As anyone who’s worked in human resources for a while should know, building an effective HR strategy is often the easy part. The real work is making sure everyone is aware of what your goals are, can find the information they need, and knows how to get in touch with you when they need you. In a word: communication.
Having a robust HR communications strategy in place has become especially important, as more organizations embrace remote and hybrid work options. For many, the HR department is no longer a quick walk down the hall. Instead, you may just be another email or chat. How do you stand out in this environment? How do you make sure your HR strategy gets heard?
Let’s take a closer look at what effective communication strategies can do for HR departments, then explore how you can build your own.
What Is a Communication Strategy in HR?
An HR communications strategy outlines how the human resources department should communicate and share information with employees, job seekers, new recruits, and other stakeholders. This communication may include new workplace policies and procedures, training information, job openings and recruitment incentives, or anything else related to HR. It may also encompass a variety of channels, from analog to digital.
However, regardless of what is being said or how, the goal of any HR communications strategy should aim to ensure each employee is aware of essential HR information so that they are empowered and the larger HR strategy is successful.
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Why is an effective communication strategy so important?
Although communications strategies are common for customer-facing and other external aspects of an organization, many HR departments still lack them despite the advantages they can offer. Here are a few of those benefits.
Organizational alignment
Good HR departments do more than just distribute company policies and job descriptions. They also make sure everyone is working together toward a shared mission, vision, and goals. While smaller, office-based organizations may be able to manage this organically, larger and more dispersed companies will require a more strategic, organized approach.
The role it plays in company culture
Maintaining a healthy, supportive company culture is a cornerstone responsibility of HR – and something you cannot do without effective communication. Keeping a consistent dialogue going with employees not only nurtures transparency, trust, and collaboration, it also helps promote more open dialogue and foster a sense of belonging among employees, all ingredients of a more positive company culture.
Improving employee engagement
If employees aren’t regularly informed of company policies or don’t understand how their roles fit into the overall organization, they’ll be more likely to become distant and disengaged. However, when they are kept up-to-date and their value is made clear, such as by connecting them with professional development trainings and other opportunities, they’ll be more likely to stay motivated, productive, and committed to their work.
Increased efficiency
How many times have you had to spend extra time reiterating policies or clarifying workplace procedures because employees weren’t paying attention? This takes away from everyone’s productivity. But when there’s a streamlined communication strategy in place, you can start minimizing these misunderstandings while reducing information gaps, contributing to a more efficient operation overall.
Job satisfaction levels & retention
A good communication strategy isn’t just about talking to and informing employees, but also listening to them. Doing this consistently can have a huge impact on employee satisfaction and retention rates. You’ll be in a better position to know about employee concerns and quickly address them, helping them feel heard and supported. In turn, they’ll be more likely to stay loyal to the organization and actively contribute to its success.
Enhancing workplace collaboration
Finally, an effective HR communications strategy should also emphasize open communication and collaboration between teams and departments and throughout the whole organization. It should make it easier for employees to share their ideas and knowledge with each other, as well as actively break down silos that hold vital information back. All this will help employees work together more effectively and achieve shared goals.
Crafting an effective communication strategy
Whether you’re formalizing your current messaging processes or starting from scratch, building your own communications strategy shouldn’t be intimidating. That said, following a careful and strategic process will help ensure you get it right. Here are some key steps to consider.
Understand your audience.
You may love communicating through emails. They’re easy to use, accessible, and safe. But if most of your employees prefer using Slack instead, you won’t be likely to convince them to switch over. Instead, you’ve just created another hurdle for your communications strategy to overcome.
This underlies the importance of first understanding what your audience wants. Not only should you get to know their preferred channels, but also what they’re looking for most out of HR communications. Would they prefer to get weekly updates and regular news from your department? Or would they rather only get essential information? Similarly, know the demographics you’re working with. Is your workforce young, or are they older and more focused on issues like retirement? Are they made up mostly of office workers, or are a majority hybrid or remote?
Understanding all of this will help you know what matters most to your employees so that you can craft messages that resonate with them.
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Create clear objectives.
What do you want to accomplish with your communications strategy? What metrics should you set for its success? Once you begin to understand what your audience wants, you can start defining objectives for you to meet.
In addition to aligning with employee expectations, these objectives should also support your organization’s larger goals. For instance, if employees want a more open dialogue, while the organization as a whole is trying to become more efficient, then one of your goals could be to make sure everyone has access to the most up-to-date information. As you define your goals, just make sure that they all remain clear and measurable so that you can actually attain them.
Done well, these objectives should help guide your efforts, even as your organization grows and evolves.
Use different communication channels.
Although there’s clear value in prioritizing the channels your workforce prefers, don’t be shy about utilizing whatever platforms are available to get your message across. When it comes to effective communication, more is often much better.
This means going beyond well-known channels like email or chat and instead embracing whatever channels best suit the needs of your message. For example, job postings obviously work best on social media, while legal and compliance policies may be best communicated through a mixture of different channels, such as email, chat, and the company intranet. For other types of communication, like promoting company culture, why not try something different, like video?
The benefits of embracing more channels not only include wider engagement, but also a greater chance of reaching a more diverse audience, which is always a good thing.
Create compelling content.
Although you may be communicating workplace policies, legal requirements, or other dry but essential material, that’s no reason why you can’t make it compelling in some way. After all, if the goal is to make sure everyone stays informed, a little entertainment can go a long way.
This is your chance to get creative. As you create your communications, start out by thinking about how you can use storytelling to get your message across. Instead of talking about things in hypotheticals, you could try developing characters that more vividly illustrate your concepts. Mix it up with some visuals or multimedia elements to make it even more memorable. Or you could try out gamifying your content, such as by handing out weekly quizzes (maybe even with prizes) to see who’s been paying attention.
It may feel strange at first communicating in this way, but you may be surprised by how much more impactful these strategies can make your messaging.
Prioritize consistency.
Don’t make your employees guess when they can expect another update from HR. Instead, make your messaging consistent so that they know when they should be looking for updated information.
The best way to do this is by creating a schedule. Work with team and department heads to find the best times to send out relevant information to employees. Building your own internal HR communications calendar can also help you plan for events, stick to regular newsletters, and create timelines for longer-term projects. In turn, keeping up this level of consistency will help build trust and credibility in your HR department.
Encourage employee feedback.
Once you have everything in place and communications are up and running, don’t forget to keep asking for feedback on how you’re doing. Chances are there will always be some room for improvement.
You can make this seamless by creating opportunities for two-way communication and feedback. At the bottom of regular newsletters, for instance, include a short link or form for people to share their ideas or concerns. Make sure to also use language throughout your communications that encourage employees to send you their ideas. And when they do, remember to actively listen to them and respond.
When employees know that their HR department is doing as much listening as it is communicating, that’s when you know your communication strategy is a success.
How PI can help your comms strategy
In this age of distributed workers and disparate channels, cobbled together communication efforts just won’t cut it anymore. It’s time for HR leaders to take a page from the customer playbook and start taking a more strategic approach to their communication efforts.
But that doesn’t have to mean starting back at square one. By leveraging PI’s behavioral assessments and analytics, you can gain a deeper understanding of employee communication styles and preferences, enabling you to tailor your communication approach to individual needs, foster stronger connections, and drive engagement and productivity.
Request your demo today to get started.
