Strengthening Organizational Performance Through Strategic Internal Communication Goals

March 7, 2023
Contents

Internal communications goals provide your internal communications plan direction by outlining your goals for employee engagement. They allow you to use the goals as benchmarks to gauge employee involvement and internal communications performance.

You may decide where to concentrate your efforts and distribute your internal communications resources by using the internal communication goals as a guide.

With the right goals, an effective internal communication strategy helps to build the bond between staff members, business leaders, and the corporate mission.

It fosters commitment by informing employees. Increasing employee engagement increases productivity. Additionally, it increases every activity's efficacy, which promotes corporate and internal communications success.

According to Willis Towers Watson, companies with powerful internal communications strategies had 47% better shareholder returns.

A successful internal communication plan will inform, engage, and improve your organization.

What Are Internal Communication Goals?

Internal communication goals are predetermined objectives for conveying knowledge and information. 

The general purposes and aims of communication in a department or organization are defined by internal communication goals, which may not always be simple to measure for individuals and businesses.

Individuals may have communication goals such as improving their ability to engage people, control their emotions, or communicate more persuasively.

There is much more to internal comms than just casual interactions between coworkers. Instead, it fosters productive interactions among every employee in a company to enable the efficient exchange of information across teams and individuals. This ongoing dialogue also develops social capital.

Internal Communication teams are frequently overloaded at the start of each year with inquiries that need to be addressed while making plans for the upcoming year. At this phase, it is critical to establish focal points and defined objectives that meet frontline and remote workers' various needs and demands.

How to Specify Your Goals and Purposes?

Internal communication goals must be precise to be effective. It might be trickier than it sounds because there are many choices and preferences that people must respect. Especially now that more digitalized channels have replaced traditional internal communication practices.

How, therefore, can you begin to specify your goals and purposes? Concentrate on the following critical elements on which your internal communication strategy depends:

Business objectives: Do you wish to boost revenue, increase brand recognition, or perhaps strive for customer satisfaction?

Your workforce: Are your workers motivated and engaged? What can you change about your strategy? How well-developed is your company culture?

Channels of communication: How do you talk to your staff? Through text, email, newsletters, or an intranet? Where do your communications have gaps? What stage of digital transformation are you at?

You will have a clear idea of where you want to go and what you want to accomplish once you have the answers to all these questions. Your communication goals should be based on your business objectives, vision, and identified challenges.

Furthermore, goal-oriented communication is a constant in business. Goals for effective business communication should be precise and measurable because they are crucial to putting business strategy into action.

More on this later.

Why Set Internal Communication Goals?

Setting specific Internal Communication goals makes achieving them much more uncomplicated. Furthermore, it may be challenging for stakeholders to distinguish between their wants and needs. 

Here, having a specific objective will be of great help. 

When objectives are established, and projects are correctly planned, neither your time nor your resources are wasted.

Effective communication is crucial in daily interactions and for any company or individual's success. Setting internal communication goals makes delivering vital messages and achieving desired outcomes easier for the entire organization. 

But creating communication goals that support your strategy and boost productivity might be difficult. Worry no more because we got you! This article will discuss communication goals and how you can set effective Internal communication goals.

SMART Internal Communications Goals

Internal communication is crucial for more than just employee communications about team absences and software updates. Driving employee engagement and forwarding employee advocacy are some of the primary goals of internal communications.

Industry experts have long advised using the SMART model to maximize the results of your internal communications objectives. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

A variety of excellent practices for developing internal communications goals are encapsulated in this acronym.

Consider that you want to use the SMART paradigm to improve your financial performance and reach business success. Similar to a checklist, the model offers criteria to guide you through the procedure.

To ensure that you have satisfied each of the SMART requirements, you should ask yourself the following criteria:

S-Specific

Goals should contain as much detail as feasible. Answering the following questions will help you write a clear mission statement that will outline what you hope to achieve:

  • What is the primary goal?
  • How frequently or how much?
  • When and where will it happen?

