How to write an internal communications plan

Internal communications has, for the most part, moved on from the days of a tatty poster on a communal noticeboard. Nowadays, employees expect to be fully up to date with the latest on business strategy, vision, and objectives. After all, if an employee doesn’t know how their job affects business success, they’re much less likely to be engaged and productive.

Internal communications is the corporate glue that holds a company together. Done right, it ensures employees have pride in their business, are committed to achieving results, and are collaborative and innovative in their working practices.

To deliver a solid, strategic communications campaign, you need to have a solid, strategic plan (you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?)

Planning doesn’t come naturally to some people, so you’ll be pleased to know that it’s actually pretty formulaic. (Once upon a time, I used to write eight different communications campaigns for eight different departments, all in one hectic, frantic week.)

Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated. But there are a coupld of elements you’ll need to cover. 

Where do I start when writing an internal communications strategy?

A lot of the time, you’ll be creating an internal comms strategy with someone who (no matter what they might tell you) isn’t as expert as you are in communications. If you jump straight in with the nuts and bolts, chances are you’ll lose them. You want them to be engaged, not confused. 

So work with them to do a situation analysis: Where are you now? Where do you want to be? Why is it important? Who do we want to talk to? How does this project link to the wider business strategies? Do we have resource? What are our timings? 

Make sure you manage expectations on what can and can’t be delivered. 

Once you have this overview, you can start thinking about what you want to achieve – your objectives. There’s very little point in doing something if you’re not sure why you’re doing it. Your objectives will steer the rest of your campaign. 

All objectives (whether part of a communications strategy or not) should be SMART, or, even better, SMARTT.

What are SMART (or SMARTT) objectives?

SPECIFIC

• Well defined and detailed – it should be clear to anyone looking at them (even with no knowledge of the project) what it you’re trying to achieve. 

MEASUREABLE

• You need metrics to show you’ve achieved your objective. Use data to show change in behaviour or sentiment.

ACHIEVEABLE

• Is it realistic that you’ll get 100% of your employees thinking, feeling, or doing something? No. Sorry, but no. Base your objectives around the available time, resources, knowledge, and budget available to you. 

RELEVANT

• Does your objective align with the wider communications and business strategies? Does it matter? 

TIMED

• Set yourself a clear and realistic deadline. This will help you be accountable and give you a sense of priority. 

TARGETED

• Know who this objective is aimed at – have a clear audience for your objective. 

An example of a SMARTT objective could be:

“Increase the number of leaders in Acme UK who understand their role in the long-term plan and feel they can explain it succinctly to their team from 54% to 65% by the end of Q3”.

Once we have those objectives, we can start to work out what our strategy is.

What’s a strategy?

If you’ve read this breakdown on the difference between objectives, strategy, and tactics, you should have this question covered. If not, very simply: your strategy is the approach you’re going to take to achieve your objectives.

With a recent client, we were working on a comms plan for their CSR commitments. The strategy for this had three tiers:

EDUCATE
Make it relevant and credible
Establish a clear link with our purpose, strategy, and business priorities; position it as a long-term commitment, not a tick-box exercise; and lead from the top with visible and vocal senior leader involvement.

AMPLIFY
Make it personal
Focus on employees and the places they live and work; tell stories about how employees are getting involved; and use real life examples and successes

ADVOCATE
Make it meaningful and measurable.
Provide employees with a clear vision of what success looks like; provide tools and content to share externally. provide tangible and understandable evidence; focus on tangibles, not abstracts; develop robust evaluation metrics; and encourage two-way communications

Who are you talking to? Everyone? No, you’re not. If your audience is “all staff”, you’re not going to get very far. Make sure you segment your audiences:

• Who are they?
• Where are they based?
• Do they have any influence? On whom?
• Who has influence over them
• How do they receive information?
• What do you want them to do?

Your key messages (find out how to create these here) should be repeated throughout your communications, multiple times. Don’t be afraid of repetition. Just because you’ve been in the room, and heard things ten times, it doesn’t mean your audience has. This might be the first time they’ve seen your communication. Make it count.

The best messages are clear, concise, compelling, and have a call to action. When you’re creating your key messages, here are some of the things that you might want to include:

• What is the current situation?
• What is changing and what are the consequences of this change (for your audience)?
• What do you need them to think / feel / do?

Your key messages should be simple.

To have the most impact, it’s not just what you say, but also the way you say it. When writing your key messages, it’s important to think about the tone and words that you use. An email filled with jargon and technical instructions is unlikely to produce results. Telling your employees what you need them to do won’t work either.

If your communication is written in a conversational tone (“normal, not formal”), is clear in the ask, explains the background, what it means for your audience, and why it matters, employees are more likely to engage. No one likes feeling like they’re back at school!

Got your messages sorted? Now onto the fun bit – tactics.

How do I come up with communications tactics?

Once you know what you’re setting out to achieve, what you’re going to say, and who you’re going to say it to, you need to look at the “how” – the tactics. Before you come up with the creative and innovative things you’re going to do, do this:

• Assess what channels are already open to you and, importantly, which channels your audience actually uses and trusts.
• Are there any new channels you can create that might work?
• Do you have a feedback mechanism built into each of your tactics? If not, how are you going to facilitate those conversations?
• How are you going to evaluate success (and the outcome) of this tactic?
• What kind of budget and time do you have? Be realistic.
• What can you do that’s different?
• What can you learn from previous campaigns or tactics you’ve tried?

What does success look like?

In theory, you should know this part, as it’ll be based on your beautiful SMARTT objectives. But think about what data you actually need. Do you need to run pulse surveys? Is it all about click rates? Can you use data from a regular HR survey?

Communications is about changing what people think, feel, or do. Any measurement you can put in place showing the outcome (not output) of your work will help show your value to senior leaders. Once you’ve finished your campaign, why not write an evaluation document – detail the results, the wins, the failures (because you will have some) and recommendations for next time. This will ensure that you continually learn and improve in your communications.

What else do you need in a communications strategy?

More stuff? Surely not!

But yes, as well as everything above, don’t forget to put the more boring project management type elements.

Budget – an important part of a campaign! What’s your budget? How are you using it? What’s being spent where?

Timeline – What’s happening, when? Who’s responsible for delivery? When are the key sign off dates? Work backwards – start at when something needs to be live and then plot backwards. Hopefully you won’t have to start doing things last month.

Roles and responsibilities – Who’s responsible for signing off what? Is it you? Is it your boss? Who are your key stakeholders? What do they need to know, when?

I know, it seems like a lot. But remember, this plan is a living document. It’s not set in stone. Evaluate as you go along, be flexible, and try and have fun?

Need help pulling together an internal communications plan that actually works? Get in touch and let’s talk through what you need.

Beaumont is a communications agency based in Lausanne, Switzerland. We work with clients all around the world to change the way they talk about themselves – helping them create engaging stories that motivate action.