Your internal communications do a whole lot more than inform your employees about the latest software upgrades and employee absences. Or at least, they should. But if you still find yourself wondering ‘why is internal communication important?’ this post has you covered.
We know the value of great communication when we see it. Think back to a captivating ad, a thoughtful email, or a great presentation. If it’s still on your mind, the message probably moved you in some way.
When it comes to internal communication, effective use of language can be just as powerful. Although the end goal isn’t to drive a purchase, you are trying to get employees to invest in brand vision and values.
In this post, we’ll walk you through 20 reasons why internal communication is important for your business. We’ll also show you how to make a business case for internal communications with great internal communications tools and strategy.
What Is Internal Communication?
Strictly speaking, internal communications can be defined as the flow of information across your company. But the function of internal communications goes beyond the circulation of company news.
In fact, part of what distinguishes effective internal communication is its ability to engage employees in conversations, rather than simply confer information.
Your internal communications should build dialogue across all levels of your company and encourage employees to get engaged, share ideas, and participate in content creation. Not to mention, when it comes to university email marketing, internal communications ensure that faculty and staff are aligned on important timelines, events, and crises.
When everything goes to plan, you’ll easily be able to see the benefits of an effective internal communication strategy. To help you get started, we created an internal communication strategy checklist that you can apply to your business.
From building engaging content to managing email density to avoid violating Outlook and Gmail sending limits, your strategy can have huge upside for your business.
Why is Internal Communication Important: 20 Reasons
We know that the importance of internal communication in an organization starts with its ability to inform and engage staff. But the impact extends beyond this. Below, we dive deeper into the different ways internal communication can benefit business and answer the question, “Why is internal communication important?”
1. Keeps employees informed so that they can excel at their tasks
The most basic function of your internal communications is to supply employees with the information that helps them succeed.
Think of your internal communications as a toolkit. It provides employees with equipment in the form of company eBooks, employee forums, newsletter updates, and the like.
All of these add up to a store of knowledge that your employees use to do their jobs—and feel comfortable doing it.
For your internal communications to succeed in offering a reliable flow of information, you have to first have effective communication channels.
The best ones are able to synchronize different types of information and resources in a clear and logical format. HTML employee newsletters are one of the best mediums for this.
With ContactMonkey’s responsive HTML email templates, you’re able to organize information in distinct sections, while embedding video communications, documents, links, and even surveys into a single page.
ContactMonkey can also help reduce the amount of irrelevant information your employees receive via custom email lists. Email lists helps you target your internal communications to only interested recipients.
Using ContactMonkey’s List Management feature, you can build custom email lists without needing IT. Your custom lists can integrate with your Human Resource Information System (HRIS) like Workday and ADP, as well as Azure Active Directory, so they’ll update automatically as employee join and leave your organization.
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2. Helps align company goals
Employees on different teams may not always be in the loop about the projects and priorities of others’. But at the end of the day, all of your staff are working towards the same goal— improving business performance.
With company-wide internal communications, it becomes easier to align organizational goals. You can use your internal company newsletter to provide an overview of what each team is working on.
An HTML email template will allow you to create distinct, recognizable sections for each team. This will make it easier for employees to scan and read information—and more likely that they’ll do so.
At the end of your email, tie in all the sections with a brief message from your company leaders explaining how each team project supports your company objectives.
Curious to see how industry leaders get more out of their internal communications? Check out our list of the best internal communications books by the biggest names in IC.
3. Drives company company culture
Effective internal communication nurtures company culture and sets the tone for workplace interactions. Even the channels that you rely on for collaboration already to speak to your workplace environment and culture.
By encouraging employee SMS or slack messages, you’re setting the tone for a more informal or fast-paced company culture.
Another way your internal communications cultivate workplace culture is by helping to engage remote workers. When teams are dispersed, internal forums and standups encourage collaboration and can help mitigate common remote team communication challenges.
Virtual town halls and team events help employees learn about what other teams are doing and engage with one another in new contexts, strengthening empathy and understanding.
4. Connects leaders and staff
Communication coming from leaders is essential because it has a direct effect on the strength of the company’s vision and the organization’s ability to embrace change.
Leaders can build trust in the workplace and help guide employees through difficult times.
A good example of this is the way Airbnb executives communicated with their staff during the difficult layoffs of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And the key to successful leadership communications isn’t a mystery. All it takes is speaking with authenticity, transparency, and consistency.
