As an HR leader in today’s ever-changing work environment, one of the key things you should be focused on is building a strong internal communication plan that benefits all members of your team. With more employees working remotely or having flex schedules, it’s important to put a structure in place that allows for effective communication among your leadership and front-line teams. At Kinetix, we’re constantly trying to balance these challenges with our folks and have tried many different things to get important information out to our team on a weekly basis. Through a lot of trial and error, we believe we’ve come up with a good set of solutions you can try with your team. Check out our list of communication best practices below.
Be Consistent
One of the most important facets of a communication plan to consider is the consistency or frequency of the communications you want to send out to your people. At Kinetix, we’ve built out a structure that allows us to send weekly communications to our team on the same two days each week. Every Monday we send a highly-visual email to our teams highlighting the great things our employees accomplished in the last week while also looking forward to what’s happening in the office this week. We also send out a weekly video series featuring our CEO to our team each Thursday. By keeping a consistent schedule, we’re able to engage our team members and keep them in the loop on a regular basis. We ensure that they don’t miss key information and are kept abreast of the important things happening it Kinetix.
Try Different Mediums
We know the days of memos are long gone (or at least they should be) but that doesn’t mean a lot of you aren’t still using old and boring mediums to reach your employees. At Kinetix, we’ve tried a lot of different ways to disseminate information and found a few that work and a few that don’t. If you’re looking for engagement, videos, in-person/remote meetings, and high-art, visual emails are the way to go. As one example, we’ve created a video series here that features our CEO Shannon Russo giving updates on happenings around the office, providing new information our recruiting team can use in their jobs, and recognizing superstar employees. Our team has really taken to it and can’t wait to see who’s being recognized this week. In the past, we’ve tried sending out pdfs, powerpoint presentations, online presentations, boring emails, and a whole lot more. By putting forth a little extra effort into designing creative ways to send out communications, we’re able to connect with our team at a greater depth than before.
Don’t Be Afraid of Feedback
If you’re unsure your current communication channels are having their desired effect, don’t be afraid to solicit feedback from the team on what’s working and what isn’t. Run a survey or schedule a Q&A session with members of your leadership team. If they have recommendations that can bring about better engagement, hear them out! Remember, it’s not a bad thing to pivot and go in a different direction. The ultimate goal is to be as efficient and engaging as possible with your internal communication efforts.
Hopefully, by following a few of the best practices we’ve outlined above, you can transform your organization into a lean, mean, communicating machine in no time. It’s key to keep your team engaged and focused on doing the best job possible for your company. By working to build a successful internal communication plan, you’re well on your way to achieving these goals.