Internal Communications During an Economic Downturn

Economic downturns mean uncertainty – and uncertainty is bad for business. Few people thrive when they are feeling nervous and insecure. Most of us work best when we have a clear picture of where our organization is heading and what we need to do to contribute.

Regular, clear, engaging internal communications play a big part in reducing uncertainty. During a downturn it is more important than ever to give staff a clear picture of the future, share information as soon as it comes to hand and answer staff’s questions and concerns quickly and honestly.

The investment is small compared with the value to your organization of meeting these challenges:

  • Maintaining productivity
  • Staying profitable and competitive
  • Retaining your best staff
  • Protecting your culture, internal and external brands

Customize Messages

People may have different needs depending on how they are affected by an economic downturn, their age, life-stage and prior experience of change or recession. Internal messages need to be customized to suit your target employee audiences. Then, once you have customized messages, you need to deliver them. This can be tricky with some types of generic communications channels, e.g. the intranet or printed magazines.

Targeted. The Snap Content Management system lets you customize messages and send them to selected groups of staff. Snap automatically detects existing network structures and groups and sets these up as default targeting groups. From here you can set up additional targeting groups as appropriate. Perhaps by department, function or perhaps you want to make managers a specific targeting group so they get advance notification of communications to the wider organization.

Be Timely

Put new information out quickly. Staff should hear company news from the company first. Nothing is worse for employee morale than learning about changes to their organization from the media or family and friends before they hear about them from their employer.

Coordinate your internal and external messages. Sometimes, however much you would like to, you cannot brief staff before you release information publicly (e.g. to the stock exchange). In these cases, organize a staff briefing to coincide with your public announcement.

Keep track of when staff last heard from you and schedule in regular updates, even if you do not expect to have anything ‘new’ to report.

Pre-schedule messages. The Snap Content Management System lets you pre-schedule your messages so that staff receive information at the same time as you release it externally (e.g. to the stock exchange or media). Formats like desktop staff alerts and scrolling news feeds get the message across quickly.

Even if you don’t know what the outcome will be, e.g. business up for sale, you an set up variations of messages and then hit publish when you have final information (you can’t accidentally hit publish, you have to confirm!)

Fast response tools. For some types of messages, a fast response tool with high cut through is essential. In these circumstances use a desktop staff alert or scrolling news ticker that is delivered directly onto the targeted employee’s computer screen. Desktop alerts can contain important messages such as; a senior manager resignation, importance financial results, buying or selling part of the business etc. Message recurrence options ensure that important updates achieve cut-through.

Scrolling news feeds are another way to update staff quickly. Snap Ticker is very easy to use: simply type in a headline, add the details of a link (e.g. to an intranet page, web site or document on a shared network) and decide your target groups. This format is ideal for call centers as it lets you keep people informed of the latest updates without interrupting their flow of work.

Push out RSS updates. Snap Ticker lets you take advantage of external sources of information too. It can push out information updates from any source that is RSS-enabled (including your own intranet) without requiring staff to opt in (although this is an option). This helps keep staff informed and be effective in their roles.

If you use RSS feeds in your press releases or web site, set up a scrolling news feed. This will give staff the release automatically, as soon as it becomes public. And it’s efficient: automatic RSS feeds mean staff don’t need to take the time to opt in. Alternatively, if you want to write a special announcement for staff, you can easily create an internal scrolling news feed and schedule it to appear at an appropriate time.

Team specific news feeds. You can nominate staff from different departments (e.g. the sales team or engineering department) to manage the Snap Ticker for their own audiences while, as overall administrator, still seeing all the messages posted. You can set the ticker to continue scrolling on-screen until the staff member clicks on it, or specify the number of scrolls and recurrence until clicked on. This is a good way to guarantee that staff view important content.

Ensure Message Cut-through

Good timing is only part of the story. We need to make sure we are getting cut through for important messages too. This is becoming increasingly difficult due to noise.

Recurrence. You can set messages up so that they recur or even stay on screen until staff have seen and acted on it This is particularly helpful for updates that need to be read.

Acknowledgement buttons can be particularly useful for HR, Health and safety etc comms. Also, in some countries there are legal requirements to notify staff when there is a change to the business that might affect their role.

The content management system allows you to report on who has or has not opened the full message and clicked on the links that it contains. So you know exactly who has seen what.

Engaging Internal Communications

Communications need to be authentic and engaging because people may be more cynical or worried during an economic downturn. Email is not an effective channel under these circumstances. In fact, workers claim that 34% of the internal email they receive is unnecessary. (Gartner / eCompany).

So is another corporate comms email REALLY going to get cut through?
SnapComms provide a range of engaging internal communications tools which some of the world’s leading companies use to keep their staff informed.


Measurable. The Snap Content Management System lets you run reports to gauge whether staff are aware of your messages and reading your materials. In uncertain times, this can be particularly important: many countries’ employment laws require organizations to tell their staff formally if they plan to change how they operate.

