Effective communication goals for your business strategy
In order for your business strategy to be communicated effectively, it must first be clearly defined. The communication goals of your business strategy should be based on your employees’ understanding of how their roles affect the strategy as a whole. No matter how much time and effort goes into your business strategy, it will probably fail if it’s not effectively communicated to your employees. It’s difficult for your employees to know how their jobs help to direct your business when communication about your business strategy is lacking.
Effective communication of your business strategy should be inclusive of every employee – from front of house workers to staff working behind the scenes. A business strategy that is well communicated reduces confusion and increases efficiency. When communicating your business strategy, you should tailor your message according to your audience. This is due to the fact that discussions with your employees in leadership roles will vary in terms of how you pass on information to other staff.
Regular in-person meetings are important when communicating your business strategy. Your goal should be to meet with high-level staff who will pass the information on to the rest of your employees. These meetings should be regular in order to provide updates and to solicit feedback. To prevent your audience from switching off (because they have heard the same message over and over again), one of your goals should be to communicate your business strategy goals in different formats.
Another objective when communicating your business strategy is to facilitate communication in both directions. Your frontline staff can be an important source of information about what is actually happening in your business. Encourage your employees to share their opinions about your strategy by making them feel valued. You should try different types of communication methods, like video training, to determine what works best for your business.
Here’s our list of 9 effective communication goals to help your business strategy.
If your internal communication processes need to be improved, here are some effective communication goals that you can aspire to for your business strategy:
- Share your purpose
- Give employees the big picture
- Prioritize messages
- Remain present
- Use storytelling
- Invest in your employees
- Diversify the delivery
- Be relatable
- Create interest
1. Share your purpose
Your purpose is the company’s reason for existence. This statement should be the key driver that influences your business strategy and decision-making. You should communicate the company’s purpose in a way that is simple and relatable to all employees. Sharing your purpose – or your ‘why’ – with employees helps them to connect to something deeper, so they’re more likely to care about their jobs. Your purpose should be central to all your communication to ensure that it’s always at the forefront of your employees’ minds. Your goal in consistently communicating your business purpose is for your employees to link your business strategy with their day-to-day jobs.
2. Give employees the big picture
In order for employees to appreciate how your business strategy is superior to your competitors,’ they need to be aware of what is happening in your industry. Share the latest trends and insights with your employees to demonstrate how your business strategy is dealing with negative changes and making the most out of positive opportunities. For example, a retailer can discuss how they’re positioning themselves to take advantage of the changes in consumer behavior in relation to online shopping. Encourage managers to share these developments and insights with their teams in an easy to digest way. This communication goal for your business strategy is to solicit feedback and ideas about the things your business can implement to keep ahead of your competition.
3. Prioritize messages
There will be frequent updates in terms of your business strategy and a communication goal should be to prioritize them based on importance. Firstly, you should aim to share inspirational messages with your team. Uplifting messages about accomplishments and new ideas serve as encouragement to your employees. These messages will also clearly demonstrate how far you’ve come in relation to hitting your targets. Inspiring messages should be upbeat and help employees to feel a sense of achievement for their part in helping your business to accomplish their business strategy.
The next type of messages should seek to educate your employees. When your employees feel encouraged, they’re more likely to want to know more about how to replicate or improve on those results. To educate your employees in the most effective way about the strength of your business strategy, you should arrange communication that breaks down what they need to learn in a way that directly applies to their jobs. Educating your employees about your business strategy is better received if it’s done in a collaborative way as opposed to one-way communication.
Lastly, the next type of message that needs to be part of your effective communication goal for your business strategy is reinforcement. Communicating your business’s strategic vision a few times is unlikely to result in positive change. You’ll need to repeat information about how you’ll execute your strategy and the link between your strategy and different jobs several times. Your message will then seep into (and eventually change) your business culture. Your communication goal should be for your employees to form a deep connection to your business strategy. In order for this to happen, your purpose and strategic vision needs to be interwoven into training, human resources, and every other internal communication channel.
