Your internal communications drive employee engagement and workplace productivity. But what happens when you’re fresh out of new ideas for creative messaging? We’ve compiled a list of our most innovative employee communication ideas to help!
Internal communicators face a recurring challenge: how to create consistently engaging content to send on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis.
It can be incredibly difficult to regularly come up with creative internal communication ideas, to say the least.
That’s why we’ve compiled a list of our best internal communication ideas to give you new ways to approach employee emails and newsletters. Implement these internal communication tactics in your business to keep your emails fresh and your employees engaged.
What is Internal Communication?
Internal communication is how your employees communicate with each other and your business. Employee conversations, internal emails, meeting invitations, employee text alerts, Slack messages; these are all examples of internal communication.
Every company approaches employee communication ideas differently. Companies with remote and hybrid workplaces rely on internal communications to address the challenges of remote teams.
Meanwhile, companies with in-person employees may use internal communications more periodically, as employees can simply speak to one another.
When thinking about new ideas to improve internal communication, assess how your employees currently communicate and look for areas for improvement. Consider conducting an employee communication survey to gather employee feedback to pinpoint communication issues and areas to improve.
Why Your Internal Communication Tactics Matter
Internal communication is a direct driver of employee engagement. Effective communication helps employees stay informed, submit feedback, and connect with their coworkers. They also help:
- Reify workplace culture.
- Share leadership messages.
- Gather employee-generated content.
- Take a pulse of workforce engagement.
- Inform business decisions through employee feedback.
- Keep employees in the loop about urgent events and updates.
But what happens when you’re fresh out of ideas for internal communications?
Hitting a dead end when it comes to innovative internal communication tactics is easy considering the volume of messaging that passes through a business. And these days, employees have seen it all. With the advent of social media, it’s harder than ever to captivate anyone’s attention for longer than a few minutes.
That’s why today’s communicators need to try more creative internal communication strategies if they want employees to tune in.
Luckily, new technology has the ability to drive creative internal communications ideas capable of challenging the status quo.
Want to learn how to create innovative internal communications from IC industry leaders themselves? Check out our list of the best internal communications books.
Innovative Internal Communications Ideas to Try in 2024
Whichever way you approach your employee communications, it’s important to keep things fresh with creative internal communication ideas. These ideas can range from developing more visually engaging content to updating the way you measure employee engagement.
Below, we’ve collected our favourite innovative internal communication ideas to help you improve how you connect with your employees this year.
Be sure to also check out our internal communications case studies to see how other companies use ContactMonkey to improve engagement and productivity.
1. Captivate readers with multimedia elements
If multimedia elements aren’t already a part of your internal communication campaign ideas, now is the time to introduce them.
Multimedia elements turn static internal emails into interactive and dynamic internal communications. Employees can click, watch, react, and express themselves in ways that just aren’t possible with regular emails.
An HTML email builder lets you bring these creative internal communications to life. You can add GIFs, insert email tables, and create dedicated email-embedded event invites, all by using HTML-based elements for your employee emails and newsletters:
When you’re spicing up your content with creative employee communication ideas, we recommend keeping the overall branding consistent.
Consistent email branding helps your employees quickly recognize the purpose of your email, and contributes to your internal brand voice.
2. Supercharge your comms with an AI writing assistant
If you’re often struggling to come up with creative internal communications ideas, an employee email tool with generative AI integration is a game-changer.
ContactMonkey’s OpenAI ChatGPT integration lets you generate fun internal communication ideas and content based on any prompts that you provide—whether it be to create an employee welcome email or build out a new product launch announcement. In just a few seconds, you’ll get dozens of new ideas for internal communications.
Simply describe what kind of content you’d like, and edit the output according to your audience. And, ta-da! You have a handful of creative internal communication strategies to work with.
3. Simplify complex information with video communications
Perhaps one of the easiest and most creative internal communications ideas to amp up your messaging is video.
Think about it: how many times have you chosen a YouTube video to learn about something over a lengthy article or report?
Not only can videos communicate huge amounts of information in a short period of time, but they’re also more accessible to employees who have trouble reading text on a computer screen. And that’s exactly why they’re one of the best internal communication ideas to spice up your content.
Video internal communications can include videos produced by employees, or feature videos from external sources that you think your employees would value. One example of an effective internal communication video idea is to feature a yearly or quarterly update from the company’s CEO or owner:
4. Streamline email workflow with responsive internal email templates
Email templates help save you hours of time while bringing all of your creative internal communication tactics to life.
