How we improved our internal communication in 3 months
In July 2023, one of the questions of our internal quarterly survey was to rate internal communication. The question received a rather low score across the whole company. It became evident that internal communication had to be the centre of attention. We somehow knew it but did not have the data to prove this — the famous saying you can't manage what you don't measure was painfully evident.
Just days before evaluating the survey, I had an opportunity to meet Laurel Farrer, the mastermind behind GitLab's concept of TeamOps. At that moment, everything clicked together. The stars have aligned and shown me what needs my immediate attention and gave me tools for how to tackle this.
TeamOps is a framework that helps remote teams operate. We are all too painfully aware that in-person work is not the same as remote or hybrid work. In the workplace where each person may be in a different location and a different time zone, people need to be enabled to contribute at any time, without having to seek information or approval for every single task.
Step 1: Recognizing the Need to Improve Our Internal Communication
We intuitively knew that something was off with our internal communication. Many decisions have not been documented, and information that should have been readily available was scattered across our Confluence, Google Drive and Slack. The score in our survey shows that internal communication is one of the lowest-scoring questions with a score of 3.59 out of 5.00.
All these things together have pushed us to make internal communication a priority in our Q3 OKRs. However, internal communication is such a wide topic, that tackling every single aspect of it would be impossible. This is where the TeamOps framework came in handy, as it gives a structured way to evaluate and improve your internal communications and processes around it. While we have not followed it diligently, it provided a big help with the different aspects to focus on.
Step 2: Evaluating and Improving our Knowledge Base
At Runecast, we had our knowledge management system set up in 2018. We have been using Confluence to document decisions, describe processes and store information such as the employee handbook. Moreover, some teams have been using it to work on their projects, so not all areas were just knowledge documentation. However, we didn't have a specific system to diligently keep our Confluence spaces up-to-date.
For us, improving our knowledge base meant:
- Evaluating and properly understanding how we use Confluence. Apart from what was mentioned above, we identified that each space has a primary and secondary audience. Your primary audience is the team who works with the space most often, likely every day. When they navigate it, they would know what exactly they are looking for and they would use the page tree to search for information. The secondary audience is someone who is looking for specific information, such as an HR person looking for a slide deck in the marketing space. In each space, we therefore identified what the secondary audience is likely going to be looking for and made that information readily available on the overview page of each space.
- Creating a shared structure that is understandable to all teams. We ensured that if a space is a team space (e.g. our Product team), it has the same overview page as any other team space. If the secondary audience visits the page, they are given the information they are likely looking for without having to comb through a large page tree or search for it. If a space's purpose is mainly knowledge sharing (like an employee handbook), it has a different home page, so it is easy to distinguish.
- Identifying ownership over spaces and pages. The ownership of spaces was given to the manager of the department, and they are responsible for the overall space. Individual pages follow a simple logic if you own it, it is your responsibility. The owner of the page doesn't have to always be the person who wrote it, as teams grow and positions change.
- Ensuring that our Confluence is up-to-date and regularly updated. One of the biggest challenges was identifying which pages need regular updating and how to handle that. We identified that we have two main types of pages wiki pages and workspace pages. The “wiki” page holds information that is important to keep updated, whereas the “workspace” page holds project-related information that does not need to be updated after the project ends. We are using labels to mark the pages either wiki or workspace, and we have created an internal Slack bot that notifies the individual page owners about any wiki pages that are outdated. We started with 1 year and eventually will move to 3 months when a page is considered outdated.
Step 3: Finding Ways to Improve Messaging
We have been discussing this topic a lot over the past months. One of the most significant realizations was the need to over-communicate every single thing. Into The Remote podcast with Shelby Wolpa highlighted that the person needs to communicate their message until they are sick of it. Only then does the audience start to listen to the message.
We tested different approaches, and one of the most successful was short video updates done by our CEO and posted in our All Hands Slack channel. We have also implemented a Monthly update in our Confluence, where we simply consolidate the most important messages from our Slack channels, things that everyone should know even if they missed the message in the first place.
Whatever you do in getting your message heard, the most important thing is to try and test different approaches and find your voice.
Another aspect of internal communication is the involvement of as many people as possible, not just the CEO, the HR or a dedicated internal comms person. For us, it is the people managers who can make the biggest impact. We have therefore carved time into our monthly learning session for people managers to give out important information and ask any questions they may have.
The results
After three months, we asked the same question again. “I am satisfied with the communication channels and information flow within the organization.” In the previous survey, the question was one of the lowest-scoring ones. In this survey, it was a question with the biggest positive jump and scored 4.05 out of 5.00.
This is of course not the end. Internal communication is a topic that can always be improved and new ways of communication explored.
What is next?
Internal communication is not only the responsibility of the management team. We want to make sure that everyone in the company is empowered to have their message heard and knows what to expect when any communication is happening. We are therefore working on several topics, such as communication guidelines, which are the building foundation for any message, email or meeting.
What has this exercise taught me?
For me personally, I have had a few realizations when it comes to internal communication:
Revelation 1:
There needs to be a person whose responsibility is internal communication. In a small company, it is likely going to be a HR person. However, it does not mean that this person is solely responsible for getting a message written, read and heard. Their main role is to pave the ways and open the channels to ensure that the message can get crafted and travel through accordingly.
Revelation 2:
It is really true that a message needs to be repeated until you feel sick of it. Only then, people will start to truly listen and hear it. So repeat the message over and over until you sound like a broken record. It pays off.
Revelation 3:
Your message can be crafted perfectly but without support in terms of communication ambassadors, it will be extremely difficult to have it heard. Ensure that you have allies in communication who will also pass your message further.
👋 Thanks for hearing me out. Let’s connect and inspire each other!
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