With an internal communications tool like ContactMonkey, your company leaders can easily communicate information to employees creatively and on a consistent basis. And they’ll be able to do it in a direct and personalized fashion.
Using the email collaboration feature, internal communicators can share pre-made internal email communication templates with leaders and collaborate on internal emails in real time.
Merge tags also allow for more direct and individualized messaging. They populate the subject lines and body text of internal emails with the recipients’ name, making for more direct and individualized messaging.
5. Helps improve customer service
Companies with high employee engagement levels of more than 50% have been proven to retain more than 80% of their clients. Not to mention, according to the latest employee engagement statistics, companies with a highly engaged workforce experience a 23% increase in business profits.
And how do staff become engaged? Through captivating internal communications.
Not only do internal communications help you promote brand values and vision to get employees engaged, but they also serve as a direct link to employee events, webinars, and other spaces where employees can feel involved and invested in the company.
Engaged employees have a personal stake in your company’s success. They’re more inspired and motivated in their roles and that energy isn’t lost on customers.
When they see that an employee personally believes in your company’s success, they’re much more likely to trust in the company themselves.
6. Creates brand promoters
Time and time again research shows that employees who are well-informed about their company, become its biggest, and most credible ambassadors.
In other words, when employees are engaged with company news and are aligned with your brand vision, values, and success stories, they’re more likely to speak positively about your company to others.
Engaged employees may share company updates on their social media, post hiring updates on LinkedIn, or simply speak positively about your company to friends. This type of brand-building begins internally but it impacts an organization’s success on every level.
With ContactMonkey, you can check how many of your employees are brand promoters straight from your internal newsletter.
You can do this by embedding an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) survey into any employee email using ContactMonkey’s eNPS survey software, before sending it from Gmail or Outlook. Your eNPS survey will measure how many employees are brand promoters using a single, focused question:
7. Boosts employee engagement
Not only can your internal communications help measure employee engagement, they can also help boost it. How? By fostering conversations with your employees and inviting them to participate in cultivating your company culture.
When you use your employee newsletters or Slack channels to celebrate team wins, share birthday wishes, and promote company events, you’re building dialogue with staff.
Interactive internal communication channels, like HTML newsletters and employee chats, prevent staff from becoming passive recipients of your communications. Employees become active participants in, and contributors to company developments.
With an interactive email tool like ContacMonkey it’s super easy to boost email engagement and promote a more engaged workforce.
You can embed pulse surveys and anonymous comment boxes into any employee email, taking your employee communications from a static monologue to a dynamic conversation.
Learn how to quickly create pulse surveys with our step-by-step guide.
8. Strengthen internal brand identity
Forbes magazine once wrote: “Every business has at least three target audiences: customers, prospects and employees.” Your internal communications help ensure that you’re consistently building and nurturing internal brand identity and improving employee experience.
Employees usually have a go-to platform where they receive company news. As such, your internal communications channels are the surest place to showcase your company’s internal brand.
Whether it’s your internal newsletter, intranet communications, or Slack communities, consistency is key. The choice of words you use across these platforms, the images and graphics you include—all of it will make up how employees ultimately see your internal brand.
With ContactMonkey’s email design tools, you can ensure that your internal communications are always on-brand and showcase the essence of your brand identity. You can design and share branded email templates, fit with default company colours and graphics to drive your internal marketing strategy.
Prefer to leave the design to the pros? Take advantage of our email design service and see why companies like Pepsi turn to ContactMonkey for custom-made templates.
9. Guides employees in times of crises
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the benefits of good internal communication, and revealed the harm of poor communication. When lockdown policies came into place, and new health and safety information surfaced, companies had to work fast.
Businesses that already had reliable internal comms channels and a captive employee audience had an easier time delivering essential information.
Needless to say, companies that harnessed the power of their internal communications to drive crisis management were able to avoid the worst of the storm.
Travel Cousellors, for instance, were able to use ContactMonkey’s internal communications software to deliver information quickly and at scale.
ContactMonkey’s Gmail integration and Outlook add-in made it easier to send out communications fast. And with dozens of pre-made email templates at your disposal, it’s easy to prepare for different types of crisis communication scenarios or IT security threats in advance. You can use your internal communications to promote IT security training and phishing awareness among your employees.
