The COVID-19 situation has had a wide-ranging impact on enterprises. It has affected sales and market prices, but it has also altered how we operate. To work under the new restrictions, organizational structures and internal procedures had to be drastically changed. Companies have had little option but to reconsider their Internal communications as remote working has become the rule rather than the exception. When employees begin to return to their desks, the new working atmosphere is vastly different from the one they left months ago.
The crisis has compelled organizations to examine their internal communication strategy and determine whether it is still fit for purpose. According to a Deloitte study, just 47 per cent of employers thought they had the capability or policies to respond to a crisis with the best potential outcome. This was an issue that needed to be remedied as soon as possible.
In the post-Covid world, your plan must address the difficulty of reaching out to off-site workers, no matter where they are. It also requires a new level of immediacy, which is now unheard of in day-to-day business. It is no longer acceptable to wait many hours for everyone to open an email. The dangers of misinformation and the requirement.
The COVID-19 outbreak has altered the internal communication landscape. This blog delves further into what it takes to communicate effectively in the post-Covid era. We look at six significant instances of internal communication that effectively controlled and overcame the issue of corporate disruption.
Some Internal Communication Case Studies for the Post-Covid Era
While no one could have predicted the epidemic, it has at the very least prepared us for any future disruptive occurrences. You will be future-proofing your firm by implementing some of the following internal communication best practices into your planning. These employee communication examples can assist you in developing a comprehensive and flexible internal communications plan, regardless of what is on the horizon.
Transparency and clarity
During the business interruption, your staff require clear direction with no room for misunderstanding. It’s reasonable for them to feel concerned and perplexed. They will undoubtedly have many inquiries, such as:
“How will all of these changes affect my job?”
“What are the new procedures and rules?”
Will I lose my job as a result of the company’s reorganization?
This is a circumstance in which excellent internal communication is critical. Even when there is no crisis, many employees believe they do not have access to all of the facts. According to a Gallup poll, 74% of employees think they’re losing out on vital information at work. Your internal communication approach must guarantee that everyone has access to the information they require and that all of their inquiries are addressed.
Notifications in Real-Time
The epidemic has made it very evident that in a crisis, time is essential. To avoid misinformation spreading throughout your organization, you must provide answers and directions as soon as possible. This is not the moment to say anything like, “I’ll get back to you later.” You must have those answers at your fingertips and distribute them to your team as soon as possible.
Your staff do not have the luxury of waiting for crucial information or searching for it. According to Gallup, the average employee spends 2.5 hours hunting for information. This time-lapse must now be removed in the post-Covid landscape.
Demonstrable Leadership
In the post-Covid world, a strong leadership presence is even more critical. Your senior management team is crucial for assuaging workers’ anxieties and soothing them as they guide the ship through rocky waters. They are well poised to serve as significant message carriers, and the tone they adopt will permeate the organization.
It is also critical to assign a clear role of responsibility for actioning both internal and external communication and ensure that there is an apparent corporate authority behind it. Leadership must guide from the top and cascade down through the organization in uncertainty.
Segmentation of Messages
The necessity for segmentation is one criterion that has grown increasingly significant in the post-Covid era. With employees now distributed throughout the country, segmenting the material you provide internally has become critical. Businesses are now discovering that they must send out customized communications targeted to the audience in question. This is a fantastic place to start if you want to increase internal communications, especially during times of transition and disruption.
Sometimes a company-wide statement is all that is required. However, there are occasions when it is critical to guarantee that workers only receive the information they need.
Channels of Feedback
When your workers return to the office, they will undoubtedly have questions. There are many of them! They will want to know how the crisis has affected their positions, how it has affected the company’s internal structure, and how it has affected sales income. If you can answer these questions promptly and directly, the benefits of solid internal communication genuinely shine through. Fear and terror will swiftly spread across the firm if you don’t do this.
The solution is to make it simple to ask and answer such questions. You must establish feedback channels to gather and process your workforce’s queries and complaints.
Evaluation of Impact
It’s always essential to determine if your messages are heard and comprehended. However, this need becomes even more pressing at times of transition and uncertainty. If critical communications are not delivered, employees’ health and safety may be jeopardised. Only 40% of internal communication practitioners, according to the IABC, measure the success of their plan. In a circumstance where your stringent laws must be implemented, this is a risk you cannot accept.
You need to know if your employees read your material and receive updates, and you should also know which employees are not reading them and rectify the matter as soon as possible. Tracking your internal communication metrics is a must-have policy, not a nice-to-have.
Ticking all the Boxes with the Employee App
Internal communications have never been more critical. Businesses are more conscious than ever that a well-planned communications strategy may differ between riding the wave of a crisis and sinking beneath it. It’s also becoming evident that the old-school intranet-and-email method won’t cut it in a post-Covid era.
Internal communications applications are increasingly considered the solution in this changing corporate context. They provide the immediacy that many other platforms do not. They seamlessly reach out throughout the organisation, engaging with even the most difficult-to-reach people. They also give a straightforward method of measuring outcomes, letting you know if you’re on the correct route.
These internal communication examples demonstrate why employee applications quickly become the must-have option for 2021.
