I don’t think there is a single company that can say they are absolutely perfect at communication. Most can agree there is a need for better communication that doesn’t involve having more conference calls or meetings that are simply to relay important information. According to a study done in 2018, Gallagher’s research found that 60 percent of companies do not have a long-term internal communications strategy at all. The businesses that do, 12 percent do not measure the effectiveness of these communications.
If you are a small organization, it can be easy to have a monthly town hall meeting or gather everyone in a room for a company update. The challenge for large enterprises is communicating across different offices and possibly even different time zones can be costly both in time and resources. Using an intranet allows employees in any location or time zone to obtain pertinent information and updates without it costing too much.
Many intranets come with capabilities that allow enterprises to significantly improve internal communication. Specifically, Liferay 7.1 comes with knowledge bases, forums and a blogging platform out-of-the-box. Setting up these features can be as turning them on and adding in users.
The following three challenges are very common among large enterprise. We’ll discuss each one and how an intranet can overcome them.
Greater Transparency and Communication From Leadership
Often times, employees don’t feel like they have a good sense of overall business goals. How is important information, such as product releases, new policies, and significant marketplace changes, being communicated?
With an intranet, leaders could post messages and updates so the entire organization can be notified. Additionally, it’s important to set up proper analytics to track user engagement. If leadership is posting updates and new content but no one is reading it, it is a waste of time. Allowing for people to respond or ask questions is another way to encourage engagement. It creates an opportunity for internal discussion and managers to jump in and add value to the conversation.
Instead of sending email announcements or updates, with a portal like Liferay 7.1, you can target content so only people with specific roles will see the announcement. Another option is to organize content based on certain topics or tags and allow employees to be notified when there is an update on each topic.
Lack of interdepartmental communication
There are many communication tools out there; Slack, Skype, or an internal communicator all have their advantages and their own purposes. In terms of departments effectively communicating so everyone is aware of what is taking place, those tools are not effective. Updates can be missed or ignored. Often times, Marketing doesn’t know what Product is doing and Sales isn’t aware of updates as well. Without proper collaboration, you end up with inconsistencies in what Marketing produces to what Product envisions to what Sales wants to bring to market.
With an intranet, there is the opportunity to create team blogs and have new posts can be pushed to relevant people. Another option would be to create specific forums or message boards where each department would update frequently. Creating this type of change would require are a culture shift within the entire company; there would need to be a strong encouragement to seek out information on the intranet instead of going to each department head.
Without proper collaboration, you end up with inconsistencies in what Marketing produces to what Product envisions to what Sales wants to bring to market.
Lack of consistent feedback from employees
As an organization, one of the ways to grow is to be constantly improving by acting on feedback. Do employees have a way of providing feedback? Do they feel like they are being heard and there is action being taken? In addition to feedback, it’s important to have a way that employees can give suggestions, share new ideas and feel like they can contribute to the overall success of the company.
With an intranet, leadership teams can provide a way of getting feedback from their employees and clearly show how they are implementing it. One way of doing this is by having a forum where employees can comment on different topics. Another option would be to build an employee feedback survey and send them out to employees. Regardless of the method you choose, making it accessible to employees and giving them a reason to participate will help it be successful.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that simply using a tool is not going to solve all internal communication challenges. The first step is acknowledging these challenges exist and figuring out how they can be fixed. Better internal communication still starts by changing company culture and increasing personal interactions. By implementing the right tool and encouraging communication and feedback will improve corporate culture. A well-implemented intranet can significantly help solve these internal communication challenges.
