A poor internal communication strategy can hurt your bottom line. Larger businesses with around 100,000 workers individually lose $62.4 million a year on average because of inadequate internal communication, while smaller organizations averaging 100 employees lose as much as $420,000 each year for the same reason, SHRM reports. By investing in a strong internal communication strategy, your business can better engage employees, facilitate effective communication, collaboration, and decision making, boost productivity, and pave the way for greater business success.  

Engage employees with a variety of communications channels 

Your internal communication strategy should feature various communications channels to best accommodate your team’s different needs and preferences. Multiple options can ensure your messages not only reach your employees, but actually engage them. Company wide emails, for example, may be opened and skimmed, but this doesn’t necessarily equate to employees’ understanding or remembering key information. Some employees may prefer to use a messaging app to ask questions, while others may opt for something more direct like the phone, video chat, or even face-to-face communication. Indeed, face-to-face communication shouldn’t be neglected since in-person requests have been proven to be as many as 34 times more successful than email. So, take time to survey your employees on how they best like to communicate and receive information, and make sure to implement a variety of communications channels as needed.

Measure the success of your internal communication strategies

If you don’t measure the success of your internal communication strategy, you won’t know if your efforts are paying off or where improvements are needed. Fortunately, analytics software is an effective method of measuring and improving your performance. If your organization uses Yammer, the enterprise social networking service, for example, Tyrane provides useful Yammer analytics tools to help you get the most out of this platform. In particular, Tyrane lets you monitor the Yammer adoption rate across your entire business. You can then see which teams still require onboarding, as well as the teams already thriving on the platform. Tyrane also lets you easily spot your network’s most influential users. Specifically, you can measure the unique impact of these users on various communities and topics.

Boost return on investment 

A strong internal communication strategy boosts your return on investment. By facilitating greater connection and collaboration among employees, you can increase overall employee morale and engagement. In turn, productivity and employee retention is strengthened, which is particularly vital since replacing an employee can end up costing your business between anywhere from 50%-200% of the employees’ salary. With strong internal communication, you can also keep our business on track to achieving organizational goals. In turn, customer satisfaction goes up and your overall brand image is strengthened.  

A successful internal communication strategy is essential for business success. By engaging employees with multiple communications channels and measuring your performance on these platforms, as well as by boosting your overall return on investment, strong communications strategies can grow your business and your bottom line.