M-Measurable

Decide on the strategy and analytics tools you will use to measure employee engagement and analyze your goals. It will simplify gathering and comparing comments, and you will have a quantitative or qualitative base for comparison over the following time.

A-Achievable

While goals should be challenging, it is also crucial that they are doable. Multiple factors that run the danger of becoming hurdles could affect your goal, making it unachievable. 

Through project management tools, spend a moment rechecking each of these things. You might notice a deadline, a financial restriction, or even a lack of staff.

R-Relevant

Keep it relevant to your current circumstances. Perhaps obtaining new clients differs from what you need if your company aims to grow profitability. Instead, you would want to improve working conditions and raise staff productivity.

To avoid applying the same business goals as the sales or deployment divisions, make sure the goal makes sense. 

Your objectives should be practical and appropriate, given your available resources.

T-Time-Bound

Setting deadlines will help you keep on top of your goals. Include a deadline for delivery; this will help you stay accountable and productive. Set reasonable deadlines because missing them increases the team's likelihood of becoming demotivated.

How Do I Set Internal Communication Goals?

What are internal communications' overarching goals? To maintain staff interest. But to accomplish this broad goal, you must first divide it into more attainable, smaller internal communications goals.

The following are crucial elements for establishing your internal communication goals and maximizing their results.

1. Conduct Research and Understand Industry Standards

Before defining your internal communications goals, you must have a clear vision of what effective internal communications include.

Asking yourself specific questions like "What are the standards for efficient employee communication in my business" and "What internal communications key performance indicators or KPIs will indicate our success" will help you focus on the details.

This research will be a helpful starting point for developing your internal communications objectives.

Focus groups, questionnaires or surveys, and interviews are regarded as qualitative methods that provide perceptions of the preferences of your personnel. 

But what someone says in a survey does not always reflect what they do. Here, measurable information like consistent engagement or clicks is helpful.

For instance, while some workers may claim they prefer management updates in writing, studies show that corporate videos generate more engagement. If you examine both datasets, you may conclude that company survey respondents who dislike video are likely to respond in that manner.

However, it does not follow that you should stop making videos. Always think of the most appropriate channels and manner of approach. 

Qualitative and quantitative data work together to complete the image, which is how they complement one another.

2. Conduct an Audit to Understand the Current State of Your Internal Communications

Data informs practical internal communication goals. An internal communications audit is the best method to get it.

It would be best if you first surveyed your personnel. Ask your staff how satisfied they are with the level of information your internal communications team provides. Exists any stuff that they would like to see more of? How about fewer?

By directly extracting employee feedback and input from your Outlook or Gmail newsletters, employee surveys make it simple to acquire this data. With the help of our detailed instructions, you may learn how to build an efficient pulse survey.

These insights should also be supported by information on email engagement, such as open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and read durations. Then compare feedback information to internal communications analytics.

3. Identify Your Company’s Goals to Ensure Alignment

What are the organization's main goals and core principles, you ask? Promoting openness via employee messages should be a top priority for internal communications if it is a core value in your organization.

Deliverables for this include developing more efficient internal communication channels for quick updates and implementing more frequent leadership communications.

Promoting a new product might be a company goal for the near future. In this situation, your internal communications should raise awareness of the product.

Call a meeting with your executive team to document important business strategies, revenue goals, and impending launches. Utilize this knowledge to inform your communication goals.

4.  Assess Your Internal Communications Channels and Establish KPIs 

Choosing your key performance indicators or KPIs is the last step before setting your internal communications goals. These will be influenced by the internal channels you use for transparent communication and the metrics at hand.

Employee social media apps will assess engagement through likes, shares, and comments rather than email performance, which you can monitor through gains in open and click-through rates.

Internal newsletters are a fantastic place to start when deciding your internal communications KPIs, given that employees check their email on average 11 times per hour.

You can utilize email analytics to determine your most popular staff newsletters to date and use this information to select your KPIs.