When an emergency strikes, internal communicators can simply open up their pre-set template, swap the relevant information, and send their communications right from Outlook or Gmail. Once your message is sent, ContactMonkey’s employee email analytics let you easily scan to see who has received your email and clicked on key links.
10. Supports employee productivity
For employees to work at their best, they need to have the necessary resources and information ready at their disposal. For instance, say your sales rep doesn’t have the necessary account information to move forward with customer onboarding.
Or, imagine that your marketing intern doesn’t know the right point of contact for pay and benefits.
In both cases, your employee will spend a good chunk of their workday trying to find the necessary information, leaving their other tasks to fall behind.
When your internal communications connect employees with relevant resources, and points of contact, it makes their job faster and removes roadblocks in their workflow.
11. Enhances employee experience
Clear and accessible internal communications enhance employee experience for the same reason that they improve workplace productivity. When work-related information is easy to access, and employees know exactly who to reach out to for help, it’s easier to do their job.
In other words, fewer obstacles in the workflow add up to a smoother digital employee experience. Not to mention, there’s also more time to further engage in the workplace.
Employees will be more likely to participate in social events, help colleagues, and generally be more involved.
Moreover, when there are effective internal communication channels in place, it’s easier to solicit direct feedback on employee experience.
With ContactMonkey, you can even conduct employee experience surveys straight from your employee emails.
Using your email builder, simply drag a survey block into any spot within your internal newsletter template. Add your questions, finish your email, and embed your template straight into any Outlook or Gmail email.
Want to make beautiful newsletters faster? Learn how to create employee newsletters that stand out with ContactMonkey. You can also use ContactMonkey’s OpenAI ChatGPT integration to generate fresh ideas for your internal communications.
Once responses start coming in, you’ll be able to access a breakdown of your response rates and the survey answers themselves in your ContactMonkey dashboard.
12. Improves team collaboration
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why internal communication is important is because it can promote collaboration. Effective internal communications encourage collaboration by promoting continuous dialogue across the organization.
It opens up channels for coworking and idea-sharing.
Employee forums and Slack communities are just some of the best examples of asynchronous collaboration. Meanwhile, Zoom, Remo, and Pigeonhole live allow your teams to practice synchronous collaboration through video calls and virtual white boarding.
With ContactMonkey’s email collaboration, even your internal communications team can work together to create employee resources.
Operating just like Google docs, ContactMonkey’s email collaboration enables up to 5 people to work on an email at the same time and see changes in real-time. So both your staff and your internal comms team can improve efficiencies through collaborative communications.
13. Opens a channel for regular employee recognition
Your internal communications are a key driving force of your employee recognition strategies. By serving as a regular touchpoint for employees, your internal communications create a consistent outlet for recognizing staff achievements.
Because of their ability to reach the whole workforce, internal newsletters and intranets are the best platforms to celebrate team wins. And they offer many ways to do so.
You can create an “Employee Hall of Fame” on your intranet, or use your internal newsletter to create a regular “Employee Achievement” feature.
With ContactMonkey’s interactive internal newsletter, you can even get the whole company involved in celebrating peer accomplishments.
Simply send out an employee recognition email about a team or single employee, and turn on commenting options within your email builder.
Once your email is sent, employees will be able to congratulate their colleagues by leaving comments and thank you notes.
14. Sets the tone and style of employee communication across the company
Think of your internal communications as a template for the way that people at your company connect and share information. When new employees come in, your internal communications will be the first space where they encounter your company’s internal brand voice and personality.
For seasoned staff, your internal communications serve as consistent cues for how to communicate with their colleagues and customers. This includes the language they use in emails to clients, the way they speak to coworkers on Slack, and so on.
For new employees, your internal communications are an important part of their formative process in the company. It’s how new hires learn to navigate their new environment and understand company norms, values, and culture.
Set the right expectations by sending your new employee email with ContactMonkey. The HTML template builder lets you showcase your brand identity in full.
You can add bold slogans, embed videos, and incorporate all the other things that make up the tone and style of your company communications:
15. Creates a consistent channel for employee feedback
One of the biggest reasons why internal communication is important is because it can facilitate bottom-up conversations. Remember, employee feedback isn’t just for your staff. It’s essential for the growth of everyone in your organization—including executives and managers.
With ContactMonkey’s pulse survey tool, you can ensure that employee feedback to managers is a routine part of your internal communications.
