7 Best Practices for Your Internal Communications Plan

Clear lines of communication are crucial within an organization, as they enable team members to stay informed and aligned. Consider this checklist when you're crafting your organization's internal communications plan.

An internal communications plan should be specific and provide clarity of purpose to promote organizational trust and transparency. This is especially the case during times of uncertainty, such as those caused by global health crises, natural disasters or cyberattacks. A plan can also help your employees feel safe and connected in other situations — for instance, during mergers, acquisitions or organizational transformations.

It's therefore imperative for employers to have a plan in place to communicate directly and quickly with their employees. Clear lines of communication should also be established with clients, partners and other stakeholders outside the organization.

So, how do you get started? Here's a look at what a solid communications plan entails.

What is a communications plan?

A communications plan is a comprehensive, detailed plan for delivering any strategic message to a stakeholder or target audience in order to produce a positive business outcome. It should outline who will receive certain information, what information needs to be communicated and why, when the communication will happen, and what the appropriate communication channel to use is. This helps ensure that your messages are heard and understood in the way that you intended by the right people at the right time. Overall, the plan should be clear and concise, have purpose and align with your organization's policies.

The following seven guidelines are designed to help you identify communications needs and leverage best practices during times of uncertainty.

1. Develop an internal communications plan to reach employees at all levels

Have a plan and processes in place to reach all employees with important updates.
Outline the communications channels you will use to reach employees (e.g. email, intranet postings, fliers, posters, videos, blog posts, FAQs), and have a "source of truth" resource where employees can go for the latest updates. This could be a business intranet site or a physical location, such as a bulletin board.
Determine how you'll reach disconnected employees — those without email or mobile access, those on leaves of absence, and those who've accepted offers but not yet started their employment with your organization.
Partner with legal, HR and other key leadership for timely review and approval of all messaging and materials prior to distribution.

2. Designate a point person to stay on top of developments, manage the communication process, and receive and respond to employee concerns

Ask employees with concerns to contact HR and provide contact information on how to reach them.
Establish a line of communication for employees to submit questions related to prevention and preparedness measures. Post answers to questions that may be of general interest
Establish go-to resources across the business to help distribute key messages and answer employee questions and concerns. This could encompass a team of HR representatives, key leaders in business units and other change champions like office managers.

3. Develop an external communications plan, and outline how, when and what to communicate to constituents outside your organization

Work with your marketing, communications and public relations teams to develop a communications plan to address external constituents, including: news media, investors, clients, partners, analysts, etc.
Ensure that external communications reflect what your target audience cares about.
Align external communications with internal communications messages so that employees are kept in the loop on what messages are being delivered externally.

4. Carefully consider your messaging — state the facts, outline the impact, share safety measures

Provide ongoing assurance that the organization is safeguarding employee health and safety in a manner that is appropriately respectful of everyone's privacy.
Review communications for content and tone. Announce information as soon as possible, don't trivialize or escalate employee concerns, and be sure to collect and respond to feedback from employees.
Place links to official news sources, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or Centers for Disease Control (CDC), on your organization's intranet or other channels.

5. Outline work-from-home, time-off and travel policies — then update on an as-needed basis

Clearly communicate expectations and polices about working from home to eligible employees.
Ensure employees are aware of any changes to your current travel policy.
Remind employees of alternatives to in-person meetings, such as conference calls, video conferences and online meetings.

6. Prepare HR partners, managers and leaders to communicate with and respond to employees:

Provide FAQs, talking points and other information to arm go-to resources with facts and information for your employees.
Redirect more complex questions to your HR team or representative.

7. Prepare client-facing team members with important information on business operations:

Develop and deploy information to your client-facing team members (e.g. service, sales and implementation) with information on what this means and how it impacts or doesn't impact client support.

Organizations should carefully document their internal communications plans, take note of what communication channels and messaging approaches work and don't work based on employee feedback, and then update their plan to use as a template in the future. A good plan will allow the organization to understand information more accurately and quickly, and it can lead to more positive outcomes tied to communications with stakeholders and constituencies.

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