5. Start Setting Your Internal Communications Goals

It is time to put your newly acquired knowledge into practice now that you have completed your research and gathered the required data. To create a successful program that will work for the entire team and other different departments, start by responding to some of the questions below using your knowledge of internal communications:

  • According to my statistics on employee engagement, how many internal messages should I send each week?
  • Based on the organization's goals, what internal campaigns or initiatives should I run?
  • Who are the main participants?
  • Which departments or groups of workers do I need to address?
  • What tools and channels do I have to distribute internal communications?

You can establish your goals when you have the answers to these inquiries. Here are some examples of internal communication goals:

  • Increasing open email rates.
  • Increasing public knowledge of a new business service or product.
  • Increasing the rate of employee input.
  • Increasing attendance at corporate events.
  • Reducing silos within organizations.
  • Enhancing departmental cooperation.

Use the SMART criteria aligned with your company's vision when modifying these examples of internal communications goals.

If you want to boost open email rates, specify the percentage increase and the performance indicators you will use to measure performance and gauge success. 

You must also explain how this goal relates to the plan and vision of your entire company and set the timeline for achieving it for the whole workforce.

How to Measure Internal Communications Goals

You can start monitoring results once you have established your internal communications plan's objectives and launched your approach.

You'll want to monitor performance visually while keeping your KPIs in mind. You may automate this process using an Excel spreadsheet or ContactMonkey's dynamic analytics dashboard.

You can benchmark your data after a few months to see if any progress has been made. During the process, you will see your top-performing channels, campaigns, and even individual pieces of content.

Thanks to this, you can identify your most exciting and engaging content, control your email density, and stay inside Outlook and Gmail's email limit restrictions.

How Can Internal Communications Improve the Employee Experience?

Metrics and analytics can be considered a feedback loop or an ongoing stream of insights. As a baseline, you benchmark your actions and track your progress over time—monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc. You will soon be able to adjust your plans in real time based on how well they work with leaders and employees.

Many communicators find measuring unsettling, yet your team members, executives, and organizations depend on you to make this change. It is how the rest of your organization probably does business, and now is your chance to take action and demand the place at the table you deserve.

You can apply all the knowledge you have gained about your employees in one of two ways: One will enable you to assess whether you are enhancing the work experience by knowing what will inspire and raise staff morale. Two, you will be able to gauge organizational alignment, determining whether workers comply with directives from the top and comprehend why they are there.

The Essential Guide for Successful Internal Communications Plans

Step 1. Where Are You Now?

Analyze the current context first, including your audiences, influences, and communication performance.

  • Gather details about the makeup of your group. Included here should be the number of employees, the locations, the departments, the demographics, the technology used, and other elements of your organizational structure.

Later, you can utilize this data to segment the audience and send highly relevant subject lines and key messages, which is essential for increasing readership and response.

  • Think about the needs, issues, and difficulties affecting your communications. Is it challenging to interact with employees in specific settings, such as call centers, warehouses, or retail front lines? What particular message requirements do specific departments have?
  • Determine how many problems are now plaguing your company. How much of an effect do they each have? What benefit would each offer's resolution have for your company?
  • Recognize the effectiveness of your present internal communications and the level of employee involvement that has been attained.

Examine your current communication toolbox. Which channels are more effective right now? For particular communication kinds, are some channels more effective than others? 

What kinds of messages do your current channels not work well for?

Step 2. Where Do You Want to Be?

You can start planning for your desired disposition or what you want to be now that you know your circumstances. Set clearly defined steps towards your goals.

Defining your goals and confirming alignment with the general corporate direction are the goals of this step.

  • Start by describing how you see internal communications in your company developing in the future. Is it a centralized new internal communications strategy, or is it decentralized according to place or functional area?
  • When internal communication aligns with the organization's objectives, it is most successful and beneficial.

For further information on KPIs and core initiatives at the corporate and departmental levels, go to your organization's strategy. You can use this information to decide where to focus your internal communications efforts.

  • Knowing the main company goals, you can establish your communication priorities.

Think about the reaction you want your communications to elicit from the staff. It could be a bodily movement, an emotional shift, or an act vs. feeling the response.