Simply add a short pulse survey question at the end of your weekly newsletter, and get insights into a range of company topics.
With the option of star ratings, emoji reactions, thumbs up/down, and anonymous comments, there are ample ways to gather feedback. Not to mention, a pulse survey’s short and simple format allows employees to complete their survey in seconds. And that means more staff are likely to do so.
16. Ensures that new employees are on the right track from day one
As remote work becomes the norm, internal communications are crucial for effective employee onboarding and remote team communication. Most of the resources, documents, and updates necessary for an employee’s successful start will be reaching them in a digital format. So having reliable and multifunctional internal communications channels is a huge help.
With ContactMonkey’s all-in-one internal communications tool, you can ensure that new hires can access everything they need in one place. ContactMonkey’s HTML templates allow you to embed meeting agendas, schedules, and even instructional videos all into a single employee email.
Not to mention, pulse surveys offer a hassle-free way to consistently check in with your new hires and give them a chance to ask questions.
Learn more ways you could use ContactMonkey to enhance your internal communications and increase employee engagement.
17. Helps companies navigate change
Internal communications are especially essential in times of uncertainty. When your company is undergoing any type of change, it’s the job of your internal communications to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Your change management communications should make the change process as clear as possible (think step-by-step guidelines). They should also offer opportunities for employee feedback, ensuring that staff opinions are being taken into account during a transition.
Change management pulse surveys help you certify that everyone is on the same page and that no one is unclear about important updates.
You can easily embed these surveys into employee emails using ContactMonkey’s email template builder. For feedback on more sensitive topics, turn on anonymous commenting to encourage employees to share in more detail.
18. Supports diversity and inclusion efforts
Workplace diversity and inclusion (D&I) is all about how companies embrace differences in the workplace. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why internal communications play a pivotal role in your corporate D&I strategy.
Whether it’s through the use of inclusive language, or by promoting D&I resources, your internal communications embody the ways that your company embraces diversity.
In addition to sending out information about diversity policies and programs in your company, your internal communications should also gather employee feedback.
To achieve true diversity and inclusion to happen, it’s important to ask staff to evaluate your D&I efforts and pinpoint what can be improved.
With ContactMonkey, you can conduct diversity and inclusion surveys and gather anonymous feedback through your employee newsletter. For more details, read our blog on improving workplace diversity and inclusion.
19. Brings employees together in challenging circumstances
Whether it’s losing an important deal or suffering through a bad quarter, there will be all kinds of hardships that staff will need to face together. And when employee morale falls low, it’s the job of your internal communications to heighten spirits and bring staff together.
The first step is being transparent and clear in describing the issue at hand. The second step is uniting employees behind a powerful brand vision and goal that inspires optimism.
This can be done through a compelling message from your company leaders, or by arranging a company-wide town hall where employees can share ideas.
Most importantly, difficult times call for frequent employee communication and staying in touch with how employees are feeling. You can do this by adding employee feedback options into your employee emails.
Remember to solicit anonymous feedback so that employees can express concerns or offer ideas with confidence.
20. Helps ensure employee wellness
It’s hard to overstate the importance of employee wellness these days. As a global pandemic turned the world of work upside down, checking in on employee wellbeing has become essential for ensuring employee retention.
That’s where your internal communications come in. They serve as a key channel for promoting wellness resources and tapping into the levels of employee wellbeing at your workplace.
With ContactMonkey, it’s easy to conduct regular wellness check-ins with employees. You can create a designated employee wellness newsletter template, as its own weekly feature. Inside, you can include a wellness tips section, alongside upcoming events and webinars pertaining to health and wellbeing.
You even have the option of embedding a simple employee wellness pulse survey to regularly check employee wellness levels.
Why Internal Communication Matters to Your Business
Whether you’re leading a global company or an emerging SMB, effective internal communication is what drives employee engagement and business success. From boosting job satisfaction, to guiding employees in times of crisis, the benefits of internal communications are far-reaching.
And it takes little more than some thoughtful planning, reliable tools, and innovative internal communication tactics to maximize the advantages of your internal communications. Learn how to create a compelling case for adoption a software solution for your internal email with our internal communications software buyer’s guide.
With ContactMonkey’s all-in-one Internal Communications software, tapping into the power of your internal communications is easy. Book a free demo to see how ContactMonkey can improve communication and drive engagement at your organization.
