As yesterday was Valentines Day we thought we’d take a break from all the chocolates and flowers (we wish!) to share a little bit about why we love working in internal communications. 

Here is why we do – but what about you? 

Helping people love their jobs

Let’s start with the most important reason. We all have one mission – and that’s to help clients ensure that their colleagues feel informed, engaged and enjoy going to work every day! There’s nothing quite like the buzz of seeing people share their experiences of a campaign you’ve created, comment positively on a new IC channel and truly become brand advocates. The rush, when employees get involved with a campaign, is hard to beat.

Getting to be extra creative 

The design process for internal communications and employee engagement campaigns is a lot of fun! You can often have more creative license as the guidelines aren’t as strict. This means you can push things a lot further and be truly innovative in your approach. Our clients are brave and like to pack a punch in their creative – whether it’s careers websites, internal publications or integrated multi-channel campaigns.

Basing everything on insight

Every internal campaign should be based on one thing – solid insight. Whether it’s surveys, focus groups, taking part in a shift on the shop floor or telephone research, to make internal communications work it has to ring true and be relevant and realistic to employees' everyday lives. This starts with listening. This is a fascinating step in the process, and we love seeing how our clients embrace the findings and adapt their messaging and strategies to fit.

 Making a difference to the bottom line

As well as making work fun and empowering for employees, we also love the fact that internal communications has the power to help businesses improve turnover, productivity and profit. Helping businesses to attract AND retain employees can’t be sniffed at, especially given that some statistics suggest it can cost up to £30,000 to replace a member of staff.

The variety of people

We’ve been in business for 10 years and it has been really interesting to see how our client base has changed over that time. There’s a definite blur and now our clients vary from CEOs to heads of HR, learning & development, chief people officers, marketing departments, internal communications functions, PR and even IT. All of these departments are essential contributors and bring a valuable and different point of view. 

The variety of channels

Internal communications uses every channel you can imagine and is just as tech-savvy and integrated as B2C, if not more so. From responsive websites, social networks (including ESNs), interactive screen technology, face-to-face meetings and town halls, videos, gamification, printed collateral, email marketing, animation…the list goes on. 

The internal/external link

It’s obvious that happy employees equal better service, which means happier customers who are more likely to keep coming back. But this realisation has grown dramatically over the past couple of years with a lot more interdepartmental collaboration and cross projects. This is leading to some interesting work in the customer experience sector, and it’s fascinating to see how businesses are aligning their internal and external strategies.