Whether you’re a small club, a growing association, or a small company, keeping members and employees connected and informed is essential to achieving your goals. In a post-COVID world where people expect online options and businesses are reducing overhead by moving toward hybrid environments, maintaining strong, easy-to-access internal communications can be challenging.

Having a well-planned communications strategy with excellent communication and collaboration tools that encourage employee engagement and set the tone of the company culture is key to employee satisfaction, which also results in retention and growth.

What is internal communications?

Internal communications refers to the way employees or members within a club or association are kept informed about the business and matters affecting their work. For instance, if the company hires a new CEO or the club buys new equipment for members to use—it’s all the information shared by the company or organization to its members and employees about the company.

Internal communications also helps members and employees stay connected and collaborating, and provides a voice for information around mission, company goals, core values, and related policies and guidelines.

Often the role of internal communications is helping employees stay connected and keeping them current on the latest company initiatives, brand guidelines, and usage policies. A good internal comms strategy should provide a corporate voice that is distinct from individual leaders to help ensure clear communications between groups and rule enforcement.

Most importantly, good internal communications is a two-way street. There has to be a mechanism in any internal communication strategy for two-way engagement, questions, employee feedback, and ongoing conversations.

Why internal communication is so important

Any business, club, or association that wants to succeed in today’s digital economy has to ensure that all its members or employees are truly aligned on the organization’s mission and vision, and clearly understand its daily operations and procedures. Indeed, many labor laws and government regulations mandate certain trainings and policies, and these all involve the use of internal communications at some point.

Just as importantly, employees have to feel connected—part of something that they believe in and are proud of—and to do that, they must feel in the know. If they are not informed about key decisions and don’t understand why those decisions are made, the mission is more likely to fail and retention start to decrease. In short, informed employees are productive employees.

How to build an effective internal communication strategy

First and foremost, an effective communications strategy depends on understanding how to reach members and employees in ways that work for them. For instance, setting up complicated wikis or knowledgebases may not work well if the audience you’re targeting is not in a very technology-focused role, such as a receptionist or a junior soccer club member.

Still, standard internal communications methods—emails, newsletters, intranet pages—may not be enough as new communication methods shape the way we live, work, and play. In our ever-expanding digital work, people are looking for more engaging features, such as file sharing, collaboration tools, and chat functions.

As well as choosing the right tools for the people, it’s also important to consider the goals and ways to measure success. This doesn’t have to be a complex mashup of analytics, dashboards, and KPIs. Depending on your size and budget, seeing high employee or member engagement in your collaboration tools and getting direct feedback on the employee may just be enough, depending on the size and budget of your organization.

The best internal communication software

There are many kinds of internal communications software to consider when looking at the best tools for your team. These include:

• Outsourced employee engagement apps: Company apps, usually developed by an outsourced third party, can seem like a good idea. However, the reality is that they often end up providing a less than ideal user experience and lack adequate platform support.
• Software: Intranet software can provide a useful framework for presenting information, but many employees find them difficult to navigate or access, and employers struggle to keep information close to real time.
• Platforms: Cloud-based workforce communications platforms can offer multiple communication tools in a fully integrated system.
• Email: Most organizations use email though not as a real-time communication tool.
• Virtual conference tools: The covid-19 pandemic saw an explosion in affordable, easy-to-use conferencing tools, which increasingly are becoming integrated into other channels, such as email.
• A combination of all or some of the above.

Depending on your size, budget, and needs, Kinscape provides many cloud-based workforce communications features that help provide an excellent internal comms experience and help keep your members or employees engaged.

With Kinscape, members and employees access to a centralized resource for answers to their questions, latest company news and updates, policies and regulations, newsletters, file-sharing capabilities, and more. Content can be organized and clearly labeled so it’s easy to find, and comment fields enable feedback and other relevant notes.

Another important feature for employees is the ability to connect, network, and collaborate with other employees and leadership, which can foster loyalty, support retention, and strengthen relationships. Plus the built-in messaging features makes it easy for staff to message each other without having to hop in and out of different applications.

All of the features are easy to use on Kinscape. With minimal set up, employees can share files, promote inside events and activities, and view important information from across the organization. Furthermore, all this company-confidential information is kept safe and secure.

Online tools have become a daily routine for many people and Kinscape offers a great way for internal communication staff to ensure employees and club members feel connected, informed, and heard.

Create an account with Kinscape now and explore our communication featues. Our tiered subscription service means you can choose the plan that’s right for you straightaway, starting with a basic free sign up. As you discover the many advantages of Kinscape, upgrading is quick and easy.