Creating an internal communication strategy is often one of the last things internal communication teams do. The focus on delivery and tactics takes over and it means time for the strategic planning disappears. The latest research into the top skills needed in internal communication has planning at number one, and it’s no surprise when you consider the pace of work today and the complications that hybrid and remote work bring to organisational alignment.
I’ve been having lots of conversations with the internal communications teams I’ve been working with this year about the lack of strategy as the root cause of some of the issues they are seeing. It’s impacting their stakeholder relationships, their confidence in working with employee experience teams and their ability to measure and report on activity.
Nearly all the internal communication strategies I’ve reviewed have focused on the activity the communication team will be doing, sometimes aligned to the organisational strategy and sometimes not. For me, there should be three components in an internal communication strategy and in this blog, I’m going to share with you what they are.
But first, I want to talk a bit about alignment.
Align your strategy to the organisational strategy
The reason why you’re communicating needs to be clear. The ‘so what?’ factor is always there so make sure it’s clear that the activity of the communication function is linked to the overall organisational strategy.
Everything that is being communicated with employees should link back to the strategy, the channels should represent the values, and the projects you’re working on should be aligned to the overall vision and goal of the organisation.
When this is missing, leaders cannot understand how the activity and the work is helping the organisation succeed, so make it really clear.
Create a content strategy
This is document one. Start with content, the rest will follow. We tend to fall into the trap of looking at channels first, but we have to know what we are saying first. And we need to know the outcome we are looking for from people engaging with the content because that will dictate the channel.
How do you create a content strategy?
Look at the organisational strategy – there are likely to be five pillars or something similar that explain what the organisation is looking to achieve. Ideally, each pillar is ‘owned’ by someone in the leadership team and there should be a list of activity in that pillar that is happening across the organisation – this is your content.
You need to find the owners of the activity and discuss what’s happening. You are looking to find out what the stories are about the activity and then you can determine whether the content is informative or if employees need to do something differently. If they need to do something differently, you’re going to need a campaign. If it’s more on the informative side, the content can be shared across the relevant channels.
This takes time, good relationships across the organisation and planning. You’re going to end up with lots of different activities, with milestones and stories that might need to be told at the same time. What’s brilliant about your role in internal communication is that you see it all. You can see where stories or activity between departments connect and you can find the stories and information that complement each other.
Create a channel matrix
This should be your second document. A channel matrix is a table that shows the channels you have and how they are used. When I worked in organisations, I had one for internal and external communication. For some of our clients we create them for all employees and then we do separate ones for the top 200 leaders, if that’s appropriate. You might find you need a few depending on organisational size.
This is what it should look like:
We create these in tables in word documents or in excel and I used them during onboarding sessions with new employees, so they know where to find everything.
Remember, communication is the tangible representation of your culture so your channels should reflect your values. If you talk about being innovative, your channels should be.
Your projects and activity
This is your third document within your internal communication strategy. There will be things you need to work on as an internal communication function. This could be working with IT on the digital employee experience, or it could be supporting learning and development with manager and leadership communication skills training.
This activity should be aligned to your role supporting other functional projects (mainly from IT and People/HR) as well as the development of your own team.
Don’t overload yourself here. Often projects are linked to channel development and the infrastructure of communication inside the organisation but make sure it is realistic with the time you have.
And that’s it! Those are my three documents to create the strategy for the function. From these, 90 day plans can be created for content and projects and you should be able to determine the right team set-up to deliver it all. This could involve recruitment, or it could be outsourcing different aspects to different experts.
I really hope it helps if you’re getting started!
