Why Effective Workplace Communication Is the Future of Internal Marketing
The year is 2019, and for any organisation, its employees serve as its most valuable marketing assets. In the creative industry, they serve as evangelists for the brand in their personal and professional lives, which makes the existence of a concrete inter-organisational communication system imperative. An efficient system that distributes timely and relevant information across the employee base, while also catering to their productivity levels, can work wonders in boosting a company’s work profile in the industry. For widespread organisations, the good news is that employers no longer have to rely on near-redundant forms like mass emails, that can get lost or ignored in the inbox, or company-wide servers that are subject to a lot of risk variables. Here’s what the future of internal marketing looks like.
Why should you invest in efficient internal marketing?
The benefits of having an effective internal communication system in place are obvious but often overlooked. The relation between internal marketing and revenue generation is an indirect one, but employees who feel connected to a brand are its biggest asset. The most important result of an efficient communication system is that it ensures accountability and responsibility in employees, by providing a direct channel of communication between managers and subordinates. This also directly boosts morale, as it can serve as a platform to place value on employees’ contribution to the organisation. In addition to spiking employee satisfaction, it also makes them more familiar with the brand history and goals. The end result? The common ground between the employees and their employers at the top level, ensuring that the former is aware of the company’s stand on pertinent issues and have a common understanding of organisational goals and strategies as well as increased synergy between different departments.
What new-age tools are out there?
Software giant Microsoft has doubled down on the internal communication management scene by offering Microsoft Teams, a collaborative hub for teamwork. Full integration of the widely used Office 365 within the CMS is just the tip of the iceberg; the platform also provides scheduling assistance, live broadcasts, seamless workforce management, employee recognition tools, end-to-end security and adaptability with third-party plug-ins.
Also rising in the collaborative workspace is Slack, a channel-based hub that supplies individual channels for messaging, tools and files. Upping the productivity of never-ending email chains, individual channels can direct workflow within teams and members can choose to leave as their contribution to the project gets done. The integrated file sharing system is compatible with a wide range of multimedia, as well as drag-and-drop PDFs and screen-sharing capabilities to collaborate effectively across teams.
Another application that has been currying favour is Workplace by Facebook (who have just clocked in 2M paid customers). One of the drawbacks of most internal communication systems is that they can be too complicated to operate. With Workplace, Facebook has created a space where all the members of the organisation can collaborate, with an interface that almost everybody is familiar with as it’s a mirror image of Facebook. Businesses can utilise this tool by Facebook as a communication centre, where people can share messages, organise events, and even live stream videos.
Because of the social media giant’s familiarity with the majority of users, employees find it easier to adapt to this method of communication. The silver lining comes in the fact that the Workplace account isn’t linked to the user’s private Facebook account, making it instantly more professional than a WhatsApp workgroup. It also takes it a step further than popular collaborative applications, like Slack, that lack the Newsfeed feature on the homepage timeline. Workplace makes it easier to view notifications through their newsfeed, much like the one you’re already used to on the parent company Facebook.
Do you have go-to internal marketing strategies and tools that suit your organisational framework? What kind of tangible, and intangible, results have you observed? I’d love to hear about your experience with internal marketing in the comments below.
