The 7 Key Internal Communication Challenges

Poor internal communication can be costly! According to a Mitel survey, French companies lose more than €9,000 per employee every year due to ineffective collaboration and internal communication.  The best way to fix it? Optimize your internal communication, starting by prioritizing your biggest challenges. 

What are the main internal communication challenges in the era of hybrid work ? And what actions and tools should you put in place to address them? We explain everything in this article 👇

       

1. Streamlining Information Sharing and Access 

Information is the lifeblood of any organization. Facilitating access, flow, and sharing of information — ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ — is one of the key challenges for internal communication. This is especially important for organizations that have adopted hybrid working, split between in-person and remote work. Poor internal communication leads to silos, loss of connection, wasted time, and reduced productivity in hybrid teams. 

Indeed, according to a Panopto study, the difficulty of getting the right information at the right time costs each employee around 13 working hours per week (including 5 hours contacting colleagues with the relevant knowledge, and 8 hours looking for solutions independently).

To avoid this, internal communication must adopt several best practices to facilitate access and sharing of information internally, for example:

• Share information on a single channel (for example, a collaborative platform all-in-one) accessible to all employees, to save time and avoid information fragmentation 
• Communicate regularly using different formats to keep employees engaged (for example: videos, image and GIF-enhanced posts, webinars, video conference meetings, etc.)
• Create groups dedicated to knowledge sharing on your enterprise social network (for example, groups for sharing industry news articles, field feedback, or specific professional expertise)

2. Engaging and Motivating Employees 

Improving engagement and employee motivation is also one of the main internal communication challenges. And for good reason: companies with the most engaged employees are on average 17% more productive and 21% more profitable than those with disengaged employees.¹

However, only 6% of French employees are truly engaged at work (compared to 17% in Norway, for example).¹ To address this, it is important to take targeted actions proactively. 

Here are some ways to improve employee engagement:

• Give greater visibility to everyone’s actions by highlighting their successes on your internal social network (for example, through a dedicated post, photos, and/or a video interview)
• Gamify your internal communication, for example by offering quizzes, challenges, or mini-games that will boost employee participation
• Involve employees in internal communication by inviting them to create content about company life (for example, a video presenting their role) and/or to suggest new ideas to improve their quality of life at work

Lire aussi : Internal Communication: 7 Tips to Boost Employee Engagement

       

3. Encouraging Upward Feedback

Encouraging upward feedback is another key challenge for internal communication. Indeed, this feedback enables you to gather valuable information that a purely top-down communication approach would miss. For example, it can reveal:

• problems employees face in the field,
• conflicts that may arise within project teams or between managers and their reports,
• requests and improvement suggestions from customers,
• misunderstandings related to certain communications,
• etc.

Lire aussi : Internal Communication: Why Encourage Feedback?

All of this essential information will help you stay attuned to employee needs and continuously adjust your internal communication strategy.

To cultivate this feedback culture, we recommend:

• Raising awareness among employees and managers about the importance of feedback
• Offering them training to learn how to give feedback at the right time and in the most effective way
• Acknowledging the work done by teams and thanking them through a dedicated post or live during your company meetings
• Regularly sharing polls with employees to gather feedback on company initiatives, and making time for 1-1 conversations when needed
• Creating an “Ideas and Improvement Suggestions” group on your internal social network, where any employee can contribute

Lire aussi : [Webinar] Why and How to Build a Feedback Culture?

4. Encouraging Cross-Functional Exchanges 

Beyond upward communication, it is also essential to encourage cross-functional communication, so that employees working in different departments and/or offices can easily communicate with each other, regardless of their hierarchical level. This cross-functionality makes it possible to:

• stimulate collective intelligence,
• break down organizational silos,
• unite the different teams,
• foster open dialogue,
• and drive innovation. 

Fostering these cross-functional exchanges is often a challenge for internal communication, especially when the organization is spread across multiple sites. 

