Highly motivated employees are the key to corporate success. But motivation is only possible if employees know where they are going, who is leading them and what exactly their jobs are. Otherwise, staff will invariable drift away. Internal communications takes the lead. Whether through the intranet, employee workshops or senior manager communication, we ensure that your employees are actively engaged and motivated.
Internal communications is one of the most important elements of ensuring motivation for your own employees. Targeted and transparent communication with your team will create an honest, value-based corporate culture. And that, in turn, will help to establish confidence in the company among employees. Finding and recruiting new team members that bring the right combination of personality, know-how and mindset to their new task is a considerable challenge. As is ensuring that they are sustainably motivated and satisfied, and will ideally remain with your company for many years.
Senior managers above all need to be able to rely on excellent internal communications and behaviour management to ensure an open, eye-level exchange within the corporate structure. Internal communications, of course, comprises far more than just targeted discussions between managers and employees. It also includes the use of communications tools and exchanges and interactions between employees. We therefore differentiate between formal and informal internal communications. The former refers to any exchange taking place via specific communications channels, the latter to information communicated through the ‘office grapevine’ or by way of gossip or rumours within the team.
Employee communication rests on four pillars that are intended to boost and sustain motivation:
Information is the essential ingredient. Without it, the remaining three pillars would not exist. The most important point is that information conveyed to the team is significant to all employees. Every team member being equally up to speed on important company matters ensures trust and transparency.
While information usually flows in one direction, from the management to the employee level, dialogue is largely about a mutual exchange and the opportunity of receiving feedback from employees or colleagues. Everyone has the change to actively deal with input.
Build motivation and remove resistance – the objective of successful employee communication. Transparent and efficient communication motivates the team and encourages greater performance. That in turn decreases churn and the loss of knowledge in operating activities.
Loss of knowledge? Exactly. High employee churn often means that a company loses internal knowledge that has not been passed on to new team members. Hence, the fourth pillar of internal communications is the transfer of knowledge. Employees passing on their knowledge to others, for example in workshops, additionally gain recognition and appreciation from colleagues and managers, increasing their own motivation even further.
Very important: internal communications does not necessarily have to be verbal. You do not always have to rely on traditional conversations. Allow your creativity free reign, including at the non-verbal level. For example, all team members demonstrating a positive attitude, treating each other with mutual appreciation, can contribute to a far more agreeable working environment. Numerous examples illustrate how employee communication can be handled outside traditional meetings. One possibility would be an internal blog, where all team members could post content. Is there anything more conducive to team bonding than team building events attended by everyone? How about a popular escape game or a joint visit to the Christmas market? Or you might want to try producing a podcast together. However you choose to implement internal communications, the important thing is an open, transparent interaction to create a strong sense of ‘we are all in this together’.
