What are Internal Communication Solutions?
The dramatic shift in today’s workforce from on-site to remote work has put a spotlight on enterprise communication. Internal communication may have not been an aspect of your organization that had received much attention until, suddenly, employees needed new platforms and strategies to keep their many communication channels open, active, and up to pre-pandemic levels of efficiency and effectiveness. Now that we are more comfortable with some of these newly adopted strategies and platforms, it is an excellent time to question everything. Were your pre-pandemic internal communication channels actually working as efficiently and effectively as you thought? Have you learned some new things? Have your communication preferences and priorities shifted? The following internal communication tools may be solutions that you might want to consider:
Instant messaging. Instant messaging tools such as Slack and Flock allow company users to communicate instantly with each other with text messages, photos, videos, and web links. This method of communication is similar to Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, allowing for instant communication, as opposed to the delayed or denied communication that can happen with email. With instant messaging tools, channels can be set for group communication.
Intranet. An intranet is a private network that’s connected via the web and is designed as a centralized channel for internal communications. An intranet serves as a hub for every aspect of internal communication including document-sharing, photo-sharing, note-sharing, and more. Dedicated areas and channels can be created for certain groups or departments to easily gain access to their frequently accessed resources. Igloo is an example of an intranet tool that integrates with many popular tools such as Google, Office 365, Zendesk, and Slack.
Collaboration tools. Collaboration tools allow more than one person to access a project to edit, add feedback, share notes, or provide sign-off. Cloud-based collaboration tools such as Google Docs allow multiple users to access and edit documents simultaneously.
Employee social network (ESN). Employee social networks are solutions that organizations can use that have features of public social networks, but they are only available to users in your organization, similar to an intranet. Yammer is an example of a solution that allows users to communicate via social media as they naturally do in their personal lives, but within an organizational space.
Video chat. Video chat tools allow multiple people in different places to connect via voice call or voice-and-video call, via the internet. This solution offers flexibility to meet with people who are geographically dispersed or simply find it faster/easier/cheaper to meet via the internet. Zoom is a popular web and video conferencing tool that is easy to set up and use. Users set up a meeting, share a link with the other meeting attendees, users click on the link to enter the “room”, and then the attendees there can share screens, communicate via video, and send messages.