24 Ways To Improve Internal Communication Within Your Company

Alex Cleary

Internal Communications

Whether you’re an international corporation or a local tech startup, you rely on effective internal communications to drive success for your business. Let our ideas to improve internal communications inspire your communication strategy.

Internal communications grow and change with the rest of your business. To keep your employees connected and information flowing, it’s important to constantly revise and improve your internal communications approach.

We’ve compiled a list of our favourite ways to boost internal communications. Large company or small, you can find novel ways to promote communication and reduce unnecessary emails, meetings, newsletters, and more.

Not sure how to improve internal communication at work? ContactMonkey’s powerful internal communications software gives you a data-based approach to employee emails, tracking metrics, event management, and more. Book a free demo to see how ContactMonkey can make your company work better.

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How To Improve Internal Communication: 24 Tips For All Types Of Organizations

We’ve divided our ideas by their relevance for large and small companies. But don’t let this division make you think some ideas aren’t applicable for you.

We encourage those in large companies to review the basics that might get lost in a complex internal communication strategy. Likewise, smaller companies can look at advice from larger ones to form goals for their future state of internal communications.

Be sure to look through the entire list for ideas that can help improve internal communication at your work. And be sure to check out our internal communication strategy checklist for more high-level ideas to improve communication at your organization.

Communication is the lifeblood of your business. Even if you’re just starting your business journey, internal communications are indispensable for your success. Let’s look at some best practices for internal communications.

1. Establish an internal communications plan

Internal communications happen organically, but the best companies plan their approach from the very beginning. Put simply, an internal communications plan lays out the communication goals for your organization.

Think about the overall goals of your business, and then think about how communication helps facilitate those goals. From this, create an outline for how to approach your internal communications and measure your success.

Internal communications goals can range from quantitative to qualitative goals. A quantitative goal is one you can directly measure, like achieving a minimum open rate or click rate percentage. A qualitative goal is one that requires feedback from employees, like how they feel about your company culture or management.

Learn how to create your first internal communications plan with ContactMonkey’s free downloadable guide.

2. Keep communications consistent

We often recognize big companies from their employer branding; colours, font, tone, design, and other factors all help audiences build familiarity with a product or service. Your internal communications are no different.

Build your internal brand voice with visually and textually consistent internal emails. Using email templates you can build a template to use for all your internal communications, substituting old content for new but keeping the design and branding.

With ContactMonkey’s email template builder, you can use the drag-and-drop interface to create stunning email templates:

Screenshot of email newsletter template within ContactMonkey's email template builder.

Use a template when you create new emails, and you’ll only have to swap your content rather than having to redesign the entire email. You can set default colours, buttons, headings, and more to your brand guidelines—no need to remember pesky hex codes.

Not only do you save time and effort, but consistent branding can help catch your employees’ attention and build the authority of your internal brand. Whether you’re sending email newsletters, higher education communications, or employee feedback.

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3. Think about employee engagement

Small businesses are (ideally) always growing and expanding, and the excitement of gaining new customers can often take priority over employee well-being. But employee engagement is a crucial aspect of every business, and your internal communications both motivate and measure employee engagement.

Engaged employees are more productive than those who aren’t, more likely to contribute new ideas, and more likely to go the extra mile for your business. When crafting an internal communications plan, companies will often include engagement goals.

Via your internal communications, you can help gauge how engaged your employees are and determine what you can do to improve engagement.

You can also target your internal communications to only relevant employees using custom email lists created with ContactMonkey’s List Management feature. Create email lists without IT that sync with your Human Resource Information System (HRIS) like Workday and ADP, as well as Azure Active Directory, so they’ll automatically update.

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4. Listen to your employees

For smaller businesses, employee engagement is often measured by how involved employees feel in decision making processes. This differs from larger companies, where employees are less-connected to decision makers and employee engagement is measured via other methods.

Employee feedback is super-valuable: your employees feel more ownership over their work because they helped bring it to life, and your business benefits from engaged employees eager to suggest improvements.

An internal communications tool like ContactMonkey centralizes your employee feedback. Embed pulse surveys, emoji reactions, thumbs up/down, yes/no, and more in your employee emails:

Screenshot of employee survey options within ContactMonkey's email template builder.

You can also enable anonymous comments to let your employees leave messages to contextualize their survey responses. Anonymity helps your employees share their true feelings without fear of repercussions.

5. Schedule your emails

As we’ve seen with your internal email branding, consistency is important. This is no different for the frequency with which you send your internal communications.

Too few emails can make employees feel isolated from your business, while too many emails can be overwhelming and make employees tune out. Finding the correct balance of how many emails to send and when to send them is crucial for your internal communications success.

There are certain times when your employees are more likely to open your emails, and so scheduling your emails for strategic times can greatly increase email engagement (we’ll get into how to determine these “strategic times” further down).