4. Remain present
Even though it can be difficult to meet with all of your staff, an effective communication goal of your business strategy should be to set aside time to make periodic visits to staff on the frontline. Employees who see that you’re a real and relatable person are more likely to believe in your vision. Spend time speaking to frontline employees to let them know that you’re invested. This course of action means that your employees are more likely to return the loyalty you’ve demonstrated. You should also consider selecting some employees to be representatives who will disseminate important messages to other colleagues. Peer-to-peer communication is an effective way of communicating your business strategy. This is because employees are more likely to opt-in to the message from seniority when their colleagues on the same level show confidence in what is being reported.
5. Use storytelling
A business strategy can be a dull and static document. Bring your strategy to life with the power of storytelling. Everyone can relate to a good story, so include this as a goal to effectively communicate your business strategy. Stories will help your business strategy to be more relatable to your employees who may not connect with corporate figures and terminology. Similar to your other communication goals, storytelling should be a two-way process. Give your employees the opportunity to share their stories as well.
6. Invest in your employees
Employee communication initiatives can often be overlooked in favor of activities that have a more tangible effect on the business’s bottom line, such as marketing. However, if you neglect to allocate the necessary resources into embedding your business strategy, then your other customer acquisition and retention efforts could be in vain. An effective communication goal of your business strategy is to allocate the necessary budget and time resources. Your employees are the ‘face’ of your business. It follows that your employees’ understanding and adoption of your business’s strategic values will impact on the way they relate to customers.
An internal communication campaign to embed your strategy into your business culture may take some time to demonstrate results. However, your return on investment – in terms of brand-building and customer retention in the long run – will confirm that investing in your employees is the right choice.
7. Diversify the delivery
PowerPoint presentations alone will hardly cut it when trying to educate your staff about your business strategy. An effective communication goal should be to experiment with different medias to deliver information about your business strategy. Handing out paper handbooks is also becoming outdated, especially as people are more aware of the toll that using paper can impact the environment. If you use a workforce management tool to schedule your employees, why not utilize the collaboration feature to send messages to your employees? You can also use games to increase the engagement level of your communication.
Another idea is to write a blog. So, instead of sending the run-of-the-mill emails, write a weekly blog that provides your employees with an insight into you as a real person and how your values are consistent with your business strategy.
8. Be relatable
With more high-level executives using social media to connect with customers, there’s no excuse to remain unconcerned in relation to your employees. Your employees are more likely to get onboard with your business strategy if they can relate to you as a normal person. As mentioned above, one way to show the more human side of your personality is to write a blog. Use everyday language and occasionally talk about what you do outside of work to give your writing a more authentic feel. Giving your employees a sneak peek of yourself helps them understand that you’re human just like they are. This association may have the effect of creating empathy as they realize that dealing with the ups and downs of running a business affects you like everyone else.
9. Create interest
Some employees just come to work for a paycheck. As far as they’re concerned, they do their jobs well, get compensated, and that’s the end of it. You need to have that type of employee in mind when planning effective communication techniques for your business strategy. You’ll need to impress on your employees that, if they enjoy working for your business, then it’s in their best interests to help keep it profitable. One of the best ways that employees can invest in the business is to understand your purpose and how this influences what they do.
Other ways that you can get disinterested staff to become interested in your business strategy is to communicate the importance of working for a business with a good reputation. No one wants the embarrassment of being employed by a business with a shady character. Therefore, the more the values from the business strategy are passed on to the customer, the better the chance of maintaining a solid reputation.
Conclusion
Developing effective communication goals for your business strategy can be challenging. It may be difficult to transform a high-level corporate document into different forms of communication that will resonate with all your employees. With a solid internal communication strategy in place, you’ll find it easier to communicate key messages around your business’s strategic vision. Clear, consistent, and authentic communication is necessary to engage and motivate employees to invest in your business strategy.
To learn more about how Deputy is helping organizations improve their internal communication, try out a free 30-day trial of our product by booking a demo below.
