Internal Communication: How it Impacts Your Company Culture

The purpose of internal communication isn't telling people what to do, it's to create a shared understanding and meaning. Only then can employees align themselves with a company's purpose.
~ Rachel Miller

The internal communication of an organization is how it communicates with its members, both top-down and lateral, to make sure all the work processes run smoothly with less friction and more effectiveness.

Internal communication helps you maintain the flow of communication between organizational departments, management, and employees. It also ensures how the company culture is perceived by its workforce and clarity for everyone in the organization.

Strong company cultures are critical to organizational success. And there is no denying that. For a company to reach higher growth and sustainability, it must put on its best culture that is honest about its values, beliefs, and practices. Most importantly, keeping its employees happy and satisfied by supporting them and give them the best employee experience. And this is only possible when good internal communication practices are in place across the organization. Communication practices that glue the team together, build transparency, and promote openness for everyone to speak their mind.

Few other importance of internal communication

• An effective internal communication process speeds up decision-making.
• Taking care of employees' needs and motivating them is made easier with it.
• When the company is more transparent and encourages effective communication, it results in more productivity.
• A collaborative approach and effective internal communication make it easier for the company to reach its goals and for team members to work more effectively together.
• Improves employee experience and engagement.
• Allow employees to express their voices and benefit from their diverse perspectives and ideas.

General types of Internal communication

Communication from the management: The management communicates with the workforce one-way (mostly) to keep them informed about what's happening in the organization, business strategies, and other general information. 

Communication between cross-functional teams: The two-way communication between the employees to collaborate effectively and meet the common end goal.

Communication between Peers: The communication on briefs and tasks and also informal chats to share information among the employees. 

Depending on the size of the workforce, geographic location, and culture, companies use different communication channels. Emails, chatboxes, video calls, phone calls, communication, and collaboration tools are the most effective resources today.

The world of business and how people interact with each other has shaped leaps and bounds. Your workforce today could be working from anywhere in the world, which is why the way the management communicates with them to keep everyone aligned and let them have their voices has become critical.

Therefore, to sustain growth and productivity and ensure effective employee experience is provided to the workforce, we must let go the obsolete communication practices and adapt to new digital technologies that can support each other and bring more effectiveness to the communication process.

Let’s look at how internal communication impacts company culture

1. Improve inclusivity and culture with effective communication

The importance of diversity and inclusion is quite evident for companies to build better cultures, acknowledge diverse ideas, and build a community where everyone can cohesively work together. The thread that connects it all is communication. How you connect to your employees and you align everyone under the same roof is a humongous task if strategic communication practices are not implemented. Or else, diversity remains just like any norm you play out on paper but do not live through it. Diversity tokenism can thus do more harm than good for your company.

Therefore, implementing any communication strategies you must have the answer to questions like what is your purpose? How do you drive action? How do you take decisions objectively and help your team collaborate better? When you have the answers you can implement strategies based on your culture, and your workforce needs and look into their convenience. One of the easiest ways to achieve that is by having a centralized communication tool, where the management and employees can communicate at regular intervals. To help keep the transparency across the workforce and also help the teams collaborate and learn from each other.

2. Empower your people

Don’t let one-way communication from the management take away the motivation. Leaders can practice two-way communication at regular intervals to gaze at the work environment and fulfill the needs of the employees after listening to them. Allow them to express their views, ideas, and opinions. Allow them to be part of the culture with continuous communication channels. Empower them and make them believe that their voices are heard, and their ideas are appreciated if not always considered. This will give the employees a sense of belonging and empowerment to take better decisions.

3. Collect employees' feedback

Create feedback channels that can help you gauge your employees' engagement and productivity. Implement strategies that can help you shape your culture by conducting continuous surveys to understand your employees' needs. Employee engagement surveys can only work if you do keeping human psychology in mind. Stay away from redundant questionnaires but build one that speaks to your cultural needs so that you can support your employees in more effective ways.

What more you can ensure:

• Establish one-on-one feedback sessions between employees and upper management.
• Use engagement polls and surveys to capture employee opinions on a variety of topics.
• To ensure employee satisfaction, it's vital that they feel comfortable asking questions and expressing their needs without feeling judged.
• Describe any employee protections and allow anonymous feedback upfront.
• Once you take the surveys, track the progress, learn from the insights collected and follow up.

4. Use one common communication tool for all

Keep one communication tool where everyone can connect and interact. Also, when teams go bigger, it becomes quite a task to update them all on important announcements or any important updates. Your teams can have their groups to keep track of the workflow, but at least have one common group for all the employees to improve transparency and function as one big unit.

Therefore, adapt with one robust communication tool for everyone to come under the same roof, stay aligned and keep growing together.

5. Encourage community and team building

Promote team building to encourage better work relationships and collaboration. People in a work environment need a sense of belonging, respect, and trust to reach their full potential. As Maslow points out in his hierarchy theory, a sense of belonging is crucial to boosting self-esteem and integrating into a community.

Run company-wide campaigns like marathons or any festival your team can participate together and connect in the most humane way possible. It will not only help make your team feel inclusive but also enhance their overall experience and job satisfaction.

Conclusion

Although technology has changed the way we connect and work, the fundamentals remain the same. Bringing everyone together in a cohesive way to bring growth, happiness, and overall satisfaction is the goal. Utilizing technology that can enhance your internal communication strategy and help you build that culture is therefore crucial today.

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