[Webinar] Streamlining Internal Communication in Multi-Site Companies

Internal communication challenges are plentiful in multi-site companies. When employees are spread across several locations, the consequences are inevitable: information silos, difficulty moving beyond top-down communication, disengagement, and a loss of connection among colleagues.

Addressing these challenges is essential for multi-site companies that want to engage and retain their employees, while also saving time and money. Because it’s proven: companies with the most engaged employees are on average 17% more productive and 21% more profitable!¹

If you too are looking for tools and best practices to streamline your multi-site internal communication, you’re in the right place 🙂. This is exactly the topic we covered in our webinar on March 16, 2023, with:

• Adèle Hošek, Lead Customer Success at Talkspirit
• Elise Attia, Head of Internal Communication at Solimut Mutuelle de France

Here is the summary and replay of these sessions, along with feedback from participants 👇

The Benefits of Effective Multi-Site Internal Communication

If you’re in charge of internal communication, you’re probably already convinced of its importance. But for your approach to succeed, it’s also essential that your leadership and employees are convinced too!

Our advice: clearly highlight the benefits that strong multi-site internal communication can bring. For example, good internal communication is a great way to:

• align on shared practices and common processes,
• preserve information and make it easily accessible,
• boost productivity and innovation,
• improve transparency,
• build a sense of belonging,
• break down communication barriers.

Best Practices for Successful Multi-Site Internal Communication

Once your employees are convinced of the value of the approach, it’s time to implement several best practices to streamline your internal communication across multiple sites. Adèle Hošek, Lead Customer Success at Talkspirit, recommends:

• Deploying a comprehensive tool that centralizes all your communication channels. 29% of internal communication managers surveyed during the webinar use, for example, an enterprise social network or an intranet for their internal communication.

• Celebrate team successes on this platform,
• Encourage participation by launching polls or an idea box where employees can submit their feedback,
• Share company news, and more broadly news from your ecosystem (competitors, customers, partners, etc.),
• Facilitate connections between users by creating discussion groups to encourage mutual support and informal exchanges (why not create a “Water Cooler” group, for instance?),
• Organize events on a regular basis (via video conference or in person).

Read also: [Expert insights] Internal communication: 4 examples of companies that got it right

Finally, don’t forget to involve employees and managers in your internal communication! A factor considered essential by 22% of participants.

Deploying Your Internal Communication Platform in 6 Steps

As you can see, your internal communication platform will play a key role in implementing these best practices. To ensure a successful rollout, our expert Adèle Hošek recommends following these 6 key steps:

1. Analyze employee needs to understand the challenges and obstacles they face.
2. Audit existing tools already in use across all your departments and offices.
3. Involve senior leadership in your project so they can sponsor and champion it.
4. Create an internal communication plan outlining the steps to take before, during and after rollout, and define who will relay communications (managers, site managers, etc.).
5. Identify and train ambassadors (enthusiastic employees who want to be involved in the project) who can help generate word-of-mouth and drive engagement on the platform.
6. Encourage initiative-taking by involving employees in your decision-making processes.

• Add a banner to download the internal communication plan template

A Real-World Case Study: Solimut Mutuelle de France

A Talkspirit customer since 2020, Solimut Mutuelle de France successfully streamlined its multi-site internal communication by replacing its “aging intranet” with a modern internal communication platform.

Read also: Improving Information Sharing with Talkspirit: The Solimut Mutuelle de France Story

A Need to Move Beyond Top-Down Communication

With 500 employees spread across 4 administrative sites and 57 reception points, this mutual insurance company faced several challenges, including:

• information shared in a predominantly top-down manner,
• a lack of connection between headquarters and field employees, as well as between staff on different sites.

These are challenges that many multi-site companies face. As evidence:

• 28% of internal communication managers surveyed in the webinar report that developing upward and/or cross-functional communication is one of their main challenges
• 28% struggle to foster connections between employees,
• 25% say their main challenge is boosting engagement.

And with good reason: the tools used to share information internally are not always fit for purpose. Indeed, for 31% of participants, internal communication still relies on email, while 19% rely on a newsletter or internal newsletter.

Choosing a User-Friendly French-Made Tool

To address these challenges, Solimut Mutuelle de France implemented a dedicated platform: Talkspirit! 100% made in France, Talkspirit met all of Solimut Mutuelle’s criteria, particularly in terms of data hosting.

“Given our industry and our legal obligations, we must be very careful about GDPR compliance. The fact of having a tool hosted in France allowed us to meet this legal requirement, and thus guarantee data security”, explains Elise Attia, Head of Internal Communication at the company.

Beyond security, “we appreciated the many features available to us, which allow us to progressively develop other aspects of internal communication without having to switch tools.”

Other elements also made a difference, including:

• the responsiveness and proximity of the team, “who are proactive in supporting you throughout the deployment of your platform”,
• and the ease of use of the tool, which allowed the entire workforce to get on board quickly.

A Stronger Internal Communication Than Ever

Deployed at the start of the March 2020 lockdown, Talkspirit transformed internal communication at Solimut Mutuelle de France. Today, the platform enables them to:

• share company news and projects via the home page, and especially via posts, which allow project leads to showcase their achievements,
• know who is who and who does what via the directory,
• facilitate exchanges between colleagues through the chat.

“When we sign a new contract, it’s the sales team that shares it directly on the platform, not the internal communications team. And it works really well, as these posts generate the most engagement”, reveals Elise Attia.

The result: since implementing Talkspirit, “we have managed to get people to see that staying informed about the company is also part of the job”. And that’s not all: the company has also succeeded in forging connections between employees across different sites and boosting their engagement!

Key Success Factors Identified by Solimut Mutuelle de France

For Elise Attia, three key factors largely contributed to the project’s success:

• Collecting employee feedback through surveys, which helps identify what worked well vs. what can be improved — and turns employees into active participants in the process!
• Training users, which helps remove barriers and ease adoption. On their end, Solimut Mutuelle de France implemented two training modules: one for discovering Talkspirit, and one for “power users” responsible for managing groups and creating events.
• Organizing challenges (on company topics or more informal ones like sports or cinema), which helped animate company life in an engaging, fun way and strengthen team cohesion.

In many multi-site companies, some of these best practices are already in place. For instance, 65% of webinar participants report collecting employee feedback on their internal communication initiatives — which is very encouraging!

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To Conclude

In short, streamlining internal communication in multi-site companies requires drafting an internal communication plan, centralizing information on a single platform, encouraging employees to speak up, and regularly gathering everyone’s feedback.

Want more details on the essential tools and best practices for multi-site internal communication? Watch the webinar replay 👇

Watch the replay

¹ Gallup “State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report” study