Using ContactMonkey’s email scheduling feature combined with a communications calendar, you can easily set your internal communications to send at future times to maximize engagement:

Screenshot of Gmail scheduling on ContactMonkey's Gmail email dashboard.

Not only will this increase the likelihood of your employees reading your emails, but it also allows you to schedule your emails ahead of time so you’re not scrambling each day to send out your employee emails.

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6. Make your communications indispensable

Branding and consistent sending will help with improving internal communications, but you also have to provide real value to your employees. If your internal emails contain nothing but fluff and half-important information, your employees will tune out pretty quickly.

Just as if you were showing a presentation to a potential customer, you should be discerning in what information you share with your audience. Before you send your email, think to yourself, “how will this information benefit my employees?”

Remove as much unnecessary information as possible, and keep the information you do include as concise as possible. When your employees find value in your internal emails, they will seek them out in the future.

7. Spice up your employee emails

In addition to providing useful information to your employees, your internal communications can increase engagement simply by being fun.

With ContactMonkey, you can add well-placed multimedia to your internal communications to give them a professional polish email alone cannot match.

Create visually-stunning emails featuring GIFs, internal company videos, clickable icons, customizable HTML code, and more.

Get new ideas for your internal communications by using ContactMonkey’s OpenAI ChatGPT integration you can generate fresh email content based on prompt you provide. Simply generate new text and edit the output for your audience!

8. Keep employees in the loop

Let’s move on from how to present information to what to present in employee emails. Your internal communications content will depend on your business, your employees, and many other factors. But the common throughline of all your internal communications remains the same: keeping employees informed.

Think about what information your employees would benefit from. For smaller businesses, it’s useful to keep everyone aware of what everyone is working on. Teams can become cloistered over time, but your internal emails can bridge communication gaps and provide important information to your various teams.

Try including a “what to watch” section in your internal communications where team managers share the status of their current projects. Share sales goals with marketing, or create a digestible version of your developers’ project roadmap. The more your employees know about your business, the better they can contribute to the overall effort.

9. Sensitivity is key

Your business is made up of people from all different backgrounds and experiences. And to ensure they feel like a full part of the team, employees should feel comfortable being themselves at your company.

When you craft your internal communications, be sensitive to how you present information and how you address employees. There are numerous resources to help you get a solid grasp of how to write emails so that you are sensitive to all of your employees.

A diverse workforce is stronger than a homogeneous workforce, and your internal communications should reflect your commitment to inclusion and diversity.

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10. Start an employee newsletter

We’ve talked about “internal communications” more or less abstractly to this point. So here is a concrete step you can take to improve your internal communications: start an employee newsletter.

Your newsletter need not be a comprehensive summary of everything happening at your company. Rather, think of your internal newsletter as a place where you can highlight information you really want your employees to see.

If done correctly, your employee newsletter can be a powerful resource to share information and gather feedback from your employees. There are many employee newsletter ideas you can include, so you can build a compelling internal newsletter with ease.

How to Improve Internal Communications at Your Large Business

The larger your company gets, the more internal communications matter. How you manage internal communications at your organization has a huge impact on your success. Use our ideas to create more efficient communication in your workplace.

11. Use the right tool for the job

There are plenty of stellar external communications solutions available, but you can encounter problems when turning their focus inward.

Emails sent using external communication software are required to feature unsubscribe buttons to allow recipients to opt-out if they no longer wish to receive them.  An internal communications tool like ContactMonkey simply doesn’t allow your employees to unsubscribe, so you know they’re receiving the information they need. ContactMonkey has versions for Outlook OWA, 365, Outlook for Mac, and Gmail, so whatever email software you use ContactMonkey can improve your internal emails.

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12. Use a distribution list

Tens of thousands of employees in different sections around the world can be a lot to keep track of. Large companies use distribution lists to organize their internal communications, usually by what part of the company employees belong to.

Smaller companies may not always need a distribution list, especially if that company has less than 100 employees.

A distribution list can help reduce the number of unnecessary emails you send, as you can target only relevant audiences. They also give you an idea of how engaged different sections of your company are.

When sending emails with ContactMonkey, you can use your existing distribution lists to quicken your sending process. Distribution lists can be tracked on an individual or overall basis, to provide you with thorough insight to improve internal communications.

13. Use CSVs with ContactMonkey

Internal communicators in large companies sometimes do not have the authority to modify or create distribution lists. But there is an easy alternative: you can substitute comma-separated values (CSV) files instead for your distribution lists.

CSV files are easy to create and they can help you create unique mailing lists to improve your internal communications. Using ContactMonkey, you can send your internal emails to CSVs in a snap so everyone gets only the information they need.

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14. Use a data-based approach

We talked about how an internal communication plan can gauge the success of your communications; a data-based approach to internal communications uses goals based on measurable email metrics to determine success.