Once you design an internal comms email template (or choose a pre-made one from a template library or template design service), you simply replicate, adapt, and send your mass email whenever you need. No need to ever start from scratch and see that daunting blank page!
With the right tools, creating an email template can take minutes. So you can focus on coming up with your next innovative internal communication tactics instead of struggling to execute them.
After using ContactMonkey to design their internal emails, Mettler Toledo now saves a whopping 25 days on their internal communications.
Do you need any more proof that email templates are one of the most effective internal communication ideas you can implement in your organization? Try our email template builder for free to see what it can do.
5. Reach employees anywhere with internal SMS
With the advent of hybrid and remote teams, email with built-in SMS is the latest innovative employee communications idea to keep your employees connected and engaged.
ContactMonkey’s employee SMS feature allows you to draft and send text messages to your employees from the same platform as you create your emails. You can use employee SMS to send immediate updates and alerts, or share links to your website or internal intranet:
6. Amplify audience targeting with email list management
To ensure that your internal communication campaign ideas run smoothly, you need to target the right audience.
With HRIS, Workday, and Microsoft Teams integration, ContactMonkey helps you seamlessly manage your distribution lists and segment campaigns for targeted messaging.
You can segment your lists based on departments, teams, or roles, enabling you to tailor your content to different groups within your organization. So targeting the right employees with your innovative internal communication campaign ideas becomes a breeze.
Already have an HRIS list? Simply connect it to your email design system with ContactMonkey’s integration and send more captivating emails faster.
7. Activate granular email metrics
How do you know if your creative internal communication strategies are working? Three words: employee engagement analytics. With the latest innovative internal communications technology you can go far beyond open rates and clicks.
For a comprehensive picture of email engagement among employees, you can use an innovative internal email tracking software.
ContactMonkey’s email analytics software delivers precision data to inform your internal communication strategies and tactics.
With open rates, read times, click-through rates, event registrations, eNPS, and survey ratings, ContactMonkey tells you everything you need to know about the success of your internal communication tactics. And it does this in a secure way.
ContactMonkey’s anonymous tracking feature delivers in-depth reporting while making recipient email addresses anonymous. In turn, you’re able to comply with GDPR or privacy regulations while still gathering much-needed email performance data.
Another one of our innovative internal communication ideas: click maps!
ContactMonkey has heat maps called “click maps” to help you see exactly what links your readers are clicking on within your emails. This makes it easier to know where to put the most important pieces of your email and how to get eyes on what matters.
Combine the information from your campaign comparison with segmented email stats to see a breakdown of how different parts of your company engage with your internal communications. You’ll get a clear picture of which creative internal communication tactics are working and which ones are flopping.
Segmented email stats let you break down your email tracking metrics by different departments, job titles, and office locations:
8. Show ROI on internal communications with reporting
Internal communications don’t see as much investment as departments like Marketing and Sales. And yet, effective employee communications are the driving force behind any successful team.
Internal communications reports are an innovative feature that allows your team to show the power of investing in employee engagement and comms.
ContactMonkey’s email analytics tool offers an email comparison tool with in-depth reporting features to help you show exactly which of your internal communication strategies and tactics were successful. Moreover, you can even download your reports into PowerPoint slide decks and PDFs for easy presentation.
This way, it’s easy to demonstrate the ROI on your employee communications and build a business case for trying out new, creative internal communication tactics
If an email campaign stands out in your comparison, go into segmented email stats to see if it resonated with a particular section of your business. This will help you tailor your future email content to be more effective with those employees.
9. Send timely communications with automated email scheduling
One of the simplest and most effective internal communication ideas is to leverage timing.
By tapping into email engagement patterns and behaviours, an email scheduling software helps you increase your internal email open rate and overcome internal communication challenges. It does this by determining the best time to send internal emails.
Whether you’re sending a monthly email newsletter, higher education communications, or employee surveys, you can use send time analytics to find when your recipients are most likely to engage with your email.
With ContactMonkey, your email open rates are visualized in a graph to show engagement over time. Once you’ve determined when your employees are most likely to open your emails, you can schedule future emails accordingly for maximum engagement.
We recommend using email analytics to find your employees’ preferred email sending times, and then planning your emails using an internal communications planning calendar. This way, you can create and schedule your internal emails ahead of time and avoid overwhelming your employees with too many emails.
10. Build community with dialogue-driven communications
Sometimes, the most effective internal communication ideas are the simplest ones. Building community through dialogue-driven communication is one of them.
