How to Communicate Important News Internally: 15 Top Tips
An effective internal communications strategy is essential when trying to encourage a cohesive team to work together toward the same goal. Especially when it comes to announcing important news to your team, using the right internal communications approach is of utmost importance. The right communications strategy ensures the intended message is clear and easily understood, leaving no room for error. That’s why we asked 15 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:
“What’s your best tip for internally communicating important news (key hires, funding, etc.) to the entire company, and why is this key to ensuring the message is communicated well?”
Here’s what YEC community members had to say:
1. Be Transparent
“Be transparent as much as you can and as soon as you can. Nothing is worse for morale than employees thinking they are not in the loop or an equal member of the team. This is especially true if the news will impact that employee financially, organization-wise or responsibility-wise.” ~ Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings
2. Communicate in Person
“Any time a major development happens in a corporate setting, communicating the information personally is a major asset. I have frequently sent emails to discrete groups of individuals and then spent the time to personally meet with each group to deliver the news. This way you have control over your audience but also can deliver a personal feel.” ~ Ryan Bradley, Koester & Bradley, LLP / White River Consulting, LLC
3. Build a Cadence
“Build a cadence. We have a 10-minute all-hands meeting every day where we rotate through what different teams are working on and share company news. Especially since we’ve now gone all remote, this is the central “heartbeat” of our company and where everybody comes together. Monthly, we have a more formal all-hands meeting where we dive deeper into things that take more time.” ~ Tony Scherba, Yeti
4. Stay on Top of Rumors
“To communicate with your team effectively, it’s important to stay on top of rumors and false information so you can squash it from the beginning. Communicating early and often is key to building healthy, professional relationships.” ~ Jared Atchison, WPForms
5. Align Messaging Through Several Channels
“Align messaging and disseminate through various channels. Individuals digest information differently, so it’s important to utilize different modes of communication that resonate with everyone. Some employees may thoroughly read a company email, while others may engage better with an executive video, company meeting, intranet message board or phone call.” ~ Traci Beach, Craft Impact
6. Repeat Your Messaging
“Repetition is key. You need to send things in multiple formats. For us, we send an email, note it in Slack (in multiple channels) and bring it up during our weekly team meetings. Eventually, the news gets out.” ~ Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
7. Host Weekly Video Discussions
“We host weekly video discussions with the entire team. This gives everyone an opportunity to share any key news or updates and to ask any questions they may have. It’s very important that people within a company feel a sense of community and regular calls help to do this. This also helps you quickly identify any issues and get to the bottom of them before they escalate.” ~ Ibrahim Alkurd, New Mine
8. Have a Monthly Town Hall
“We have a monthly town hall event where we talk about the progress of our brands. During this time, we go over housekeeping notes so everyone knows about the latest news and updates from within the company. These small video conferences are super effective at getting your employees engaged in all of the activities taking place at the office.” ~ John Turner, SeedProd LLC
9. Be Clear About Confidentiality
“Our company meetings, also called L10s, have a section in them where we say whether any information exchanged must be kept confidential or not. It’s not always clear-cut that certain news isn’t out to the public yet, so it helps to have it in writing every week. That way, everyone stays on the same page, and no unnecessary information leaks.” ~ Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
10. Create a Company Newsletter
“I suggest creating a company newsletter that goes out either weekly or monthly. Include all of the important updates, deadlines and new hires with your team so they can stay in the loop. You should encourage employees to give you feedback on the newsletters so that you can continue to improve while delivering essential information to all of your departments.” ~ John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
11. Use a Platform of Their Choosing
“Use a platform of their choosing, not yours. You might like to communicate important news through company email, but they may not read it consistently. As long as the news isn’t sensitive, if your team prefers social media, send out your announcements there. That way, you’ll ensure that your employees are as up- to-date as they need to be.” ~ Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
12. Communicate Via Social Media
“In our case, most of our employees’ ages range from 21 to 26 years old, and that’s why we use mainly social media to communicate our key messages to the company. We’ve created a private group on Facebook, and when an employee joins our company we add them to the group. We also communicate the news via our company email, but we’ve identified that our message has more impact on social media.” ~ Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME
13. Use the Company Email
“Using email within the company is one of the best ways to carry out communication processes. Even more, considering the recent events in which communication is almost always remote, making use of technological tools to carry out these processes is an excellent way to save time and maintain contact with different areas of the company.” ~ Kevin Leyes, Leyes Media & Team Leyes, by Leyes Enterprises
14. Utilize Video
“Without a doubt, we are living in the age of video. The fastest way to communicate big news—good or bad—to your entire company is to utilize video. Because they lack emotion, tone, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact and body language, words on a screen can be easily misinterpreted or misunderstood. One of the easiest ways to convey exactly what you want to express is through video.” ~ Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker
15. Use a Dedicated Slack Channel
“We have a Slack channel called Announcements where we share important information with the entire company. The reason this strategy works so well is because we can tag everyone at once when an announcement is made. This ensures that every person that’s on our Slack will get the notification and have the option to comment and ask questions.” ~ Chris Christoff, MonsterInsigh
Image: Depositphotos.com
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