How can you develop an internal communication strategy for onboarding new hires that is engaging and interesting? In addition to creating a positive culture and alignment with your goals, an effective internal communication strategy can assist you in recruiting, maintaining, and motivating your workforce.
In this post, we’ll discuss some suggestions and best practices for creating and implementing an efficient internal communication strategy for onboarding purposes.
1. Establish your company goals
You must have a clear understanding of your company goals and the audience you will be interacting with before you can begin to develop your messages and channels.
What are the primary objectives of your plan for internal communication? How do you intend to evaluate its effectiveness? What are the needs, goals, and preferences of your newest employees? How do you categorize and modify your messaging for various groups or roles?
It will be easier to produce appropriate, consistent, and interesting content if you have a clear approach and an awareness of your audience. Then the new hires will be able to catch on the company culture much faster.
2. Choose the right communication tools
Making a decision about how to communicate internally with new hires is the next stage. There are lots of choices, including video, audio, webinars, chat, social media, email, intranet, newsletters, and more.
Your goals, target audience, and available resources will determine the ideal platform for your internal communication plan. Reach, frequency, engagement, feedback, and cost are some things you should take into account.
To satisfy various learning preferences and styles, as well as to reinforce your main points, you should employ a variety of channels and tools.
For example, gamification in onboarding could be a fun and engaging tool to use.
3. Plan and schedule the information for new hires
After choosing your platforms and tools, you must decide what content to produce and when to share it. Your writing should be educational, interesting, and useful to your new employees. To avoid overwhelming or boring your audience, you should balance the amount and frequency of your communications.
A content calendar can be used to schedule your themes, formats, deadlines, and responsibilities. Also, so that you can track and modify your communication as necessary, you should coordinate your content with your onboarding milestones and feedback loops.
4. Involve managers and colleagues too
Your internal communication strategy shouldn’t only be used in one direction. To ensure that your new hires are welcomed, supported, and mentored, you should also include your leaders and peers in your communication.
You can urge your leaders to recognize and celebrate the successes of your new hires. Do that while also communicating their vision, beliefs, and expectations.
You may also inspire your colleagues to work together and interact with your new hires by asking them to contribute their experiences, advice, and feedback. You may encourage a sense of community and trust among your staff by establishing a culture of communication.
5. Keep updating internal communication
The final step involves reviewing and updating your internal communication strategy. To evaluate the efficacy and impact of your communication, you should gather and analyze data and feedback from your new hires as well as from your leaders and peers.
Also, you should assess the communication’s strengths and flaws and look for ways to innovate and enhance. Your goals, audience, and circumstances may vary over time, therefore you should keep your communication plan adaptable and up-to-date.
Additional tips for internal communications for onboarding
And here are some more tips on how to create the most effective internal communication plan for onboarding new hires.
Answer questions even before day 1
On or before day one, proactively respond to FAQs. On their first day, many new hires will have similar concerns.
They might be interested in an on-site position and ask things like, “Where should I park? Do I need to pack lunch? What should I wear?”. If it’s a remote job, they might be wondering when their supplies will come or when they’ll get to work with their teammates.
Hiring managers and internal communications teams can brainstorm a list and easily produce a finished FAQ document if you don’t already have one.
Highlight the company culture
In the past, company cultures have developed naturally as a result of interactions between employees and the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the company. Nevertheless, culture is less likely to develop on its own in the more spread office setting of today.
Whatever your plan, it’s usually helpful to have a one-page document detailing the company’s culture, including organizational principles, the working environment, acceptable attitudes, and more.
Internal communications teams that are innovative can offer more considerate resources to help a company’s culture come to life. Culture can be taught effectively by example, which frequently makes use of hypothetical situations. They could be used in pre-recorded videos or in real-time role-playing exercises.
Communicate about communicating
Internal communications is in a unique position to teach new hires on communication standards. This provides guidelines for how to use (or not use) each channel, as well as what is appropriate or not. For instance, email is best used for scheduling and reminders, whereas Teams is best used for real-time collaboration and communication.
For instance, some firms encourage chat interactions to forge relationships, but others oppose this and would rather workers focus on completing responsibilities.
What rules apply to you? How do expectations for communication vary according to roles? Internal communications teams can assist new hires in adapting to their workgroups and getting up to speed fast by taking the time to describe and exemplify these communication practices.
In conclusion
In conclusion it is clear that creating an engaging internal communication strategy for onboarding new hires requires careful planning, effective communication tools, and ongoing evaluation and modification.
It is important to answer questions proactively and always highlight company culture. Ultimately, by implementing these strategies, companies can create a more engaged and productive workforce, and ensure that new hires feel valued from day one.
Read more from us in articles like Employee Onboarding in HR Cloud Software and Onboarding Training.
