The vital role of Internal Communications in aligning people to strategic goals – Part 1
Achieving enterprise strategic goals requires more than planning and execution; it demands effective alignment and engagement of every employee towards a common purpose. At the heart of this alignment lies the realm of internal communications, serving as the crucial link between organisational objectives and employee understanding and commitment. In this article, we look at the critical role internal communications play in aligning employees with strategic goals, what happens when you don’t, how to get it right and how to measure it.
1. The consequences of communication failures
Internal communications serve as the lifeblood of organisational alignment, fostering a shared vision, and guiding employees towards common objectives. However, when communication channels falter or messages become distorted, the consequences can be severe.
Let’s use an example. Your organisation’s revenue is flatlining and competitors are circling customers with attractive offers. You have identified product development as one of the primary solutions to the problem. The executive team has agreed to develop new products to increase revenue.
The head of marketing, head of product development and the CFO all agree to the same objective but go about it in conflicting ways. The head of marketing wants to increase marketing spend to drive revenue from existing products while new ones are being built. The head of product wants to prioritise new product development and avoid marketing existing products that might be axed. The CFO is eyeing the opportunity to reduce costs overall to pay for product development. Informal and inconsistent messages flow down to their respective teams, and without clear and consistent communication employees lack clarity leading to misalignment of efforts and priorities across departments and teams.
While the executive team is busy in a three-day strategy workshop trying to sort out why little has changed, the rumour mill has already started. “What on earth is going on?”, “Who will be restructured?”, “Will I keep my job?”. Employees are confused, and the smartest people are updating their resumes. Poor communication has led to uncertainty and disengagement, eroded morale and diminished productivity.
As you can tell, the ramifications of communication failures extend far beyond mere misunderstandings; they can derail progress, stifle innovation, and jeopardise the attainment of enterprise goals.
2. Creating effective internal communications initiatives
To steer the organisation towards success, internal communications initiatives must be purposeful, inclusive, and aligned with overarching objectives. Here are key strategies for crafting impactful communication initiatives:
Clear and Consistent Messaging: Develop concise, easy-to-understand messages that articulate enterprise goals, values, and expectations. Consistency in messaging across various channels fosters coherence and reinforces key priorities.
In the example above, it becomes paramount to explain the factors that are driving the focus on product development, so clearly communicate what the organisation will STOP doing, START doing and what will CONTINUE.
Two-Way Communication: Establish channels for feedback and dialogue, encouraging open communication and active participation from employees. Recognise the importance of listening to employee perspectives and addressing their concerns to foster a culture of transparency and trust.
“What are the new products we’re developing?”, “What about my role?”, “What does it mean for existing products?”, How long will this take?” are all relevant questions employees will have, and they are important to answer. Lack of two-way communication invariably leads to misalignment.
Tailored Communication: Recognise the diverse needs and preferences of employees and tailor communication initiatives accordingly. Utilise a mix of channels, including email, intranet portals, virtual or face-to-face town hall meetings, and digital platforms, to reach different audience segments effectively.
Leadership Engagement: Leaders play a pivotal role in championing communication efforts. Employees need to see that leaders are behaving and are making decisions that are aligned with the goals. Ensure that leaders are visible, accessible, and actively involved in communicating strategic initiatives, providing context and inspiration to employees.
Celebrate Milestones: Recognise and celebrate progress towards enterprise goals, acknowledging individual and team achievements. Publicly acknowledge contributions and milestones, reinforcing a culture of appreciation and motivation.
Communication Tools: Use tools and technologies that scale. For an organisation using Microsoft, the internal communication initiatives above will likely involve the following:
Planning and delivering a Microsoft Teams live event for the kick-off meeting.
Developing intranet content for, and publishing resource pages about, the new product development initiative.
Planning and then launching a community on Viva Engage where leaders host Q&A sessions about the new product development initiative, post updates on progress, prompt discussions about different aspect of impacts.
Planning a set of intranet articles and Viva Engage community updates that celebrate progress.
Preparing updates to go out via email, digital signage or similar one-way communication channels.
All the internal communications initiatives require constant tweaking in response to the evolving situation. Measurement, therefore, becomes the third essential leg of the stool. Without it you’re flying blind.
3. Measuring progress of internal communication initiatives
Measuring the effectiveness of internal communication initiatives is essential for continuous improvement and accountability. It helps ensure constant alignment between the people and the goal. Here are key metrics and methods for assessing progress:
Reach and Engagement: You need to know who is, and isn’t, aware of the new strategic initiative so you can start closing the gap. Track metrics for your chosen communication channels. These could be email open rates, intranet page views, attendance at town hall meetings, and participation in communication initiatives. Analyse engagement data to assess the reach and impact of communication efforts and compare it against your target audience.
A screenshot of SWOOP Analytics for SharePoint intranet.
SWOOP Analytics provides rich insights for SharePoint intranets that allow you to do exactly this and enables you to segment the data to match your corporate structure. Then you can see exactly who has seen the relevant content.
Two-way Communication and Feedback Mechanisms: As the impacts of the strategic initiatives start to be felt, you need to be on top of discussions. Customer-facing employees can help collate questions they get asked to allow for more efficient knowledge-sharing of answers. For example: “No – we will not be decommissioning product X for another 10 years.”, and “Yes – this new product will be available in Q2 this year”.
A screenshot of some reports from SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage.
Discussion platforms such as Viva Engage deliver very efficient feedback mechanisms for employees to share insights, concerns and suggestions, and SWOOP Analytics is ideally positioned to measure what is going on. SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage reports on top conversations, the level of two-way communication, identifies influencers, benchmarks leaders’ engagement levels and style, and much more. Using sophisticated generative AI, it can even suggest ways for leaders to have even more impact.
Alignment with Business Objectives: Measure the extent to which internal communication initiatives contribute to the achievement of enterprise goals. Align communication metrics with key performance indicators (KPIs) related to revenue growth, customer satisfaction, employee retention, and other strategic priorities. While the internal communications team doesn’t own these metrics, the metrics need to be looked at together.
Using SWOOP Analytics’ metrics you can determine if your people are engaged, informed and equipped to deliver the strategic change.
Qualitative Assessment: Conduct qualitative assessments through focus groups, interviews, or sentiment analysis tools to gain deeper insights into employee perceptions and experiences with internal communication. Identify themes, trends, and areas of strength and improvement.
SWOOP Analytics can assist here by delivering deeper analysis on things such as readability of content, sentiment analysis of conversations on Viva Engage, automatic and thorough analysis of automatically extracted conversation themes.
Benchmarking: Compare internal communication metrics against industry benchmarks or organisational targets to evaluate performance relative to peers or desired standards. Use benchmarking data to identify areas of excellence and areas needing enhancement.
Since SWOOP Analytics was founded in 2014 it has been publishing benchmarking reports on how Viva Engage, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 and, most recently, SharePoint intranets are being used. These reports provide examples of what the best-performing organisations are doing and show what ‘average’ versus ‘top-performing’ looks like.
By systematically measuring the effectiveness and impact of internal communication initiatives, organisations can iteratively refine their strategies, optimise resource allocation, and ensure alignment with enterprise goals.
In Part 2 of this blog series we will revisit our example organisation mid-way through its product transformation initiative and use metrics and benchmarks to find how it is progressing and what could be “tuned” to align its people to the strategy.
Want to see how SWOOP Analytics could help you measure your path to success? Get a demo today.
