5 internal comms documents every organisation should have
When setting up your internal communication function, documents that provide guidelines around what to do and when, and spell out roles and responsibilities, will form the foundation for a well-run internal comms function.
Even if you don’t have anyone in a specific internal comms role, these documents will provide guidance to anyone involved in communicating internally, and help to provide a sense of cohesion and professionalism. They should be regularly reviewed and updated, easily accessible from one point that is the ‘one source of truth’, and have clear ownership.
Writing style guide
The Writing Style Guide explains how you talk about your business. It’s a reflection of your brand and your culture. Some of the key elements include:
How you refer to your customers or clients
How you refer to your team members
How you describe what your business is and what you do
What you capitalise in writing and what you don’t
How you write role titles
… and much more!
For more, see our article on ‘What you need in your company’s style guide’.
Brand guidelines
Brand guidelines - and accompanying templates - help to ensure that every touch point a person has with your brand internally or externally is consistent. This helps to maintain the strength of the brand, and prevents different variations or ‘sub-brands’ appearing.
From an internal perspective, your brand guidelines should be applied to all your channels, including your intranet design, email templates and signatures, logos and brand colours in print and digital, and much more.
Crisis communication plan
A crisis can happen any time, any place, to any business. No matter how well prepared you are, a crisis could take you by surprise! Whether it’s reactive or proactive, your crisis communication plan will help to provide guidelines on roles and responsibilities, the review and approval processes, and how you will communicate to all stakeholders, including staff.
Having this plan regularly reviewed and updated will make your life a lot easier when a crisis does occur.
Channel governance matrix
This document clearly spells out who owns what channel, what the channel should be used for, who the primary audience is, and parameters around the content. For example, your intranet could have different owners for different sections; you might have rules around how often the news section is updated and what kind of content is appropriate; and it might also describe the review and approval processes.
Group channels that could be included in this matrix include the intranet, group-wide emails from key leaders or generic mailboxes, internal social media channels such as Yammer or Slack, or even channels such as WhatsApp used for communicating with all staff.
Communication plan template
This template is super useful for anyone involved in communicating about projects or initiatives. Even if you do have an internal comms team, they are likely to be running very lean and will only have the resources to focus on the big-ticket items. Having a comms plan template - and some related training such as a quick webinar - will go a long way to easing the burden on comms and project teams alike, and help ensure a better standards of communication across the board.
Does your business need a hand with setting up your internal comms framework, drafting these documents or developing training to build capability? We can help! Get in touch today to chat to us about what you need.