Track performance. Snap Poll lets you assess how well your employee communications are working, measure staff’s attitudes and understanding and spot trends. Snap Poll pops up on the computer screens of chosen staff. It includes built-in reminders to encourage staff to take part.

Repetition. The Snap Internal Communications tools give you a wide range of different ways to communicate and repeat important messages without their becoming ‘wall paper’.

Reduce information overload. The Snap Internal Communications tools are built to bypass email, a channel which is overused and often fails to get important messages across. Use Snap Mag to eliminate emails, by collating general news and simple updates in an easy-to-read, one-stop format. Read more.

Drive performance. Use Snap Staff Quiz to encourage staff to share their ideas for saving costs or working more efficiently and to reinforce important messages and new ways of working.

Build community. Snap-Mag lets staff to tell their own stories in their own words. The Snap Interactive channels let them take part in online discussions and blogs with their colleagues.

Use Two-way Internal Communications Channels

Investigate specific issues. E.g. understanding of downturn business strategy, or take a quick temperature check to get a sense about what’s bothering people. For example, “What process or rule is preventing us from growing our business?”

Gather feedback about new business strategy in light of economic downturn. Review employee understanding, feelings, and collect suggestions for improvement.

Keep lines of communication open. Snap Poll also allows you to run opt in surveys (e.g. link on screensaver or from intranet) for less critical but important issues to give staff a voice and keep lines of communication open.

Extend the value of face to face communications . Use Snap Poll or Snap Interactive to encourage staff to provide questions or issues prior to a face to face communications and to give feedback and suggestions after face-to-face meetings.

A CEO or senior manager blog can act as an ongoing ‘town hall meeting’. The direct, informal nature of blogs appeals to many staff and encourages them to approach their senior team with questions and comments. The Snap Interactive tools are secure, easy-to-use, interactive Web 2.0 internal communications tools. They are built specifically for employee communications and need little IT resource, training or budget to put in place. You can customize pre-defined templates and settings in a few clicks.

Staff discussion forums can provide a way for staff to explore ideas and provide feedback. They can also help to gauge the feeling within the organization. Just the type of questions (e.g. “is my job safe?” versus “what career opportunities are there?”) gives a good indication of how people are feeling.

Q&A forums can be a real asset if things are changing e.g. processes, services, products. It provides a means for staff to get quick help and stay effective. The moderator can receive an automatic desktop alert when a new question is posted. They can then tag questions and which then become part of an evolving searchable repository of knowledge. It saves you time having to construct FAQ's ahead of time as the questions evolve quickly based on real needs and questions rather than having trying to predict the future.

Rumors. If you are brave enough, consider setting up an online discussion forum as a ‘rumor mill’ to let staff post anonymously any rumors they are hearing. Bringing them out into the open lets you address them quickly. When people are worried about their job security innocent things (e.g. cutting flowers in the office areas) can trigger rumors (“they are closing this office!”). This allows internal communicators to act as a “voice of reason”. Snap Interactive provides a range of moderation options and is highly secure which can reduces fears of leaks outside of the organization..

Be Visible, Honest and Open

No news is good news? For your employees, it’s rarely the case – and certainly not in an economic downturn. In fact, research shows that 71% of people felt that their organization should be communicating more about the current economic downturn than they are (Weber Shandwick).

Use face to face effectively. Snap RSVP is a meeting request that behaves like a desktop staff alert. This tool is ideal for getting the best out of events like employee briefings or CEO road shows. You can include explanatory text and ask staff to choose the session they want to attend. When they reply, Snap RSVP automatically enters the appointment in their Outlook calendar. Simple reporting tools in Snap Content Manager let you see which staff are attending which sessions. This helps you plan logistics (e.g. room sizes and catering) and lets you close off specific time slots as rooms fill. Snap RSVP is particularly useful in uncertain times when it is so important to communicate face-to-face in smaller interactive groups. Use Snap RSVP to make sure that staff come along to these sessions.

Use video if face to face is not possible. Credibility, conviction and passion are best conveyed visually. When a face-to-face meeting is impossible, use Snap Video to let staff see the commitment and intent in your senior leaders’ eyes (and hear the passion in their voices). Snap Video is a desktop staff alert that delivers video to the desktops of employees you select. To make sure as many staff as possible get the information, you can set desktop alerts up to prompt staff to watch the video and encourage them to click through to a discussion forum or intranet pages for more details.

Measure your Impact (and Demonstrate Your Value!)

Demonstrate the value of internal communications. During an economic downturn, it can be particularly important to demonstrate the value of internal communications to senior managers. Snap Poll allows you to do this. You can measure understanding, awareness or behaviors etc before a communications campaign, then after the campaign benchmark again and measure the shift. Because the Snap Content manager makes it so easy to target messages to specific employee groups you might consider using a control group to measure against if it is possible. Recurrence options mean that staff are more likely to participate and gather representative survey results. Easy targeting allows you to sample rather than target everyone so that employee don’t get survey fatigue. Read more.

You can also use Snap Poll to measure the effectiveness of managers as communicators and to review the effectiveness of other internal communications channels. Read more.

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