Measuring open rate, click-through rate, read time, open by device and location, and other email metrics can give you hard data on how your employees engage with your internal emails. Using ContactMonkey’s email analytics dashboard, you can view stats and track trends in your internal communications:

Screenshot of engagement distribution timeline within ContactMonkey's campaign overview.

Remember the email scheduling we mentioned earlier? You can use your Gmail and Outlook email tracking data to learn the best times to send emails so they’ll get read. You can even track individual recipients’ email engagement to see who is your most or least engaged employees.

15. Personalization

Nobody likes receiving an email that’s obviously meant for hundreds of thousands of people. Thankfully, you can use merge tags to personalize the subject lines and body copy of your emails based on the recipient.

Personalized emails are a proven way to increase open rate, and you can easily add merge tags to your employee emails with ContactMonkey.

16. Be a leader in your sector

As your company grows, so will your competitors. How can you be sure your internal communications are matching or exceeding others in your sector?

ContactMonkey’s Internal Email Benchmark Report can help you understand how to interpret your email metrics and compare them to other companies in your sector. You can download a free copy of our internal benchmark report here:

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17. Measure your eNPS

What is eNPS? Your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) tells you how likely your employees are to recommend your product or service to their friends and family. This metric can reveal how engaged and passionate your employees are about your organization.

You can embed eNPS surveys in your emails with ease using ContactMonkey. Your employees responses will be automatically collected and show within your analytics dashboard:

Screenshot of employee net promoter score (eNPS) results within ContactMonkey's campaign overview.

Make eNPS a priority in your internal communications strategy and work on getting your eNPS as high as possible.

18. Design emails for every device

If your company has employees working in different locales, your HTML emails will need to display perfectly on different devices. Responsive emails can mean the difference between a great-looking informative email and a jumble of broken images, jumbled email tables, and dead links.

Emails built in ContactMonkey’s email template builder display perfectly across all devices and email service providers. Preview how your emails will look on mobile devices before you send them:

Screenshot of email newsletter with eNPS surveys embedded using ContactMonkey.

You can even edit your emails within mobile view so you can ensure your emails look great on whatever device your employees are using.

19. Send emails in multiple languages

Large companies can have offices around the world, with a diverse workforce of folks from myriad nationalities. When sending emails with ContactMonkey, you can ensure that your emails display in the correct language for your recipients.

20. Find your best content

Take your email tracking one step further by comparing your email campaigns against each other to see which earned the best engagement.

Compare the open rate, click-through rate, read time, and more of multiple email campaigns using ContactMonkey’s Reporting feature:

Screenshot of email analytics reporting for ContactMonkey.

Comparing your campaigns helps you find the content or send times that work better than others, so you can encourage higher engagement with your internal communications.

21. Keep your emails secure

When you’re sending important information via email—like IT security updates or email phishing training—many company’s security protocols don’t allow emails to pass through third-party servers. This can affect both external and internal communication software that require use of servers external to the customer.

Emails sent using ContactMonkey don’t go through our servers, so you can email important information knowing that it’s secure and safe.

22. Create amazing events

Encourage engagement with fun and informative events for employees. Webinars, team-building exercises, Going-away parties, and more can help contribute to a positive and productive workplace culture.

Your internal communications are crucial for organizing successful company events. With ContactMonkey’s event management feature, you can easily embed event invitations in your employee emails. After they RSVP, you can view responses in your analytics dashboard:

Screenshot of event invitation and attendees within ContactMonkey's event overview page.

Employees can even attach comments to their RSVPs so you can collect feedback prior to the event. You can book a free demo to see how event management works within ContactMonkey.

23. Keep employees in the spotlight

Include information in your emails that your employees will be interested in reading. Feature important milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, birth announcements, or other fun content in your employee emails.

You can also feature business-related employee achievements like:

  • landing a large account;
  • getting promoted;
  • achieving important certifications; or
  • anything else that highlights the accomplishments of your employees.

24. Utilize internal influencers

While measuring your email metrics, you may notice that certain employees are consistently more engaged than others. These employees would make great candidates to be an internal influencer.

An internal influencer is someone who management relies on to disseminate information to employees in a less-formal way than announcements or emails. Internal influencers can help gauge employees’ feelings about a particular issue, and provide valuable insight to inform your internal emails like leadership communications.

Want more expert tips for improving your internal communications? Check out our list of the best internal communications books by the biggest names in IC.

Improving Internal Communications Going Forward

We hope that these ideas help spur positive change for internal communications at your company. Effective communication is an ongoing process, so constantly look for ways to improve and foster ways for your employees to connect to your organization and to each other.

If you’re serious about internal communications, learning how to use an internal communications software like ContactMonkey can help you achieve your communication goals and increase employee engagement.

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If you want to see ContactMonkey in action, you can book a free demo to get a first-hand look at how internal communications software can help your business.

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