When you’re running a small business, internal communication is incredibly important. Maybe you think that’s just something nice to say, but the thing is, communicating effectively with your employees can often make or break your business. You don’t want anything to get lost in translation, do you? Didn’t think so!
Your employees should be able to communicate with their fellow coworkers just as easily as they can with higher ups. And upper management should be able to do the same. And no, internal communication isn’t just organizing office parties or creating a monthly newsletter.
There are so many common misconceptions about what internal communication includes and we’re here to break three myths that almost everyone believes.
The three most common myths of internal communication in small businesses
There are many internal communicaiton myths need debunking, but here are three of the most common ones:
1. That internal communication is a nice-to-have, but not a necessity
Keeping everyone on the same page and headed towards the same goal sounds like a necessity if we ever heard one. Once everyone is working towards a common goal, it limits confusion and avoids unnecessary friction.
One report even found that, “Effective internal communication is a powerful force that leads to a 40 percent increase in customer satisfaction, a 30 percent increase in profitability, and a 36 percent increase in the overall performance of a company.” Now wouldn’t you agree that a 30% increase in profits is a necessity and not a “nice-to-have”?
2. That internal communication is usually too-expensive for SMBs
There are a couple of great inexpensive tools that come to mind that you can start using right now. In fact, there are plenty of small business tools you can use to run your business for less than $100 a month. Yes, really!
First of all, Slack is a great tool for office employees so you can hold discussions for every project, department, or team. Plus, Slack integrates with virtually every app out there, so you can always see sales data and leads, support tickets, and so on. Choose from their three pricing plans, free (preferably for really small teams), $6.67/per user monthly, or $12.50/per user monthly.
Second, we highly recommend Connecteam, a mobile employee communication tool that makes communicating incredibly easy, especially if you have a large deskless workforce. Create public or private chat discussions per location, project, or department. Easily send updates, without comment capability or with, to everyone to boost engagement so you can celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, the employee of the month, weekly goals, and so on.
The work directory is kept on the Connecteam app instead of your personal phone making searching for an employee easier than ever. Create surveys on anything and everything and have a private suggestion box available at all times. All the data is actionable as well and is hosted on a secure cloud.
3. That internal communication can’t be measured
You most definitely can measure internal communication! Implement one of the tools available for internal communicators so that you can enable the tracking of metrics to genuinely see how a campaign is actually performing.
Once you know how a key performance indicator is performing, you’ll know if you’re on the right track – are things going right or wrong – and as a result, you’ll know how to send better communication out to the rest of the team.
Conclusion
Myths debunked, now we know that internal communication is important – much more important than many small business owners realize. That said, using the right tools is crucial in making sure that your internal communication is well-managed. Make sure you spend sufficient resources for investing in such tools.