Effective employee communication is what keeps employees engaged and excited to contribute to your company’s success every day. A recent study by Gallup found that companies with a highly engaged workforce are 21% more profitable.
So, how can you improve the effectiveness of your employee communications? Earlier this week, I read an interesting article on this subject that shared these 10 tips:
- Be clear and concise.
- Set the tone at the top.
- Understand your employees.
- Use many channels.
- Notify employees first.
- Match actions with words.
- Emphasize personal (and personalized) communication.
- Communicate regularly.
- Measure effectiveness.
- Facilitate conversation.
While these are all helpful tips, there are five that I believe are the absolute most important for those who really want to produce more effective employee communications.
Why are these five the most important? Because they are the things that are top of mind for every single customer and potential customer that we speak to at Sparrow Connected. And they’re things that our internal communications platform can help with.
1. Communicate Regularly
Be systematic and strategic. Create an editorial calendar with regular dates for communicating with your employees, whether it’s by newsletter, email or a scheduled meeting.
How Sparrow Connected helps. Keeping up with regular communications is quicker and easier because you can create your content once and publish it everywhere. Plus, the platform takes care of formatting, notifications, reminders, and publishing across all your channels. No more cross-posting, no more having to create the content multiple times, no more wasted time.
2. Measure Effectiveness.
Set objectives and assess whether you have met them. Ask employees whether the organization has communicated its strategy well. Do they understand how their daily work helps the organization meet its goals?
How Sparrow Connected helps. From compliance reports to understanding trends and providing content insights across all channels, Sparrow analytics have been designed to measure what matters most to communication professionals.
3. Facilitate Conversation.
One-way communication is a thing of the past. Employees who feel “listened to” tend to be more engaged, motivated and loyal. There are many ways to facilitate two-way communication, including face-to-face meetings, interactive video interviews, employee surveys, Q&A features on your intranet, and anonymous comments and questions.
How Sparrow Connected helps. With Sparrow Connected you can turn employee communication into an intimate dialog with your workforce. Allow collaboration and engagement through reactions, comments, and more to empower every person in your workplace.
4. Use Many Channels.
Most people need to hear or see a message multiple times, in multiple ways, to understand it completely. Distribute your messages electronically, in writing, face to face and at meetings. Your message should be consistent across all these channels.
How Sparrow Connected helps. Sparrow Connected is the platform that brings all of your channels together for true omnichannel communications. From the frontlines to the head office, you can engage your entire workforce on their preferred channels from your intranet to mobile apps, to email, SMS, digital screens, and more.
5. Emphasize Personal (and Personalized) Communication.
Although today’s employees may be more tech-savvy than ever, nothing beats human interaction. Most employees want to hear news and information that is personalized, relevant and sent from their supervisor or department head.
How Sparrow Connected helps. With Sparrow Connected, you can personalize your communication for each worker. Create audiences by demographic data such as role, division, location or tenure and send the right content to the right audience to avoid overwhelming workers with digital noise.
Be sure to consider these five tips if producing more effective employee communications is one of your priorities. There is one final tip I’ll leave you with: Take a look at the technology you’re using to manage your employee communications. How is it working for you? This article may help you in your evaluation.
What’s next:
Improve Your Employee Communucations with Sparrow Connected
Your team deserves the best communication tools out there so you can engage your employees, boost productivity, and bring value throughout your workforce. Go beyond basic metrics and realize your full organizational impact with support from the right technology. At Sparrow, we believe in the power of workforce communications and can help your business stay ahead of the competition. Book a conversation with us today.
