Effective internal communication is essential to improve productivity, and improved productivity ultimately leads to increased profitability.
So it stands to reason that choosing the best strategies for maintaining open and seamless communication is vital.
With well-maintained communication, co-ordination between departments is seamless, office systems become routine and, overall, it projects a positive image of your company in the eyes of your customers.
It is unfortunate that internal communication is often overlooked because it is not dealing directly with customers. Yet it has a vital impact on your customers overall experience.
The first step to good internal communication is to establish professionalism.
Email is the most commonly used internal communication method. It’s important to dictate clear guidelines to your team and ensure that emails follow a specific protocol. Develop an email format that is used uniformly throughout the organisation.
More businesses today are employing the use of an intranet - a network operating within an organisation. This private extension of the internet acts as a platform for posting office materials, announcements, files, directories, sales, projects, etc. The benefits include increased productivity and the immediate delivery of information in a secure and efficient manner.
Intranet also encourages collaboration and builds corporate culture. It is built for your specific audience, has cross browser capabilities (meaning it works irrespective of if you are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome or many other internet browsers) and is cost effective. Consider employing the use of instant messaging systems that are simple and use friendly. These quick messaging platforms increase productivity and considerably reduce the time usually spent on tracking down answers.
As an example we use a system called PowWow, an online collaboration tool which allows a simple, clear and secure interoffice communication on projects and group tasks. PowWow functions in the cloud, retaining files and allowing for multiple users to access and edit files, send messages, create milestones and to-do lists, and it has an instant messaging capability. We prefer it because we can provide clients access to their own workspace so we are all on the same page.
This sort of system is useful because it encourages team members to utilise the same platform for all internal communication and it keeps things organised and fluid. It also provides a huge competitive advantage!
Regardless of the type of internal communication it is important to stress the need for professionalism. Short, succinct and to the point should be standard.
