How to Promote Company Culture and a Diverse Workforce Through Effective Internal Communications

Most corporate communication strategies are focused on external communications – press releases, crisis communications, ads, and more. But internal communications are just as important. In fact, internal communications can help you promote your company culture, evolve it into a healthier version, and even attract a diverse, competent workforce at the same time.

It’s no stretch to say that effective internal communications are absolutely vital for forward-thinking organizations in this day and age. Particularly during the pandemic, strong communication strategies are crucial for businesses to invest in employee development and foster inclusivity. Let’s explore how effective internal communication strategies can be used to build a healthy, diverse environment in your organization.

Creating a consistent company culture

More than ever before, executives are realizing that building – and maintaining – a welcoming and inclusive company culture isn’t just a morally correct thing to do. It also provides a number of practical business benefits, including:

—  Helping companies to reach higher revenue benchmarks

—  Improving employee morale and, therefore, productivity

—  Attracting the best talent from across different backgrounds

—  Fostering innovation in the workforce with more viewpoints

Showing what your company stands for is both an internal and external activity, from marketing with cultural intelligence to eliminating bias from your hiring processes. All told, your company culture should be a high priority as you work to rebuild after the pandemic.

There are a number of ways to prove to your employees and your customers what you value as an organization. For example, hiring a chief compliance officer could drive values of security and ethics in your business. Depending on what values you want to instill, the steps to achieve them may vary slightly. But, in general, there is plenty you can do to build and transmit your company culture across your workforce – even if everyone is working remotely.

Remote work and internal communications

The COVID-19 pandemic may be winding down, but its impact will be felt for many months and even years to come. Your company may have decided to keep remote work either entirely or to an extent to save money and to improve employee morale.

Naturally, this also affects internal communications. However, modern communication strategies, programs, and tools will allow you to effectively communicate with your remote team members and help your corporate culture feel binding and shared, even if there isn’t quite as much physical time spent standing around the water cooler.

Internal communications strategies and tools can do a lot to improve morale and ensure that you’re building a culture that is valuable for everyone on your team. Software tools are one easy way to leverage new technology for increased productivity with remote or hybrid work.

For instance, collaboration software that comes with crucial features like file sharing and project profitability tracking is ideal for helping your remote employees work together and feel like they are all on the same team, even if they don’t see each other in the office. There are also additional tools for communication-specific benefits, such as instant messaging platforms and more.

No matter what kind of tools you use, internal communications can help promote diversity, create and maintain your company culture, and improve employee morale by:

—  Fostering easy communication between team members,  as well as between employees and executives

—  Allowing everyone in your company to share ideas quickly and easily

—  Enabling everyone to give and receive feedback promptly

—  Helping your team to set goals and celebrate their progress

In a way, internal communications tools and strategies will help your corporate culture blossom, even if geography separates your team members. Simply put, executives don’t need to worry about the advent of remote work – you can adapt. Just as you can incorporate new practices for remote productivity and cybersecurity, you can rely on internal communications tools and strategies to keep workplace culture strong.

Top internal communications strategies

With COVID-19 and modern economic challenges rearing their heads, many companies are worried that they will succumb to economic problems in the near future. But with a strong company culture and internal communications strategies to foster that culture, your organization will be resilient enough to withstand this crisis and any new ones in the future.

With that in mind, let’s break down some of the best internal communications strategies you can and should adopt ASAP.

Build team connections with instant messaging tools

For starters, you can start using instant messaging tools to help your remote and in-office team members communicate easily with one another. By allowing for streamlined, smooth internal communications between team members:

—  You’ll boost collaboration between team members using platforms like Google Workspace

—  Allow the best ideas from your team members to be easily visible to everyone

—  Help your employees feel connected to one another, even if they only see each other in the office once or twice per week

Instant messaging tools and platforms are more common than ever, so start using them for both work communications and team-building exercises. Video platforms are also ideal – there’s nothing quite as good for fostering a company culture and a sense of team spirit as seeing your coworkers’ faces.

Allow for accessible employee-executive communication channels

By the same token, you should ensure that employees and executives can communicate freely and easily. Employees should feel empowered to bring any concerns to you whatever they need, particularly if they relate to problems with stress or discrimination. By having an open-door policy, your team members will trust in their executive team and their loyalty to their organization will grow.

Offer welcoming resources and activities

More companies than ever before are looking to add resources to improve mental health, to reduce discrimination, and to overall improve employee well-being. Policies and services are a valuable form of internal communication because it tells everyone in your organization that you care about their well-being, not just the bottom line. That, in turn, contributes to a corporate culture where your team members actively care about one another.

If you don’t already, consider offering open community forums, fun social activities, employee fitness programs and mental health services, and even 24/7 counselling services in your organization.

Consolidate communications to a single platform

You can streamline internal communications even further by consolidating them onto a single communication platform. This not only makes work information easier to find, thus fostering efficient productivity and project collaboration. It also creates a sort of virtual office space where employees will feel most engaged with one another. Don’t discount the value of building real relationships for remote workers in maintaining productivity and connectivity at a distance.

Collect employee feedback regularly

Finally, one of the best ways to improve company culture and encourage communication is through targeted feedback. Feedback channels can include surveys, one-on-one constructive feedback sessions between employees and upper management, and more.

Engagement polls and surveys are also great for capturing the opinions of your employees on important issues. The more feedback you collect, the better you can improve your internal communications and other aspects of your company.

Conclusion

Ultimately, leveraging the above tools will help you invest in employee well-being, promote and evolve your company culture, and encourage a more diverse workforce. These are all crucial if you want your company to survive COVID-19 and thrive in the new economic environment. With so many benefits to using internal communication tools, there’s no reason not to leverage these tactics to improve your company from the inside out.