ContactMonkey’s employee engagement software helps to facilitate dialogue in the workplace through interactive newsletters.
How is it different from other workplace digital communications tools?
Well, ContactMonkey doesn’t simply send out information but encourages conversations through employee pulse surveys, anonymous comments, and a range of interactive elements.
11. Connect employees with internal influencers
Another innovative employee communications idea is to emphasize your company culture by electing an internal influencer from your employees.
An internal influencer is an employee who helps bridge the gap between management and employees. Their job is to communicate information to employees, gather their reactions and feedback, and share their thoughts with management.
Internal influencers are generally highly engaged employees who have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening at your organization. They can share their knowledge with their coworkers, and encourage them to get involved in company initiatives.
And they might even have a few innovative employee communications ideas under their belt that they can share with you!
12. Boost engagement through individualized communications
One of the most effective and fun internal communication ideas is collecting employee feedback for tailored messaging.
Using a pulse survey email software with fun emoji reactions or star ratings, you can conduct quick employee pulse surveys and learn more about your staff. Once you’ve gathered the information you need, you can create more informed and individualized communications.
For example, you can try conducting an employee satisfaction survey to gauge how your employees feel about your workplace culture. You can even ask them to share some innovative internal communication tactics that they want you to try out.
Not only does collecting employee feedback give you great employee engagement ideas, but it also helps your employees feel heard and valued by your organization.
13. Scale employee engagement with multilingual emails
If your company has offices in different countries around the world, it’s likely that you have employees whose first language isn’t English.
Your internal communications can lose much of their effectiveness if employees are forced to copy and paste text into a translator just to make sense of it.
Fortunately, there are several approaches you can take when translating your internal communications. Multilingual emails can help bridge the language barrier between your organization and your international employees. This is an easy and creative internal communication tactic that can make a huge difference in your overall employee engagement.
14. Strengthen workplace security through emergency alerts
In order for your innovative internal communications tactics to work, they need to be delivered in a way that’s secure and respects employee privacy.
Phishing scams are more common than ever before, and your employees can be targeted by those who wish to steal their personal information to cause damage to your company. Keep your employees on the lookout for email phishing scams by frequently highlighting phishing email awareness strategies.
You can even use your internal communications to test your employees phishing email awareness. Using ContactMonkey, you can send a fake phishing email to your employees and measure how many employees open and click a link within your email:
15. Diversify communications with a company podcast
Make your internal communications as accessible as possible to maximize their reach. While employee emails can quickly be ignored and forgotten, other kinds of internal communications have better staying power.
One great example of this is a company podcast. It’s one of the best internal communications tactics to reach employees who may not be around their computers at all times.
Not to mention, podcasts allow your employees to take in important information while continuing their work or other activities.
Your internal podcast can cover the latest company news, interviews with employees, announcements about upcoming events, details about the latest product releases, and more. For more fun internal communication ideas for a podcast, check out our blog on the best internal podcast ideas.
16. Increase your reach with Email at Scale
Your creative internal communications strategies are only as good as the number of people they’re able to reach. Email sending limits can stand in your way.
With ContactMonkey’s email at scale feature, internal communicators can send employee emails to over 10,000 recipients using CSVs, Distribution lists, Contact Groups, Security Groups, Universal Groups, and Dynamic groups.
This makes it easy to surpass email limits and reach as many employees as you need as quickly as you need.
17. Expand internal communications reach with Microsoft Teams integration
The main goal for internal communicators is to connect and engage as many employees as possible. With so many companies relying on Microsoft Teams for their daily updates, tapping into this vital channel is an important internal communications idea.
ContactMonkey’s Microsoft Teams integration for Outlook and Gmail streamlines multichannel messaging while allowing you to reach more employees at once.
You’ll be able to seamlessly integrate your newsletter content and merge email tracking and analytics within the Microsoft Teams platform. No need to toggle between tabs, apps, or screens—everything converges in a single location:
Don’t Be Afraid to Innovate
Every company approaches internal communications differently. Ultimately the best internal communication tactics are the ones that resonate with your employees.
We encourage you to survey and collect feedback around your employees’ communication preferences. You’ll get a ton of great ideas for internal communications and to better reach your employees and keep them engaged, wherever they are.
ContactMonkey can make learning about and implementing new internal communications tactics easy. With our suite of dedicated internal communication tools, you can use your employee emails to drive engagement and productivity.
Want to see ContactMonkey in action? Book a free demo to see how to boost employee engagement with your emails:
