NHS internal communications strategy

What are the gold standard requirements?

• Share information – ensuring staff are kept fully informed
• Unity culture – imparting the values and ethics behind the decisions
• Employee feedback – offering a platform to share ideas and any concerns.

While the primary goal of internal communication is to keep staff informed, it is also crucial to ensure that a unity culture is strived for and two-way internal communication channels put in place. Ask yourself the 5 best internal communications questions.

Who is it aimed at?

Never forget to focus on who your internal communications strategy is aimed at.

Your staff have a lot on their minds, from the stress of the job they have to worries about what the future has in store. They have personal matters and concerns too. Your job is to cut through all the noise and get your key messages heard.

To get, and keep, staff engagement you will need to understand your workforce and what information they will find interesting and important. It may be helpful to segment your audience into specific groups such as age, locations, teams and attitude. Messages about pensions will be more important for older staff for example, as anyone under 25 plans to live forever!

Don’t expect a single internal communication to work for every person. Use a range of techniques in your internal communications strategy to allow for individual needs.

Why do you do it?

To get the most out of your internal communication strategy, you need to define your goals.

For some the goal may be to improve staff retention levels, for others it may be about improving productivity. Your goals will differ but as long as they are clear from the outset, you will be able to have a clear focus and set measures to monitor progress.

Using internal communication software like NewZapp Trusted Delivery  will give you the ability to set benchmarks and monitor engagement to achieve these goals.

Once you have strong, clear goals in mind, the rest of your internal communications strategy will fall into place much more easily.

What are you sending?

You need to always consider the two questions that reside in the minds of your staff, “why should I care?” and “how does this affect me?” Staff  will see everything you are saying through their own personal filter.

Your internal communications strategy will work best if you have already mapped out some outcomes that will interest them. Making their jobs more enjoyable and easier for example.

Not as easy as it sounds I know; you can’t put a positive spin on everything! This is where a positive unity culture comes into play. That way the bad news is on everyone’s shoulders!