  • When deciding your goals, be clear about what you want to accomplish. Is there a strict metric that must be satisfied?

Setting goals effectively can be done in a variety of ways. Setting SMART goals is one of the most popular and considered most effective. 

With the addition of Evaluate and Readjust at the end to represent the value of ongoing progress, many firms are now moving further and adopting SMARTER goals.

Step 3. Tell Me the Best Way to Get There

To accomplish your goals, combine the best strategies and communication methods in this step.

  • List all of the significant communication tasks you have planned for the year. It would be best if you had a specific Internal Communications Plan for each assignment. A straightforward spreadsheet, such as the one shown below, may be adequate.
  • Depending on their preferred methods of communication or working environment, divide your staff into various groups. Create these groups in your communication platforms, so targeting them with the channels and formats most appropriate for them is simple.
  • Make a contingency plan that explains other actions to be taken if the original plan is derailed due to schedule issues, a lack of resources, or bad weather. When difficulties emerge, having backup communications ready in advance might help you feel less anxious and respond more quickly.
  • The most suitable channels will be determined by the type of content you need to distribute and the urgency with which staff members must consume it. 

For instance, sending out IT breakdown alerts, promoting campaign activities, and getting customer input on company announcements are all quite diverse tasks that call for very different communication channels.

It is advised to employ numerous channels to make the most of each channel's finest features and lower the risk of relying on a single, overloaded channel. Balance, variation, accessibility, and repetition are crucial.

Internal Communications Strategy Example

Plan prospective strategies with your team, including channels and methods.

Also, plan a meeting where people can express their thoughts and views. You'll discover the ideal strategy for the internal communications procedure in this way.

The goals of your organization will determine your internal communication approach or strategy.

Using Videos, Infographics, and Microlearning

If the word count in your internal communications materials is out of control, you need to change your strategy. In today's hectic world, expecting staff to read mundane messages is equivalent to asking them to keep financial information recorded on a physical ledger.

In your company's internal communication strategy, you can use interesting visual communication examples like infographics, pictures, videos, GIFs, slideshow presentations, and comic storyboarding.

Using Digital Signage

Optimizing internal communication inside an organization is one of the main goals of any internal communication strategy. When internal communication is optimized, staff members have access to information. Using digital signage effectively helps improve workplace communications.

You can use digital signage's flexibility to entertain and inform your staff.

Conducting Internal Surveys

Make sure your internal communication strategy is not a one-sided monologue as you are constructing it. Your staff members are internal communications professionals and experts in their disciplines. 

Their experience with your goods and services, clients, and client problems has made them knowledgeable about these topics. 

You can gather their insight through internal surveys and turn it into helpful decision-making criteria.

FAQs: Internal Communication Goals

What are the goals of internal communications?

The goals of internal communications center on fostering an efficient and effective line of communication within a department or an organization. 

What are internal communication strategies?

Internal communication strategies are plans and actions toward achieving internal communication goals.

What's the difference between an internal communication plan vs. strategy?

Internal communication plan and strategy are almost the same and primarily interchangeable, but a plan dictates action steps, and strategy is the tactic to make the plan work.

What is an internal communication campaign?

An internal communications campaign is a program that aims to strengthen and enhance internal communication.

What best practices should organizations follow?

Organizations should strive to connect effectively, collaborate, and communicate through internal communications to achieve success.

Conclusion: Internal Communication Goals

Strategic, accessible, and user-friendly internal communications are characteristics of success. Generally speaking, a multi-tool strategy will be most effective. However, integrating communications into daily tasks naturally is the key to its effectiveness. 

After all, you can set internal communication goals and employ internal communication strategies. You must utilize your communication tools to convey your message effectively.

Organizations should take the time to evaluate their communication process and determine how they can better connect with their colleagues and employees.

By investing in strategies that focus on clarifying information, establishing a consistent messaging system, and engaging staff through various channels of communication, organizations will create an environment of understanding, collaboration, and success.

Written By
Kim Pañares

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