Make your strategic priorities count with an effective communications plan

You’ve set your business goals – now maximize communications to make a bigger impact!

Why is developing a strategic communications plan important for your business goals and objectives? The impact will lead to a win-win for employees and employers: 

• Employees understand how they can make an impact.
• Leaders are equipped and empowered to communicate with employees, so they can do their job and help achieve your company goals. 

As you develop your comms plan, it will be helpful to understand this year’s market climate. Check out my colleague Mark Lindley’s blog, “3 unique communication challenges you must address in the new year.”

How to develop a strategic communications plan that empowers and engages

First and foremost, you should develop your plan with an experienced communications partner. Here are some ideas to help you align, engage and drive results across your organization:  

1. Key message plan – translate your goals into messages that can be used by your leaders. Include how your business goals tie into the overall organization. State your message in layman’s terms so that leaders are unified in how they talk about goals and objectives with their teams. 

2. Strategic slide deck – use PowerPoint to share visuals, high level messages and results. This is a key resource to have, not only at the beginning of the year, but to update on a quarterly basis. 

3. Employee Q&As (FAQ materials or lunch and learn sessions) – identify questions that employees have on their minds. These questions could be around the opportunities (i.e., how meeting your goals helps them grow), needs (i.e., what do employees need to be successful), challenges (i.e., what are the headwinds or marketplace pressures), and barriers/obstacles (i.e., how will it be possible with expense controls in place or resource constraints). Consider wrapping it up with how you’ll work together to achieve your goals (i.e., collaboration, partnering across the organization).

4. Script for leaders – map how goals apply to different functions in your organization and identify how high-level goals roll down the org chart. Encourage leaders to tie these goals to their group, so that employees understand how their group plays a role.  

5. Video messages – share leader updates with your employees throughout the year. These updates should include goals, progress and accomplishments. Along with videos, this can also be accomplished through quarterly town hall meetings.

6. Employee goals – help employees see how their work makes an impact! Take your business line goals and develop them further to determine how internal groups will align. Then have managers and employees discuss how they can be included in the employee’s goals and development discussions.

What’s next? Build the plan and then follow it, continuously sharing updates throughout the year.

It’s no surprise that teams can easily be derailed from following their communications plan. Stay tuned for my colleague’s tips for sticking to your strategy.