Internal Communication
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Internal communication – also referred to as employee communication, internal employee communication or business communication – can be defined as everything that gets said and shared inside an organisation. As a function, its role is to curate, enable, and advise on best practice for organisations to communicate effectively, efficiently and in an engaging way.

It will include the channels used inside the organisation for communication like town halls, intranets and employee events and it should be focussed on content relevant to different employee groups aligned to the organisational strategy. 

If you’d like to find read more about internal communication, Redefining Communications’ founder and global communications expert, Jenni Field, has written two books; Influential Internal Communication and Nobody Believes You. The first is a great practical guide to using internal communication to streamline your organisation and ensure it is both efficient and engaging. 

The second book is more focussed on credible leadership – still relevant for internal communications but more focussed on leaders and managers and the role they play. You can find out more here: redefiningcomms.com/books/

There are other books on internal communication written by other experts covering more specific areas like crisis, inclusion and project communication – Amanda Coleman, Advita Patel and Ann Pilkington are all worth looking at.  

We always advise clients to explore the employee lifecycle, the organisational culture and the employee experience to impact engagement. While there are different enablers for employee engagement success (strategic narrative, engaging managers, integrity and employee voice) you need to look more broadly at what engagement means in your organisation. 

Employee engagement objectives need to be linked to the overall organisational strategy and the culture you’re trying to achieve as they need to be linked to something that has an impact on business success.

We use the definition from Maylett and Wride: The Employee Experience is the sum of perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organisation in which they work.

For us, employee experience has three main parts: tools and processes, relationships and environment. Each of these three areas is important and depending on where you are in the employee lifecycle, one of these will be more important. 

You can read more about how to create the strategy for your employee experience here: The essential elements for a successful employee experience strategy | Redefining Communications

The employee lifecycle typically consists of six stages: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and separation. Each stage presents its own challenges and opportunities, so it’s important to focus on them individually rather than one big, long journey. We have shared more about it in this blog post: redefiningcomms.com/what-are-the-stages-of-the-employee-lifecycle/

Communication is so important in building and maintaining excellent relationships at work. Do you understand your communication style? And do you know how you impact others? These questions are so important to answer to make sure you communicate effectively.

Jenni regularly works 1:1 with people looking to improve their skills to build better relationships at work. Start by taking some time to understand your own communication style and that of your team. Coaching, reading and developing the skill over time are all very achievable. We offer DISC assessments as part of our coaching packages or as stand alone assessments to help you understand yourself more. 

Check out our podcast here: Internal Communications Podcast by Jenni Field

Check out Jenni’s books: Books | Redefining Communications

To really understand what’s happening in your leadership team and how it might be affecting any organisational transformation or growth, you need to look at themes of accountability, adaptability, capability, communication, connection, strategy and velocity in your organisation.

If you are going through leadership changes or just find that the team aren’t full aligned, our Leadership Alignment Tool has been built to help you within a month. redefiningcomms.com/consultancy/leadership-alignment-tool/

Internal communication is: “Everything that gets said and shared inside an organisation. As a function, its role is to curate, enable, and advise on best practice for organisations to communicate effectively, efficiently and in an engaging way.” (Field)

Employee engagement is: “A workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being”. (MacLeod and Clarke)

Employee experience is: “The way in which employees internalize and interpret the interactions they have with their organisation, as well as the context that underlies those interactions.” (Gartner)

Communication is so important in building and maintaining excellent relationships at work. Do you understand your communication style? And do you know how you impact others? These questions are so important to answer to make sure you communicate effectively.

If you’d like to improve your communication skills, we create and deliver bespoke communication workshops for teams to help you to adapt your communication style to influence others and use the right communication methods to achieve the outcomes you want.

Effective internal communication is the key to creating excellent workplace relationships. Here are some quick tips:

• It takes time – acknowledge the symptoms of chaos, but don’t rush to fix. Take the time to delve into the root cause.
• Great storytelling – make sure you’re telling a compelling story that takes people with you and helps them understand the journey towards achieving organisational goals.
• Know your desired outcome – focus on what you want people to “think, feel and do” to make sure your messaging elicits the desired response and behaviours.
• Invest in yourself – we have to understand how we work and why we behave in certain ways to improve our relationships, so it’s essential to work towards increasing skills that improve communication, productivity, empathy and resilience (see links below).
• Know your scope – what does internal communication mean as a function in your organisation and where does it sit? Being clear on scope is important. It doesn’t really matter where it sits, as long as it supports the business strategy.

Leadership isn’t easy. There’s a huge amount of pressure on leaders to understand the complexity of their industry and organisation, lead projects, grow the business, as well as recognise team dynamics and nurture relationships.

Focus on being credible. This means you need to think about the eight practices that enable to be seen as credible and a leader people will follow.  You can find out more about these here: What is credible leadership? And why is it so important? | Redefining Communications

An audit should be carried to help you understand whether the content and channels you use are working for your audience. If you’re doing one, make sure you have some ideas around what you want to prove or disprove here.

Depending on you organisational size you’ll need a survey and/or focus groups and some 1:1 interviews with leaders. Combine this with data you have from digital channels or existing information on the channels and you’ll have the insight you need to make the changes you need.

There are lots of podcasts, books and events out there. Do you know how you like to learn? This is the first thing to consider. Jenni is a big fan of attending events and reading as that is how she learns best and for some it’s online events or podcasts. Once you know that, drop us an email and we can point you in the right direction for where you’re based.

Remote and deskless are a little different. If you have people who are remote from the organisation but sitting at laptops, there is a separate strategy needed than for those who are on the frontline and disconnected.

For remote, focus on improving digital communication across the organisation, training leaders on how to use digital tools and the importance of the different aspects of digital writing. This is a bigger cultural challenge so make sure you’re looking at meeting times, breaks and expectations.

For deskless workers, check out our latest research in this area where we uncovered the real issue being linked to cultural differences between office workers and those who are deskless – here

You have to focus on your credibility and the eight skills linked to this. This is around building your skills and strategies around empathy, having a vision, capability and integrity to name a few of them.

You’ll need to be more intentional in how you communicate and engage with others and invest in yourself and your development to grow in these areas. Drop us an email if you’d like to explore more as Jenni can share her research in this area and do some 1:1 consultancy with you too.