Health Check Your Internal Comms

It's well documented that internal comms is more important now than ever...

With staff scattered all over the place, work-patterns seemingly randomised, the lines between individual roles blurred and the future hovering somewhere between uncertain and unknown, communication and engagement really are fundamental to any business’s survival and growth.

This is about the time of year when many companies take stock of how they’re doing, what they can allow themselves to celebrate and what they need to focus on or improve for the year ahead.

“Take Stocktober”, anyone? No? OK, well, regardless, this is traditionally the time of year for the employee engagement survey.

Sniffed at or disregarded by only the most foolish of employers – you know the type: the ones who don’t think their people’s views, feelings and levels of motivation, loyalty or commitment matter – this can provide a great opportunity to glean an insight into just how engaged your employees really are.

As with anything, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Carefully considered questions, batched to reach the people to whom they apply, and decorated to be appealing, inviting and engaging, will return useful and meaningful insights into the health of your business and motivation of your teams. SurveyMonkey and Typeform are so easy to use and, with a little creativity, pictures, photos and illustrations can be added to make the driest of topics more appealing. Never be afraid of using humour or light-heartedness to draw in your people and draw out their honest feedback - literal or metaphorical colour can work wonders.

Newsflash: “professional” and “humorous” are not mutually exclusive! The key here is maximising user engagement and honest returns. And then acting on the findings, of course!

If, like many, you’ve been doing things very differently since the arrival of our most unwanted and uninvited guest of 2020, this can be an invaluable chance to see what landed! What worked? What didn’t? What motivated? And what fell flat? Then you’ll know what to stick with, what to tweak and what to get rid of. And if you need a little help with any of it, there are a wealth of free resources available to steer you to comms success.

For the new things that are working, give yourself a pat on the back. This has been unchartered territory for many. Making new things work is a success worth celebrating. Now keep doing it!

For the things that didn’t: don’t beat yourself up. You tried. Change it or bin it. Learn from it.

We’re all hoping that 2021 gives us a break. Make that ride even easier by doing a robust health check on your comms strategy now and setting yourself up for comms glory in the new year.

Is “Take Stocktober” still not a thing?