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Successful internal communication

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Today, internal communication defines the durability of a company and lies at the heart of its strategy. There's not just one way to achieve internal communication: it's in fact used in its plurality that it allows you to effectively meet your objectives. 

Internal communication can be delivered from the top down: this is top-down communication: it makes it possible to organize an operating system, to inform about safety or performance criteria, about processes to be put in place, but also to motivate. 

Internal communication is thus neither natural nor spontaneous: it evolves through constant effort. It must be defined by several people, shared, and evaluated regularly. If you wish to make Talkspirit your communication platform (upwards and/or downwards), you'll find some keys to success in this article.

Ensure the dissemination of company information

Create a space for general information gathering 

Via the homepage 

To ensure efficient dissemination of your company's information, we recommend the use of the homepage. You can then highlight the content of your choice but also the work of a team or a particular employee. You can set this page as the default page displayed after each connection to the tool.  

New users will be able to refer to this page to find out about the latest events and projects of your organization, but also to find their main contact points in case they have a question or suggestion. 

Display your company's news on the homepage

We also recommend that you set up a group dedicated to general company information: this will most often be the General group

Via the General Group 

The general group is automatically created with your platform: each new member will be integrated into this space. It is advisable to keep this setting as it is: all the members of the platform can then be informed of messages of interest or importance related to your organization. 

However, we recommend you deactivate the chat room linked to the general group (it's activated by default). Indeed, the general group will not allow targeted exchanges and too many requests from your employees from this channel will be subject to numerous notifications that will dissuade Talkspirit users from connecting to the platform. 

Share information with all platform users

We recommend that you share a first publication in this general group to: 

  • welcome new members and clarify your objectives in using Talkspirit,
  • Explain what benefits they will gain from using the tool,
  • Present the different open/public groups to encourage their discovery, 

In order for this publication to be seen in priority, we recommend that you pin it in the group!

Highlight the importance of certain information by pinning it to the group

You can then post to the group to share general information such as: 

  • to mark the arrival of new employees,
  • Announcing the gain/success of clients,
  • share news/events related to your services,
  • share the creation of a new group that needs to be promoted,
  • Share an announcement from your leader (via live video for example).

If necessary, you can schedule the publication of this information using the scheduling option: you just need to select the dates and times for publication. 

Adapt the construction of your groups to your communication objectives

The group's a space for sharing information and collaboration on a main topic.

Create a group by business, site, or department to ensure that the information provided in the group is of value to its members.

Share official information in the news feed

Use the news feed to share official or important information and ensure that it can be relayed and easily accessed. Chat is recommended for fluid or ad hoc exchanges on topics that do not need to be shared in an official way. If there are more than 20 participants in a conversation, publication in a news feed should be preferred.

If you have several general communication groups, we invite you to organize them under a theme of Institutional Groups or Open Groups. 

Create public groups tailored to users' needs

You can also name each of these groups @all - Group Name so that platform users can easily identify it as an open group.

Regulate and supervise the exchanges in the groups

Delegate the management of each space to a group leader. This person will be responsible for disseminating information, supervising the exchanges that take place there and, if necessary, modifying the users' permissions. The objective here is that each group fulfils a precise communication objective in line with the information that is shared. For example, information on the restructuring of your organization would not be appropriate in a group dedicated to human resources processes. 

Define the type of communication that will be shared: upwards, downwards, both? This allows you to define the publishing and reaction permissions of the group members. Depending on the publishing permissions you set, you can also restrict the creation and editing of documents to a few members or allow all group members to share new information.

Give visibility to your publications to generate interest among your employees

Enhance your publications with visuals attached as an attachment or in the form of a gallery.

Generate user interest by associating visuals with your content

Prefer the event format if you wish to know whether or not members are attending a meeting. To give visibility on all the events taking place in the company or on the important dates of your structure, we recommend you to display this information in your Talkspirit calendar. 

To increase the visibility of certain information, use the Set as important option which will place your post at the top of the user's news feed for a set period of time.

Engage in dialogue with your employees 

Involve your employees in your discussions on a particular theme to create commitment. 

Make sure communication is top-down but also bottom-up. Sometimes employees aren't involved in projects that require decision-making. However, employees face conflicts and possible obstacles every day, and they should be informed about them in order to make a decision in any case. 

Furthermore, how can you understand the tools that need to be put in place to optimize the working time and productivity of your employees without involving the employee in this analysis?

Communicating means listening to your teams in order to better understand the expectations of each of them so that your structure can evolve.

Encourage your employees to react to content shared in groups

Encourage reaction to communications (through likes, comments, use of emojis, mentioning) but also speaking up in the various discussion areas. 

