Engaging your employees through high-quality HR and communications is vital in transforming your workplace culture. However, there’s often a disconnect between the two areas, despite them working in perfect harmony.

When human resources are aligned with communications, everyone benefits. This is because HR deliver the most critical messages to make sure the workforce succeeds, from onboarding to benefits, training, changes and company policies.

By linking the two areas together, you can form a better understanding of how your business can support the employee and vice versa.

As part of our mission to bridge the gap between HR and communications, we’ve created expert toolkits to help you deliver improved and clear messages with a people focus. Our ‘Foundations for Engaging Interactions Toolkit’ combines the knowledge of HR, psychologist and communications professionals to provide you with clear templates and policies to improve your internal communications and better engage your employees.

The toolkit focuses on five interlinking key themes: clarity, refresh, interaction, growth and change. But what do these themes mean and why are they so important in promoting effective internal communications?

We explain how each of the themes work, the tools that are focused around these, and the ways in which they can help deliver better engagement in your workplace:

Clarity

Our toolkit helps you promote clarity in the workplace by providing you with guides to deliver clear and concise messaging when communicating with your employees. Doing so ensures everyone in the business knows where it’s heading and what they’re all doing to get there.

The documents in this toolkit which help create clarity at work are:

• Company handbook – A guide on what to include in your company handbook
• Information on facilities – A guide on creating a facilities and contact document
• Policy checklist – A checklist on key HR policies to incorporate in your business
• External media relations & crisis communications – How to set up a guide for handling external media enquiries and crisis communications

Refresh

Prioritising people’s wellbeing has never been more important. The refresh documents in our toolkit are centred around putting health and wellbeing at the heart of all HR and communications.

By supporting employees with their mental health and listening to what they think and feel, you can make them feel valued by showing them you care. Doing so strengthens relationships, develops a sense of communication and a feeling of solidarity – all factors that contribute to a happier and more motivated workforce.

The documents in this toolkit which help your team to refresh are:

• Benefit Scheme – An overview of the types of company benefits to offer
• Health & Wellbeing – A ready-made health & wellbeing policy
• Mental Health – A guide on how to talk about mental health at work
• Volunteering & charity work – A guide on promoting volunteering at work

Interaction

Interaction is about the social elements of work, how people interact, what mechanisms they use and how they utilise them. Interacting successfully is crucial to developing solid relationships and getting the best out of people.

After all, fruitful interactions boost morale and satisfaction. If your workforce is happy, they’ll not only do a better job, they’ll become advocates for your company and shout out about how good you are.

Interaction is also about communicating your brand proposition through all your HR activity to ensure the story of your brand gets shared across the company. When employees are better engaged in what you stand for, they’ll spread your values to consumers without thinking because they’ll become ingrained in everything they do.

Having a social media policy in place also helps you manage interactions. It allows you to spell out what’s acceptable to post on social media about your company and what’s not. It helps guide employees on how to advocate your brand while protecting your reputation at the same time.

The documents in this toolkit which help your team to interact are:

• Brand proposition – A guide on how to create an effective brand proposition
• Social media policy – A ready-made social media policy

Growth

Growth is about business and personal growth. It’s about developing people through training opportunities as well as growing the business and moving it forward in the marketplace.

Adopting a structured approach to performance in the form of training, appraisals and objectives can positively influence employees’ work ethic. Having a supportive framework in place not only motivates the employees by giving them goals to work towards, it also strengthens their skills to help grow your company.

The documents in this toolkit which help promote growth are:

• How to write objectives – A guide on how to write appraisal objectives
• Training & Development – A guide on how to create a successful training and development programme

Change

Change centres around bringing your people with you on a journey of change, whether that’s a change in leadership, personnel, software, working arrangements, approach or restructures.

In a rapidly changing world, it’s important to have provisions in place to safeguard your business from unforeseen challenges and to protect employees psychologically. In times of uncertainty, staff react emotionally. Emotional issues need to be handled with sensitivity, using the right language, tone and messages.

Change can happen from an employee’s standpoint, too. You might find a staff member’s circumstances change and they need your support in accommodating flexible arrangements. The change section in the toolkit helps guide you through all of this.

The documents in this toolkit which help your team to change are:

• Crisis planning – A guide on how to implement a crisis management plan
• Flexible working – A ready-made flexible working policy
• Working from home/ home worker – A ready-made home-working policy

There’s no doubt about it; implementing clear communication strategies through HR processes is crucial to engaging your employees and getting them invested in your business. With the help of our toolkit, you can do just that.

Find out more about our Foundations for Engaging Interactions Toolkit or get in touch to see how else we can support you with your internal communications.