Organisational crises are a time when corporate communications teams demonstrate their value and the COVID-19 pandemic response relied upon communicators like no other crisis before it.

Corporations moved swiftly to establish communications platforms for remote working, while providing vital information flows to support employee safety and business continuity.

While the crisis phase of the pandemic feels (almost) like a distant memory, the communications legacy remains, and few organisations doubt the importance of effectively engaging employees during major changes.

But does your organisation value great internal communications as part of its regular business operations?

The post pandemic research shows they should.

In a recently published systematic review of internal communications practices post-COVID, the researchers identified numerous benefits organisations gained from effective internal communications:

• Greater employee connection to corporate culture
• Increases in employee engagement
• Reinforced sense of belonging
• Greater alignment to organisational strategic objectives
• Promotion of a more collaborative and effective working environment.

Another post pandemic study summarised by the Institute for Public Relations reaffirmed the employer brand benefits delivered by strong internal communications.

This emerging research highlights that, even though the crisis is over, great employee communications remain as important now as ever.

So how can you achieve these benefits for your business and ensure your post-COVID communications strategies remain relevant to your organisation’s new normal?

The authors of the systematic review offer this insight:

“Internal communication must be managed as an interconnected system, in which bidirectionality, transparency, and coherence are the pillars that support the relationships between the different organizational stakeholders.”

Simply put, an effective internal communications framework should enable:

• Two-way communication between employees and leaders – i.e. “talk with me and listen to me”
• Transparency of information – i.e. “give me the information I need to do my job”
• Consistency – i.e. “don’t say one thing and do another”.

Remember also that humans are a key part of any communications system, and training or coaching for line managers may also be required to get your communications really humming. Leaders who can communicate with authenticity are better able to build trust and engagement with their employees.

If you sense that your employee communications may have lost some relevance post pandemic, don’t wait for your next employee engagement survey to show that perceptions of communications have softened.

Be proactive and invest in an internal communications health check. This could be as simple as a survey on what’s working or what’s not, or a more structured external evaluation of your internal communications strategy alignment to your corporate strategy.

BBS can assist your corporate communications team with a range of support including internal communications audits, leadership communications training or change communication plans for specific projects.

Learn more about our corporate communications expertise or get in touch to discuss your communications challenges and opportunities.