It’s unfortunately way too relatable in the internal comms world: HR employees, comms managers, and even marketing specialists have internal comms shoehorned into their responsibilities. They’re working off the side of their desk or coming in a half-hour early to get that all-staff email out before turning to the rest of their day.
Even for organizations with a dedicated internal comms professional, the field can be stressful and systemically undervalued. Considering that the role that has a tangible impact on employee satisfaction, connectivity to the organization, and even turnover, that’s a mistake.
Related reading: What role does internal communications play in fostering employee wellness?
A great internal comms software can change all that. It’s an investment in the success of your organization, but an investment nonetheless—so if you’re still on the fence, read on for our top five signs it’s time to make the leap.
And of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention our own internal comms software solution with features multi-channel messaging capabilities. As you read through the following issues, keep in mind that our intranet software has all the capabilities listed to help and more—read until the very end for links to our demo and free trial options!
Sign #1: Too many employees are saying they never see your messages
The first sign it might be time to bring on some intelligent software is that employees are telling you they aren’t seeing your messages as often as you’re sending them. This could be for a variety of reasons: people are receiving too many messages and filtering out some of them unconsciously, you’re sending them to a platform they infrequently use, or your timing is off, to name a few examples.
Look for an internal comms software that lets you schedule automated reminders for your messages as you send them, taking away the worry that some busy employees won’t respond to an urgent email or a request for feedback.
Another key feature to look for is the use of employee channel preferences—a great software will allow employees to select their favourite platforms and send out messages according to that priority. If a younger employee rarely checks their corporate email and instead relies on Slack for work-related communication, sending them messages through that platform could drastically increase your conversion rate.
In our intranet software, when communicators go to send a message, they can select which channel strategy they prefer, with one of the choices being according to employee preference.
Related reading: There’s a generational gap: appealing to different messaging habits
Sign #2: You have no idea—and no data—about how your messages are performing
We know you’re going to a lot of effort with your internal comms messaging, and constantly making thoughtful decisions about timing, platform, audience, and more. But it’s difficult to make these calls in a vacuum, and poor or nonexistent data is a real problem for the modern internal communicator.
To solve this issue, look for internal comms software that helps you gain instant visibility into how your information is landing with high-level insight on channels, messages, audiences, and timing—perhaps even conversions and sentiments. The best software will track every single message and present you with downloadable data you can play with and present. This type of insight is almost impossible to obtain on your own—imagine tallying conversion rate on your own with a pen and paper? No thanks!
Bonus: once you have quality data to track your results, you can easily report back to the leadership team at your organization and demonstrate the value of your work.
Related reading: Collect it, download it, analyze it—announcing our intranet’s data & reporting feature
Sign #3: When in doubt, you resort to the all-staff email too often
Ah, the hallowed “all-staff” email: a company-wide eBlast that hits the inbox of every single employee. They can feature important updates that everyone needs to know about, but they tend to be generic, unspecific, and non-targeted.
Feeling a bit guilty that this sounds like your approach on a busy day?
Organizing your employees into audiences—whether that’s by city, department, team, or another metric—can help you properly segment them, so that you’re only sending messages to those who need to see them, increasing open rates and engagement. Look for an internal comms software that offers this feature, and ideally, auto-syncs to make sure your contacts are always updated with new hires. That way, you’re only blasting out an all-staff message when you absolutely need to, and when employees receive a message, they know it’s a must-see.
With intelligent audience segmentation, you’ll be able to think critically about who really needs to see your message and tailor accordingly.
Related reading: People come first: announcing our intranet’s audience segmentation feature
Sign #4: It’s a high-stress or turbulent time at the office
Internal comms have a crucial role to play during tumultuous times, or even just periods of intense change, as are guaranteed to happen from time to time at any organization. Keeping employees promptly updated and feeling like they have been kept in the loop is crucial to weathering any storm and making your workforce feel valued and included.
When you can organize your internal comms effectively, issues suddenly become manageable. Look for an internal comms software that lets you organize messages effectively, ideally by folders and/or tags—for example, maybe you want a folder dedicated to COVID-19 so you can keep track of all updates that have been sent out regarding the pandemic.
Our own internal comms software, Reach, helped Sun Peaks transform its communication during the pandemic, ensuring that nobody was left behind. Read more about their journey in this case study.
Sign #5: You’re overwhelmed by your multitude of channels
We’re all too aware that many internal communicators are strapped for time and under-resourced, and this effects their ability to deliver quality, customized messaging to all employees. Lots of the features listed above can help with this issue, too: letting employees choose their channel preferences, scheduling in advance, organizing into audiences, and more.
Also, look for software that can blast the same message out through multiple platforms in one click, which comes in handy for urgent messaging and saves you a lot of time you would have spent copy-pasting.
Identify with one of more of these issues? It might be time to invest in internal comms software
If you recognized yourself in this post, don’t worry. Lots of internal communicators are in the exact same boat as you, and you all deserve high-quality software to help you work and continue your important role in your organization.
We suggest you start by learning about our very own software, Reach! It features lots of other useful tools that will help you organize your efforts, engage employees, and measure tangible results. If you’re interested in learning more, you can start a free trial or book a demo today!