Lire aussi : [Ebook] The 7 Challenges of Internal Communication in a Multi-Site Context

Here are some initiatives to help you boost cross-functional communication:

• Create processes that clarify what types of information should be shared with whom and how
• Organize cross-team meetings to bring greater transparency to each department’s projects and identify collaboration opportunities
• Implement a mentoring program to encourage knowledge and best practice sharing across departments
• Deploy a collaborative platform (like Talkspirit!) that allows employees to communicate with anyone in the company

       

5. Involving Managers

Managers play a key role in internal communication, as they are responsible for:

• relaying management messages to their team,
• defining the roles and responsibilities of each team member,
• giving employees regular feedback on their work,
• motivating and engaging their employees.

Like internal communication itself, the manager plays a genuine communication role within the company. However, they don’t always have the time (or the habit) of communicating regularly, whether within their own team or with the rest of the organization. This is why it is important to put initiatives in place to more actively involve managers in internal communication. 

You can in particular:

• Organize training to help managers develop their internal communication skills
• Give them regular best practices and concrete action ideas to implement (for example, by making a weekly post dedicated to managers on your enterprise social network)
• Create a practical guide to managerial communication (including for example post templates to onboard a new employee, organize a team-building event, showcase your team’s projects to other departments, etc.)

Lire aussi : Hybrid Work: Management Best Practices

6. Fostering Inclusion 

Due to their ways of working, some employees are sometimes excluded from internal communication. This is particularly true of frontline workers (also called blue-collar workers): field employees who don’t have a professional email address, and who therefore don’t receive company email communications. As a result: they are sometimes completely disconnected from what is happening in the company.

Lire aussi : Connecting Employees Without an Email Address: Lyon Parc Auto’s Success Story

Remote workers, too, can be affected by this lack of information, especially when they are a minority within the company. While many companies formalize official communications in writing, informal exchanges primarily happen verbally — and especially in person. Over time, this can disadvantage remote workers who are not included in these exchanges.

It is therefore important for companies to make the effort to include all employees in internal communication, regardless of their working arrangements. Replacing your internal emails with an enterprise social network (ESN) is a great way to achieve this. Unlike emails, an ESN lets you broadcast your messages to all employees in real time — and in a dynamic way!

Talkspirit, for example, offers an email-free access feature, allowing you to invite all your frontline workers to your platform. Feel free to try the solution and see what it can offer you in terms of internal communication.

Try Talkspirit for Free

7. Maintaining Company Cohesion 

Maintaining company cohesion is essential for internal communication, as it has a direct impact on engagement, sense of belonging, well-being at work, and, ultimately, employee retention. For proof: according to an Opinionway survey for Monster, more than 40% of French employees say they would consider leaving their job due to a poor work atmosphere. 

Building greater cohesion can also help reduce employee isolation, which tends to increase with remote work. Indeed, according to the Paris Workplace study, nearly 60% of Paris-region employees say they sometimes feel isolated at work. Hence the need to put initiatives in place to unite all teams!

Here are some ideas to inspire you:

• Organize in-person and video-conference events (for example, seminars, webinars, after-work events, sports workshops, etc.) and communicate about them regularly
• Encourage managers to organize team-building event within their team
• Showcase your company culture and news on your internal social network (for example, by adding a dedicated section on your home page)
• Create communities dedicated to informal exchanges on your ESN, and encourage employees to create their own groups (for example, to discuss cultural outings, movies, sports, etc.)

In Conclusion

You now know the main internal communication challenges and the actions and tools to address them. One thing is certain: the enterprise social network will be your best ally for improving your internal communication, and ensuring that everyone has access to the right information at the right time. 

🤔 But what does this look like in practice? Discover in this practical guide how 10 of our clients use Talkspirit to energize their internal communication:

Access the Practical Guide

In our practical guide “10 Client Initiatives for Better Internal Communication”, you will discover: 10 examples of companies using Talkspirit to improve their internal communication, along with tips and tricks for better information sharing and strengthening cohesion within your company.

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¹ Gallup study “State of the Global Workplace” (2021)