Internal Communication: Definitions, Types, and Tools
This article includes:
· What is Internal Communication?
· 5 Types of Internal Communication
· Internal Communication Advantages
· Internal Communication Strategies
· Recommended Internal Communication Tools
· Summary
What is Internal Communication?
Internal Communication is defined as the process of exchanging information, ideas, feedback, and messages within an organization. Internal communication is essential in various situations: from small group work with 3–5 people to the workplace with thousands of workers. The bigger the organization is, the harder it is for efficient internal communication to happen.
Thus, in this article, we will provide a brief explanation of internal communication and introduce different kinds of internal communication tools that you can use efficiently in both daily life and the workplace.
5 Types of Internal Communication
Top-down Communication
One typical internal communication is top-down communication, which might happen in big companies. Top-down communication ensures that the information within an organization flows from higher-ups to lower-level employees. Managers with higher authority make decisions and decide the direction of the projects. The decisions that they made would be passed down to the lower-level employees.
👏 Clear directives and goals
👏 Easy to control the flow of projects
🙅♂️ Inflexible and resistant to changes
🙅♂️ Decrease motivations of lower-level employees
Botton-up Communication
Botton-up communication is the opposite of top-down communication. It ensures that the information within an organization flows from lower-level employees to higher-ups. Information could be feedback and concerns from team members and eventually move upward through the organizational hierarchy.
👏 More innovation and insights from employees
👏 Good at dealing with problems and providing effective solutions
🙅♂️ Less structure & leads to diffusion of accountability
🙅♂️ Too much information leads to possible inefficient
Peer-to-peer Communication
Peer-to-peer communication refers to the feedback and conversation between same-level employees. Both of you might have similar positions or working on the same projects. Peer-to-peer communication is important for making sure everyone is on the track.
👏 Encourage collaboration between workers & build good relationship
👏 Ensure the shared information is symmetric & improve efficiency
🙅♂️ Create conflicts with various opinions
🙅♂️ Risk of group thinking
Crisis Communication
Crisis communication refers to the process of managing information during an emergency. The company needs to make sure the problem-solving is fair and transparent. Thus, crisis communication plays an important role in this situation.
Some factors that influence crisis communication are the time response to the problems and the transparency of the research. A good company usually be rigorous with crisis communication to protect the power of the company brand and reputation.
Culture Communication
Cultural communication ensures the exchange of information among people with different backgrounds. Culture communication is essential as it requires an understanding of cultural differences, sensitivity to diverse perspectives, and the ability to navigate cultural nuances to convey messages accurately and respectfully.
Thus, good culture communication allows workers to respect each other and provides opportunities for individuals to express their opinions.
Internal Communication Advantages
Enhance a Sense of Organizational Unity
As an organization grows, it becomes more and more vertically divided. The number of people in a department may also increase to the point where it can be considered an organization in its own right. Thus, active communication between departments is essential. It can improve the sense of unity of the organization and thus strengthen its organizational capabilities.
Increase Productivity
Increased communication within the organization also leads to increased productivity. By borrowing the skills of other departments, projects that would be difficult for the department to undertake on its own can be carried out more efficiently. Also, internal communication provides an opportunity to obtain knowledge and ideas for product and service development that are not available within your department and further gain new perspectives.
Knowledge and Expertise are Easily Shared
Active communication between departments facilitates the sharing of knowledge, skills, and materials possessed by specific departments. By sharing and resolving issues within the company, examples based on specific experiences can be accumulated within the company, and this will lead to solutions to similar issues that may arise in the future.
If you are interested specifically in a wiki tool that allows you to share and accumulate information within your company, please take a look at our following article:
Employee Stress Goes Down
A company with frequent communication between departments fosters an open and less stressful internal culture. Employees often gain new appreciation through the exchange of ideas and perspectives with people in other departments. Also, the common reason for leaving a company is said to be workplace relationships. For employees, it is an advantage that the axis of evaluation is not limited to the department. By making the workplace as stress-free as possible, the company will be able to retain its human resources more easily.
Internal Communication Strategies
Share the Management Vision
If the management vision is not spread to each department and employee, local optimization that realizes profit priorities confined to one’s department tends to occur. In many cases, communication stagnation hinders the organization's transfer of information. This tends to lead to actions that prioritize one’s department, leading to inefficiencies throughout the organization. Thus, it will be necessary to restore a sense of unity within the organization by reiterating the philosophy and goals of the organization as a whole.
Exchanging Personnel between Departments
Exchanging personnel between departments is another good way to develop opportunities for communication. One employee can gain multiple perspectives by experiencing multiple departments and performing many tasks. In addition, by experiencing the position of each department, the employee will be able to gain a relative perspective on the positions and ideas of the different departments, including the acquisition of specific skills.
Although today the emphasis tends to be on specialists, you can expect to grow as a person who can look at the organization from a broad perspective.
Organize Internal Events
Setting up internal events allows employees to interact with others in the company in a relaxed atmosphere away from the work. For example, by holding company trips, sports tournaments, and barbecue competitions on holidays, the company can see unexpected and real faces that are not seen at work. In some cases, mutual understanding can be deepened by glimpsing the human side of people.
Although the idea of separating private and professional life has been gaining ground recently, a good recreational interaction opportunity can help build new relationships.
Use Internal Communication Tools
Another way to ensure efficient internal communication is with the help of internal communication tools. Internal communication tools can reduce the time for physical meetings & avoid information lost during work. In the next section, we will introduce some internal communication tools that you can use in the workplace.
Recommended Internal Communication Tools
One recommended knowledge management software is GROWI.cloud, an internal wiki provided by WESEEK, Inc, that supports Markdown and provides powerful functions.
GROWI.cloud
GROWI.cloud supports Markdown and provides powerful functions for you to manage documents and files. It also boasts high security and various authentication methods are available to simplify authentication management, including LDAP/OAuth/SAML.
Other than organizational use, GROWI.cloud is also available for individual use and you can always start with a free trial here. After the one-month free trial, you can change your plan into either the individual, duo, or trio plan, OR continue to use the personal plan for FREE with a maximum of 25 users! Go to price & features to learn about the details.
GROWI.cloud origins in Japan and is now also offered in the Philippine and other countries which allows customers to use the service in English.
Slack
Slack is another internal communication tool that is useful in daily life.
Slack is a business chat tool provided by an American company with the number one market share in the world. Unlike e-mail, Slack is a tool that enables chat-style communication like private chat tools such as SNS and is compatible with a variety of devices including PCs and smartphones. Another feature of Slack is that it supports voice calls.
Key functions of Slack are:
- Chat function
- Integration with external apps
- File Management
- Powerful search function
Also, Slack can integrate with GROWI.cloud to ensure that cases such as omissions of confirmation do not happen and the important information is well-managed. Therefore, with only two tools, you can manage most of your work in the company!
Summary
Internal Communication is essential in the workplace and the way of Internal Communication is diverse. I hope this article shares some information on what internal communication is and gives an idea of what internal communication tools you can use in your workplace.
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