7 Top Tips for

a Successful Employee
Communications
Strategy
7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy

Introduction
No matter how many variations of the
old saying, “fail to prepare, prepare
to fail” you’ve heard, it’s as true today
as ever it was, and it’s not going to
change anytime soon.

But can you succeed without having a strategy? Sure, people can
succeed in life without a grand plan, but companies in today’s world
rarely have any chance of survival without clear business goals and
objectives—and strategies for achieving them.
More often than not, organizations have no long-term employee
communications strategy in place. The 2022 Gallagher State of
the Sector report showed that a mere 31% of respondents say they
have an overarching internal communication strategy in place.
Leaders lack the vision, fail to provide enough support, or simply
are not inspired to drive initiatives around employee communications.
And in other instances, developing a strategy is seen as time-
consuming and challenging.
So, to make it easier, to cut through and break down negative
perceptions, to show a clear path to a successful workplace
communications strategy, we’ve created these Top Tips.

We hope you find them useful.

Tim Vaughan
Head of Content, Poppulo

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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy

01

Know Your Company’s

Business Goal and
Objectives
Your communication strategy cannot—and must not—sit in a parallel universe. It must
be aligned and tailored to the overall business objectives. So, the starting point of
any communications strategy has to be a deep and clear knowledge of the business
goals. If that knowledge isn’t clear, or the business objectives are ill-defined in the
first place, any comms strategies built on them are highly unlikely to succeed.

NOTE

01 Tactics are not strategy. A strategy

is a carefully chosen path that is
created to bring about a future state
of operations. Tactics are the actual
means used to achieve the goals
defined in the strategy.

02 A business may need more than

one strategy to reach a desired
future state.

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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy

02

Think of Your Comms

Strategy in Terms of
Adding Value, Not Costs
As leading business advisor and internal communications expert Jim Shaffer
says: “I’ve never met a business leader who, when given the choice between
having a communication professional who adds value or having one who drains
value, opts for the latter.”
Shifting from a cost-center mentality to a value-added creation mindset is
even more critical when budgets are being squeezed and where leaders are
either under-appreciative or are skeptical of the communications function.

“
Get your leaders on board.
Explain to them what other
communication professionals
are doing and tell them that
you want to add value too.
—Jim Shaffer

You can read his top tips on how to add business value here

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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy

03

Set Out Your Vision and Be

Able To Articulate It Clearly
No one in an organization, including leadership, will automatically have a clear vision
for what a perfect employee comms strategy looks like. So, don’t look for perfection.
Instead, take the time and effort to develop your vision and validate it over time.
Articulating your vision is the first step in the process that allows you the opportunity
to define the way employee comms will play a role in a future state of your
organization. And when employee comms supports your business strategy, it gives
your approach legitimacy and makes a stronger case for additional resources.

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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy
04
The Five Elements
of Your Vision
01. Audience
Understand your leaders and employees
better. Know their preferences, wants,
needs, frustrations, and learning styles.
02. Preferences
Know their preferred channels, languages,
vehicles, dayparts (best time of the day/
week to send and receive communications),
and frequency of communications.
03. Goals
Align your communication goals to what you
know about your employees. The content
you create and the actions you ask them to
take should feel targeted and meaningful.
04. Resources
Identify the resources you will need to
bring your vision to life. This includes
capital, people, and capabilities, as well
as technology. And consider any change
management resources you may also need.
05. Measurement
Last, but most importantly—determine
how you will measure your efforts. You will
need to know if your communications are
effective and how they deliver ROI. If you’re
not measuring the right things in the right
way, don’t be surprised if your leaders don’t
value what you tell them, or your work.
Finding measurement difficult? To make
your life a whole lot easier, check out The
Ultimate Guide to Measuring Internal
Communications.
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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy

05

Alignment: The
Secret to Success
Support for your employee communications strategy beyond your department
is vital. That makes finding alignment with the key people in your organization
essential to win the support you need.
First, consider the stakeholders or executive committee who own the responsibility
of developing the strategy and its outcome. Without their participation and
buy-in, there will not be any strategy, or the one you create will not be effective.
Second, look at the executive leadership or C-suite—they are the ultimate
decision-makers and will review what you and the other stakeholders present.
They hold the key to success.
Finally, there is your own team, who will be part of creating and sustaining
the strategy. Are they capable of doing what needs to be done?
Employee comms cuts across every part of the organization. Success will be
determined by your effective alignment and participation throughout the
different departments.

NOTE: SOME DON’TS!

01 Don’t work as an island—involve others

02 Don’t avoid the hard conversation around
investment in resources

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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy
06
Remove Guesswork Through
Research and Insights
WARNING!
Don’t make the common mistake of moving from alignment
directly to tactical execution without taking time to validate
your strategic vision.
It’s tempting to jump into execution mode, but it’s
strongly advised to seek out further insights that
will better shape your employee comms strategy.
This from Colin Mitchell in the Harvard Business
Review: “market research is a given for any consumer
marketing campaign, but companies seldom
invest in any research when their employees are
the audience…why go to the trouble? Because once
organizations find out what’s on people’s minds,
they can tailor their campaigns accordingly.”
Applying modern research, insights, and action-
planning methods greatly benefits strategy. You
get to know your audience, their wants, needs,
and preferences better—and when it comes to
communications, knowing your audience is one
of the oldest rules in the book.
What communication channels do employees prefer?
How do they best consume information?
What are their learning preferences?
Is it better to use more visual tools?
Or do they prefer one-to-one meetings with managers?
What do you know about timing preferences?
There are many more valid questions, so before jumping
into research, it’s helpful to perform an audit to
understand the gaps between the areas of strength
in your comms and where you need improvement.
Here’s a helpful free resource: 7 Steps for a Great
Internal Communications Audit.
After the Audit
You will have a good sense of the state of your employee
communications and how that compares with the vision
of your future state. But you need to dig deeper to extract
more information by conducting surveys and interviews.
The Poppulo Harmony platform has been uniquely
developed for internal communicators, to provide those
deep insights and statistical analysis essential for
strategy validation before moving to tactical execution.
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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy
07
Moving From Research
to Creation: Building
Your IC Strategy
Your prioritized objectives and actions will by now be
finalized and fully supported by your stakeholders and
executive leaders.
But first, create a profile of your audience. This can
either be in the form of personas or a more robust
segmentation.
At This Stage, You Will Have:
• A future vision that has the backing of your
stakeholders and executive leaders
• Audited your current state and understand
strengths, areas for improvement, and gaps in your
communications
• Compiled research that helps validate much of your
vision and course-correct where it is off
• Developed personas or segmentation of your audience
• Created or updated your employer brand
• A firm list of prioritized actions needed to take to
address your comms objectives
Next Steps: From Strategy to Tactics
After prioritizing your actions, you need to apply a
tactical plan to implement each action. But remember,
this doesn’t have to happen all at once.
Focus on one action at a time until you have enough
people to complete all assignments.
When developing a tactical plan, the first order of
business is to write up a brief that includes:
• A summary of communication objectives
• Measure of success—KPIs
• Target audience(s)
• Suggested channels and vehicles
• Team and resources¬—internal staff, external
agencies, etc.
• Budget: this is critical—you need to know that what
you have is enough to accomplish your objective
For a deeper dive into strategy creation and
execution, download The Ultimate Guide to Internal
Communications Strategy.
To keep employees engaged and happy, plus
decrease turnover, it’s critical to adjust your
comms strategy over time and ensure you have
a robust platform that provides the flexibility
and personalization your employees need. And
that’s where Poppulo can help.
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7 Top Tips for a Successful Employee Communications Strategy
About Poppulo
In a scattered world, we bridge the gaps. We connect
people, systems, and ways of working to deepen
relationships and help organizations move forward.
At Poppulo, we connect the people you need to
reach—from employees to customers—with the right
message at just the right moment in time. Imagine
easily delivering communications across email, digital
signage, mobile, Intranet, collaboration tools, and the
other channels your employees and customers rely on,
all from one platform. Then imagine that same platform
powering your workplace experience and simplifying
space reservation and management. That’s the reality
the Poppulo Harmony communications and workplace
experience platform provides.
The Poppulo Harmony Platform Lets You:
Communicate effectively with your entire
workforce via the channels they prefer
Create content once and publish it to all your
key channels for greater workflow efficiency
Foster engagement and productivity by
communicating employee achievements,
company innovations, KPIs and performance
dashboards, health and safety info, and so
much more
Understand and improve the impact of
communications through detailed analytics
and AI-driven content insights
And that’s the reality over 6,000 customers across
80 countries enjoy every day. Backed by Vista Equity
Partners, a market-leading investment firm focused
on enterprise software, data, and technology-
enablement organizations, Poppulo is positioned to
help your business achieve more—across employee
communications, customer communications, and
workplace management use cases.
Interested in learning more? Give us a call. Send us
an email. Whichever communication style you prefer,
we’re here for you.
US: +1 303-313-3000 | EMEA: +325 21 242 7277
Email: info@poppulo.com | Web: poppulo.com
Maximize the value of your physical space
with desk and meeting room booking, digital
wayfinding, interactive kiosks and directories,
location-aware messaging, space analytics,
and more
Improve your customer experience at every turn
with applications for menu and promo boards,
event displays, virtual concierge applications,
digital wayfinding, flight information, and so
much more
Integrate your data and systems to extend
your reach and unlock new use cases
Leverage hundreds of integrations with key
tools and data sources
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