5 ways to power up your internal comms with Slack

Fun fact: Employee happiness and experience has a direct impact on your company’s bottom line. According to Gallup’s “State of the American Workplace” report, unhappy workers cost the U.S. between $450 billion and $550 billion in lost productivity every year.  

Plus, engaged employees are more likely to become brand advocates, creating a winning cycle of attracting more customers and fresh talent. In a study of 30 million employees, Gallup found that companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share.

To gauge the overall experience of your employees, you must first look at the critical role internal communications plays within your organization—and discover where improvements can be made to maximize impact. Here are five ways you can improve internal communications using Slack tools and integrations.

1. Connect employees with your mission

When your people know why your organization does what it does, they’re more likely to get on board with its mission and go the extra mile.

In its study “The Aligned Organization,” McKinsey notes, “Achieving real alignment, where strategy, goals, and meaningful purpose reinforce one another, gives an organization a major advantage because it has a clearer sense of what to do at any given time, and it can trust people to move in the right direction.”

In Slack, you can keep everyone in the know by creating an #announcements channel for admins to post key company news, policies and metrics. Also effective are #exec-ama channels for senior executives to field questions from employees. They help employees know what’s on execs’ radar and allow the leadership team to get useful feedback from the workforce.

 

2. Make internal content more engaging

Text isn’t always the most effective way to get important information across. In Slack, you can get creative—and mobile-friendly—with your internal comms, using engaging formats like videos, GIFs, podcasts and slide decks.

And because Slack is for everyone, people can ask questions or leave comments and reacjis so you can see how your content is being received.

3. Help people find information fast

Employees can spend hours searching for information, creating a big drain on productivity.

With Slack, you can make information instantly accessible with intuitive, searchable channels. Create help channels for specific topics that people often have questions about, and pin key information to the top of them. Have domain experts run those channels so they can answer questions fast—or use apps like Guru to provide answers to frequently asked employee questions.

4. Increase survey participation

Getting employee feedback—and acting on it—is essential for a healthy and engaging workplace culture.

Slack is a great place to conduct employee surveys so you can make timely improvements. From pulse surveys to large-scale feedback exercises, Slack’s ubiquity and ease of use mean you’ll see real engagement across the organization.

5. Give kudos and recognition

When employees feel valued and appreciated, they’re more likely to put in extra effort, stay longer with your organization, and help others succeed.

Slack offers lots of ways to give kudos, recognition and rewards—through comments and reacjis, or through integrated apps like UltiPro and Bonusly.

With Slack, you can turn one-way employee communications into democratic, inclusive and participatory interaction—improving engagement and contributing to an outstanding employee experience. Get in touch to find out more.