We all know how important communication is to running a tight ship. Without it, your business will never be as effective or productive as it can be. In fact, businesses with good communication practices are three and a half times more likely to outperform their competitors.

But what constitutes good communication? Many have clocked onto the fact that email isn’t as great as we once thought. The average office worker receives 121 emails a day and only 38% are important enough to actually be read. That means 62% are unimportant, wasting our time – if they even get read before being sent straight to the trash. That hits at the core of the problem with emails; there is no real focus on priority. The most important email is always the one at the top and you can’t tell how urgent it is unless you have actually read it. And even when you can mark it as high/medium/low priority, most people just make it high priority, making the whole system pointless.

So what are some other ways you could communicate with your staff? These three ideas will help you keep spam to a minimum and, hopefully, engage your workforce.

Posters

The problem with emails is they’re easy to ignore. With one click, you can delete them. There is nothing to compel you to read them, nor is there something to make them at least a bit visually interesting.

So consider posters as an alternative way of getting across simple, snappy messages. They won’t be ideal for longer-form concepts but will work as a means to hit key points quickly and with clarity. There is a concept in marketing called “visual communication” which is what it sounds like: representing information through visual means.

90% of marketers consider visuals to be an absolute necessity for their strategies. So why not take inspiration from it in your own workplace? This is something the government understands and why they have created this poster, which you can use to inform your staff about coronavirus measures. The varied colours and bold font are a great way to attract attention and disseminate information.

Newsletters

This is by no means a new concept but is still worth mentioning. A newsletter – be it weekly or monthly – is a good way to condense a number of emails into one easily digestible format. It’s also a more visually engaging way of putting forward this information, using the same logic from the previous section.

A key component of a newsletter is to make extracting information easy. Not everyone will want to read through it all, so any important information should be front and centre. You can also use it as a way to boost your staff morale, taking the time to point out specific hard workers.

Videos

Another way to impart information could be through video. Much like how movie reviews have gone from writing to video, so could you internal communications. Again, like with the posters, it’s a visual form of getting your point across that is more engaging than an email.

It would be especially useful if you wanted an alternative to a long, wordy document. Simply turn it into a script and ‘perform’ it instead. Video also opens the door to new types of content, such as a quick-fire Q&A with management. People are more likely to watch a video; in fact, email click rates rocket up 300% when there’s a video attached.

The problem with all of these suggestions though is how do you know the message has been received? It’s all well and good putting out your new poster, newsletter, or video, but if no one pays attention to it, how will you be able to get your point across?

You need to find your staff can communicate when they’ve seen the vital information. A dedicated platform is a great way to mark off who has or hasn’t seen it and follow up with them. It would be accessible by all staff at their convenience and push a notification to them when there’s something new. That, combined with your new method of communication, will be a huge boost to your internal communications.

At Inform People, we can provide just this solution. Our platform is the perfect way to share information and communicate in the clearest way possible. If you would like to know more, feel free to call us on +44 (0)161 713 4104 or via email.