participant to monitor the employee view and ensure your vision is coming together as planned.
Wrap Up
The work is never done when future-proofing your internal communications strategy. Just remember that all your efforts serve the goal of connecting with employees authentically to help them produce their best work.
Reach your team with video
Originally published on June 20, 2019 by Emily Gover. Updated on April 23, 2021 by Alysha Parker.