Ask your colleagues for help with the

It's important to realize that speaking out or participating is'nt always easy—especially in front of a large audience. That's why it's important to create a friendly atmosphere to encourage colleagues are comfortable participating.

Encourage your employees to complete their profile

In this context, make sure that the various users of the platform have a completed profile and that a photo is associated with their account: it will be easier for your employees to identify their contacts and to share their ideas or objections if they're sure that they're speaking to the people authorised to provide information.

Display your profile information to platform users

Create exchange meetings

Create exchange meetings on the platform through:

  • webinars that will encourage your employees to share their experience on a given subject,
  • Competitions via the survey functionality 
Create exchange meetings

We recommend that you collect opinions from your employees after they have spoken (through a survey, for example). They can then submit a new point of view or new ideas. 

You can create a dedicated question and answer group to gather all the suggestions from your staff. 

Strengthen the sense of belonging 

Your employees will be much more involved in their work if they are proud to belong to their company. It is therefore essential to develop a sense of belonging within your organization. But how do you cultivate this feeling of belonging?

Clearly present the different areas of the platform

Prepare the arrival of new users on the platform! This is an opportunity to instil your company's values and to involve the user in the discovery of the tool. We recommend that you personalize the welcome message on the platform: insert a video message from your management explaining the objectives you wish to achieve through the implementation of the tool.

Define the objective of each group in a publication

Also clearly define the different areas of the platform so that your employee quickly understands his or her role and targets the workspaces in which he or she will work. 

Communicate your objectives

It is important to communicate your goals—whether they're awesome or not so awesome. Don't hesitate to share the data you have collected in various formats and compare it to a similar event by sharing the publication.

That way, you'll be able to observe the changes that have been made from one month or year to the next and take targeted action. 

Highlight good results 

Don't forget to congratulate your employees when they achieve good results: you can then highlight their work or project by publishing in the group and mention them for example.

Highlight good results

You can also highlight major projects or works on the homepage

And the less good ones

If great results create a sense of pride, less than great results will allow your employees to find their place in the company's progress. 

In this case, involve all employees in your decisions: give them the opportunity to express themselves by collecting their opinions via surveys and by creating exchange spaces dedicated to collecting their suggestions! 

Encourage communication

By encouraging your employees to share with each other, you will promote social cohesion among your employees and increase their sense of belonging to your organization. 

While you'll want to encourage exchanges on the platform, we also recommend that you vary the communication formats. Once you've collected the opinions and suggestions of your employees, you can discuss the subject in a video conference meeting organized to debrief! 

Getting to know your company better

Give your employees the opportunity to better understand the workings of the organization in which they work, to master its values, its figures, etc. We recommend that you share these various elements from the home page, which is easily accessible to all users. 

Clearly present important events and processes

Share important events

Please feel free to include the major events and processes that your company undertakes from the homepage to give your employees visibility on the life of your organization. 

We recommend you:

  • Create a dedicated space for your HR team to speak, moderate webinars, and share documents about the internal workings of your company. 
  • Ask your management to speak occasionally, through live broadcasts on specific subjects which you can then pin to the group for easy access.
Find the replay of the live video in your groups
  • Don't hesitate to survey your colleagues on the frequency and relevance of the information shared in this group to ensure that it plays its full role. 

Promote knowledge sharing

This will allow you to keep the know-how of employees despite departures from the company: you'll be able to pass on information easily to newcomers.

Create a collective memory 

By promoting knowledge sharing, you'll also create a collective memory that'll allow you to remember what has already been done, tried or even failed. 

This method uses the knowledge of your company's employees and is therefore low cost, while at the same time providing "tailor-made knowledge" for your organization.

Unlike an external trainer, the knowledge exchanged will be specific to your organization and its sector of activity. 

Ask the most experienced profiles to share their knowledge

And if sharing knowledge is beneficial for the company as well as for its employees, it's also beneficial for the person sharing his or her experience. Indeed, this would result in professional maturation and, by extension, greater self-confidence! If you're asked to pass on your knowledge, this is a recognition of it. 

To share their expertise, each employee must organize their speech in such a way as to make it intelligible and thus enable them to better master their subject. This will help them to identify the strong points of their skills. This could also be stimulating for an employee at the end of their career who can then pass the torch to the new project leaders.

By sharing his knowledge, the employee will probably find himself facing questions from his peers: this will enable him to flesh out his thinking and gain expertise. His colleagues will then benefit from additional information but will also allow him to feed his approaches to the project.  

Do you need help to launch your enterprise social network on Talkspirit? 

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