Internal communication – flow of information
Guarantee good internal communication
For many businesses, digital communication involves long and eventually complex e-mail threads. Over the last few years, plenty of decent tools have emerged that enable more efficient communication and collaboration.
You may perhaps have heard of Microsoft Teams, Slack, Workplace? All these are examples of tools that help you to reduce the number of e-mails sent and received.
These meet the following needs, among others, within internal communication:
- Chats and “one-to-ones” – here we’re talking about effective one-to-one (possibly a few more) communication that delivers rapid clarification and is less “formal” than using e-mail
- Video chat and opportunities to share your screen so that you can easily display the content you want to share
- Digital collaboration groups and teams – here we’re talking about inviting project participants to join a group where you discuss and share files and other content
- Dissemination of information to the entire company – collaboration tools can be used as an intranet to pass on important information to employees, as well as for “chit-chat”.
As you know, a single tool can meet the demand for internal communication efficiently and effectively. There is also an advantage to choosing one product that satisfies all communication needs, as it means employees avoid having to deal with numerous different systems.
Remember too that the aforementioned platforms enable you to invite people from outside your own organisation. Not a bad idea if you have multiple external partners!
Documents, co-authoring and file sharing – save yourself some time
Imagine the following: you are collaborating with a colleague on a document. You both want to add content and work on the text. Once you have finished making your changes, you send the document as an e-mail attachment to your colleague. He or she does the same back. This can happen numerous times before a document is finally ready, by which point you’ve lost track of all the different versions. You also can’t work in the document at the same time. Frustrating, isn’t it?
Luckily, it is now simple to co-author documents and share content with your colleagues, in real time!
Tools such as Dropbox and Google Docs allow you to share folders easily and edit content at the same time, while Google Slides allows a partner to fix an error in the presentation seconds before you click on “presentation mode”. Microsoft Teams offers similar possibilities.