Top 5 internal communication trends for 2023 

Another year is behind us… 2022 proved to us that digital transformation is still expanding its reach, which is very gratifying! Better comprehensive tools, and employee experience platforms allow us to manage internal communications more and more efficiently even within distributed teams. The months ahead will continue to require companies to innovate the management of communications as well. So will anything change? It turns out that even stronger internal communication trends, already present now, may emerge. Let’s see!  

Internal communication trends in 2023

1. Omnichannel employee experience platforms to engage your workforce 

Employee engagement is a concept you will have to follow every day of the new year when planning your activities as an internal communications manager. How to engage your employees in internal communications? For this, you will need the latest user-centric tools and multi-channel capabilities.

One of the most popular internal communication trends will bee the employee experience platforms. Not only can you use them to publish engaging, multimedia content on your intranet (consider a podcast!), but you can also maintain internal social networks, and advanced knowledge bases, conduct surveys, and send newsletters. With these features, you will increase the chance of effectively reaching your employees with information. It will be all the greater if you support it with the right data. 

2. Evidence-based internal campaigns 

Increasingly, internal communications managers will turn to data which is one of the most important internal communication trends. We’re not just talking about industry reports, but especially reports of internal operations generated by their new internal comms platforms. Analysis of reach, employee participation in communications, engagement, content, and channel choices will increasingly be the basis for planning future campaigns. Much will depend on the data collected – from the selection of the channel to the time of publication of articles, to the selection of the best candidates for internal comms ambassador programs. 

3. Personalization  

There will be increasing pressure for the tools offered to employees to be highly personalized. A welcome message won’t be enough. The proper development of personalized solutions requires organizations to thoroughly research the user’s journey, preferences, choices, and favorite working hours – hence the need for advanced analytics and the use of artificial intelligence algorithms.

Employees are accustomed to personalized solutions offered to them every day as customers. People expect the same approach at work, and if this is lacking, they are likely to get annoyed. As many as 74 percent of customers get upset when online content is not tailored to their profile.  

Personalization is also about giving the employee more opportunities to tailor the tools to their own preferences – increasingly, the employee will be able to independently select and configure the one that works best for them from among many communication channels. 

4. Employee advocacy  – one of the newest internal communication trends

This very popular in social media marketing trend will also win the hearts of internal comms managers. More and more organizations have their own internal social media platforms. Therefore, employee advocacy programs would be an ideal tool to inspire co-workers and engage them in communication through this medium.

These brand ambassadors would have an opportunity to create content, and actively take part in internal events showing in internal social media channels their worth. Why engage employees in employee advocacy? Because they are authentic. 

5. Mobile first 

The growth in the role of mobile applications in internal communications, which has been noticeable in recent years, will not stop. The mobile employee app will be a must-have in many industries employing frontline workers and is becoming one of the main internal communication trends.

Multifunctional employee apps (so-called superapps) will not only be a source of knowledge and information but will also play an important role in engaging all employees in the life of the company – through internal social media, and user-generated content – and be a place for employee recognition.

The app will also help with task prioritization, keeping in touch with other coworkers, or finding the right contacts within the company. The best proof of the increasing importance of mobile apps is the ClearBox’s independent report of employee mobile apps that was conducted for the fourth year in a row. 

Soon, we will see for ourselves how internal communications will shape up in the new year and whether these internal communication trends will actually shape the industry’s situation. It’s hard to predict exactly what will happen, but trends point to certain directions of change. Will something happen that will disrupt them? We’ll see… Certainly, with Workai you can be ready for anything!