Top 3 internal comms challenges
Internal Comms professionals have a lot on their plate. They are tasked with keeping employees informed, engaged and loyal to the business.
Employees see past any veneer an organisation may be able to portray through its external marketing. This makes internal messaging all the more important and certainly not without its challenges.
With the increase in remote and hybrid working, internal comms professionals have had to adapt as much as any other role and are more reliant on technology than ever to fulfil their purpose in the business.
The challenging nature of the role is evident in research cited by Gallup, which highlights the connection between employee communication, engagement and business performance.
Difficulty reaching specific audiences, managing multiple communication channels and understanding whether messages are effective can all contribute to internal comms challenges.
This blog explores three of the biggest challenges faced by internal communications teams and how a modern intranet can help overcome them: disengaged employees, limited team capacity and a lack of meaningful analytics.
Ramifications of internal comms challenges on your business
Not only do internal comms impact the flow of information to and between employees, but poor internal communications can also lead to disengaged employees, inefficient workflows, missed deadlines and lower employee retention.
It has been reported that 85% of employees are more engaged when regularly updated about company news, showing the importance of effective communication.
Naturally, if employees feel more engaged when they are kept informed, the opposite can happen when they feel excluded from important company news.
However, it isn't simply a case of employees feeling like they're in the know. Inefficient or disrupted communication can cause a range of wider business problems.
| Internal comms challenge | Potential impact on the business |
|---|---|
| Confusion | Employees may be unclear about priorities, responsibilities and important company updates. |
| Poor workflows and missed deadlines | Information is delayed, tasks become harder to coordinate and important deadlines may be missed. |
| Employees unaligned with the brand | Employees may feel less connected to company values, goals and organisational direction. |
| Poor workplace relationships | Limited communication can make it harder for colleagues to build strong working relationships. |
| Poor employee dynamics | Disconnected teams can struggle with collaboration, morale and shared understanding. |
On the flip side, good internal comms functions can play a significant part in your company's success. They can improve business culture and ultimately benefit the bottom line.
According to McKinsey, effective collaboration through social technologies has the potential to improve productivity among interaction workers by 20–25%.
A strong internal comms function really is worth its weight in gold.
Recommended reading
Explore our internal communication tools comparison to understand which platforms can help your organisation improve employee communication and engagement.
Top 3 internal comms challenges and how an intranet could help
The role of an internal comms professional is so vast that it's difficult to sum up the individual challenges they face in their day-to-day work in one blog.
We've summarised three of the main challenges and how an intranet solution like Oak can help address them.
Disengaged employees
As discussed, employee disengagement is a product of ineffective communication.
Just like any external messaging, internal communication needs to be engaging and compelling to your audience or it's not going to get through to them.
If you don't have the means or insight to do this, engaging employees is a difficult feat to achieve.
Much of this comes down to the technology and tools that internal comms have at their disposal.
Understanding audiences has become more difficult with the increase in remote working. Particularly in bigger businesses, limited visibility makes understanding different employee groups and their needs a struggle.
Oak surfaces content for individuals based on their behaviours and relevance through intelligent algorithms.
Oak's targeted and personalised news tailors content for specific employee needs and helps organisations reach people through relevant communication channels.
Rather than receiving large volumes of irrelevant information, employees can access updates that are more relevant to their role, location and interests.
This helps internal comms teams create a more engaging experience while improving the effectiveness of their messaging.
Learn more about how Oak supports employee communications across different teams and locations.
Lack of capacity
Personnel, or a lack of it, can be a root cause of issues in any department, and internal comms is no different.
With the many facets of internal comms, limited capacity creates several different challenges.
When businesses use different applications and systems to serve different purposes, it's difficult for smaller teams to manage them all.
This can lead to unused channels, confusion and lost messages.
Internal comms and HR teams can also struggle with the time needed to distribute important information, maintain policies and ensure that employees have received essential updates.
A cloud-based intranet like Oak provides a unified internal communications platform.
Social features such as timelines and community hubs provide channels for employees and the business to communicate with each other in one place.
Oak also integrates with third-party content sources and provides a centralised experience through content management and federated search, making information easier to access.
Policies and guidelines can be housed centrally and distributed using mandatory reads to help employees receive important updates.
The key is integration and unification of communication and information channels, which can help reduce the administrative burden on internal comms, HR and other departments.
Lack of analytics
How can you measure the success of your internal comms objectives without the metrics to do so?
Without analytics, any internal comms strategy is largely guesswork.
Even if you have SMART objectives, what do you have to measure them against without reliable analytics?
It's likely that through all stages of your intranet project, from business case to post-implementation, you'll need to demonstrate its value to leadership and the wider business.
Without meaningful data, it's difficult to understand which communications are working and where improvements need to be made.
With Oak, your intranet has built-in analytics dashboards where you can view metrics used to measure internal communications performance.
You can measure intranet user numbers, content interactions and engagement with social timeline posts.
Mandatory reads also help teams track which employees have acknowledged important policy and company updates.
Employee feedback is another key pillar of internal communications. Pulse surveys and polls provide additional insights into employee feedback and sentiment.
By analysing this data, internal comms teams can understand what's working, identify opportunities to improve messaging and demonstrate the value of the intranet to the business.
What do these three challenges have in common?
Whether the problem is disengagement, limited resources or poor visibility into performance, internal comms teams need technology that makes it easier to reach employees, manage communications and measure results.
A modern intranet software solution can help address all three challenges through personalised communication, connected workplace tools and built-in analytics.
Overcome internal comms challenges with Oak Engage
A modern intranet can make a significant difference for internal comms teams.
Not only can it unify internal communications and channels, but it can also help teams achieve the objectives of their internal comms strategy through targeted and effective messaging.
The challenges outlined in this blog can be addressed with an intranet solution like Oak, helping make work easier for internal comms professionals and the employees they support.
What other challenges do you face as an internal comms professional? We'd love to hear from you on LinkedIn.
