Streamline Internal Company Communication with Online Presentation Tools
It’s often said that internal communication is the lifeblood of any organization. Without it, you can’t even accomplish the most basic tasks of running your business successfully, never mind the more important functions. Successful company communication is about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.
Inefficient or confusing internal communication can cause employees to disengage and lead to a costly cascade of consequences. Dipping into the data reveals just how substantial the cost of poor internal communication can be. On average, a company loses more than $62 million each year due to employees and management not understanding each other, according to research conducted by PRSA Fellow David Grossman. The author of You Can’t Not Communicate discovered that 400 surveyed corporations in the US and UK lose a mind-boggling $37 billion per year due to miscommunication.
This includes actions or errors of omission by employees who have misunderstood or were misinformed about company policies, business processes, job functions, or a combination of the three. Despite the jaw-dropping $37 billion per year loss, another piece of research shows that nearly 60% of companies do not have a long-term communications strategy.
Whether you have an in-house team or a remote one, it’s essential to have a strategy that carries conversations forward. Online presentation tools are an excellent way to enhance internal communication processes by giving everyone easy access whether they're connecting via their computer, tablet, or phone.
As the more traditional communication channels prove ineffective, you need to incorporate new tools that will help you and your team communicate smarter, regardless of your respective locations.
Publish Regular Company Newsletters Using Online Presentation Tools
A good place to start using online presentation tools is by publishing company newsletters. The foremost benefit of an internal newsletter is that it keeps everyone in the loop. Often viewed as an item of subjective importance to most companies, a newsletter is an internal tool for employee communication “that could actually be more essential than optional,” as Matt Kaufman, Marketing Director at Atlantic Engineering Services puts it.
A newsletter delivers benefits no other form of internal communication can accomplish in one package:
The Digital Advantage - By creating your newsletters in a digital format using cloud-based presentation software, employees can access them on nearly any device, at any time, at any location.
Supplements Brand Culture - Not only do newsletters keep everyone up to date on the latest company developments, but they can also motivate employees to become more active in "intrasocial" activities. With digital newsletters, you can add links, videos and other media content so that employees can comment on the most recent company news themselves. Add links to your social media channels to start the conversations.
Lessens Information Output - Quarterly newsletters give employees timely, adequate company information. Rather than random internal email campaigns to communicate notifications about business activities and developments, newsletters allow to you target your employees with necessary information without inundating their inboxes. Additionally, if in the form of an engaging, interactive online presentation, chances are much greater that newsletters will be read more than the usual repetitive email, flyer, or bulletin board poster. With a dynamic digital platform in place, you can ensure that your content is presented interactively and engagingly.
Using online presentation tools to formulate your newsletters can strengthen and boost employee engagement levels. Platforms such as Ingage will enable you to seamlessly create a newsletter without the need for any technical expertise. With the intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can add elements like images, videos and buttons to your slides with ease. Additionally, you can customize the navigation, add scroll motion pages and much more—all with a few clicks.
Keep Your Company Communication Current with Cloud-Based Presentation Software
Nearly 29% of employees believe that the current internal communication model at their company isn’t working. This is a sizable stat that drives home the urgent need to implement communication systems that keep staff in that all-important company loop and eliminate any sense of alienation.
Online presentation tools like Ingage can effectively streamline your company’s internal communication processes. Take, for example, a company’s paid leave policy or its reimbursement procedures. If Human Resources decides to make an update, it can be published to the presentation and then every time a new or current employee launches that presentation, the new policy will be in place. There’s no need to change a page or two of text in your company’s HR handbook PDF and reprint the entire thing and then redistribute to all staff. Nor do you need to spend valuable time tracking down and destroying out-of-date copies. Simply update the relevant slide in your Ingage presentation, then send out a company-wide email detailing the change with a link to the online handbook. It’s a fast, easy and effective way to roll out changes and updates to company policy.
Collaborate With Team Members
With many team members working remotely, it’s important that you can effectively collaborate with others. With Ingage, it’s possible to provide editing access to specific people in your department. This way, you can get the input you need and convey the right information to your team.
What renders these online presentations even more potent is the option to add interactive graphs and charts that enable viewers to engage with the tech, increasing the odds of your message hitting home.
Measure Your Reach and Performance Through Internal Communication Metrics
To improve your internal communication process, it’s necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of your current communication plan. This requires you to identify certain key performance indicators (KPIs), with the most important being:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Outcomes
Once you’ve determined these KPIs, you need to start tracking them to measure progress. Based on the analysis, you can then optimize your internal communication plan to improve results. You can do monthly or quarterly evaluations of the data collected and modify your strategy accordingly.
However, for all of this to work, you need to be able to access accurate data related to your KPIs. With outdated communication techniques, this is hardly possible. By deploying an online presentation tool, such as Ingage, you get instant access to all of this valuable data.
With the presentation done and sent to your team, you’ll be able to track how it’s performing in the analytics tab on the Ingage platform. In addition to knowing who is and isn’t reviewing the presentation, you can drill down into the following details:
- Page duration - Engagement
- Pageviews - Reach
- Section duration - Engagement
- Presentation duration - Engagement
- Section views - Reach
To measure the overall outcomes, you’d have to go for a more in-depth analysis. You can look through various presentations and see how they’ve performed. Based on that, you can determine which ones get traction and edit the presentations accordingly.
Start Streamlining Your Communication
Poor communication often leads to frustration among workers and many may end up leaving your organization. This is a major concern as replacing a worker costs nearly 33% of the worker’s annual salary. It can also lead to lower productivity levels and cause huge losses.
You can improve your internal communication dramatically by incorporating online presentation tools like Ingage into your company’s tech stack. The idea is to make your communication more engaging and interactive and make even remote teams feel up-to-date on all the latest company developments.
Get in touch with Ingage for a free demo and let us equip your team with the tools they need to compete.