Rethinking Internal Marketing: How to Engage and Empower the New Age Hybrid Teams

The new-age workplace is full of hybrid teams, including at-office, remote, and deskless workers. It is a complicated mishmash that requires a unique approach to ensure everyone is engaged, motivated, and has aligned goals.

Earlier, a single traditional message and a few perks helped establish these. However, that’s not the case nowadays.

Instead, you need a range of internal marketing strategies that will reach every single employee, despite their roles and work location, and ensure they contribute to the same goal.

This involves sharing updates, building a positive, supportive, and connected culture, and much more. So, let’s understand what internal marketing is and explore the top strategies in-depth here!

What is Internal Marketing?

Internal marketing involves several strategies that help improve your company’s employee performance, well-being, and quality.

In this strategy, you promote your company’s values and goals to employees in a way that treats them as an audience. You market your company to employees so that your team, especially remote and in-office teams, recognizes its mission and works toward a unified goal.

Through internal marketing, you effectively share the company’s objectives, culture, and value proposition. This boosts inclusivity and establishes a sense of purpose among all team members.

It shows all team members their respective roles, keeps them motivated, and aligns them enough to encourage loyalty and improved employee retention.

7 Effective Internal Marketing Strategies

While there are many internal marketing strategies, it’s always best to adopt the top ones, such as the following.

1. Define the Internal Brand and Value Proposition

Your employees are the greatest representatives of your company. When they resonate with your company’s vision and values, they become more engaged and loyal to your company. Thus, each of them becomes your brand ambassador.

So, define your brand values, culture, and mission with the following tips.

a. Merge values and purpose

Communicate the company’s values and mission to every employee on the team. Make sure you explain how it’s relevant to each employee’s individual goals.

Identify whether your company might be devoted to innovation, growth, stability, or employee well-being. Clearly define the purpose through multiple communication channels.

b. Build and promote a consistent messaging

Work on building an authentic and consistent internal brand just as you do to maintain a steady brand identity for customers. Whether through team meetings or newsletters, promote this message across all communication channels.

How to implement it in your organization:

If your business is devoted to innovation, host virtual seminars regularly to share industry trends.

Alternatively, you can arrange lunch and learn sessions. In this, the company discusses relevant topics through informal meetings/trainings held during lunch breaks.

2. Encourage Open Communication and Transparency

Establishing open communication and transparency is an effective internal marketing strategy for building trust in hybrid teams. This is especially important because these team members don’t get enough opportunities for face-to-face interactions.

This keeps employees informed and offers them a sense of belonging in the company, making them feel valued. Here are some detailed tips for this strategy.

a. Ensure transparent leadership

Remind every team leader to be upfront about communicating all organizational changes, company challenges, and new/updated policies.

When team members are kept informed about the latest updates, they stay invested and motivated to work toward organizational success.

Statistics show that poor communication affected 54% of employees’ trust in leadership and 52% of employees’ trust in the team.

b. Maintain regular communication

Regularly communicate with all employees through appropriate channels, such as forums and company-wide town hall meetings.

Use a reliable platform where employees can also ask questions, share feedback, and be open about their concerns.  Choose one depending on your team’s needs.

For instance, the EMPLOYEE app is an amazing communication platform that keeps the entire team aligned, whether they’re in-office, deskless, or remote employees.

The all-in-one app ensures regular communication and lower chances of miscommunication with unlimited messages and fast access to necessary information.

c. Offer training and support programs

Whether you’re using old-school communication tools like Teams, Slack, and Asana or something more advanced like the EMPLOYEE app, ensure everyone knows how to use the tools. Offer training and support programs so everyone can use them comfortably.

How to implement it in your organization:

Schedule a monthly or weekly company-wide virtual meeting where the leaders share new company goals, challenges, and updates.

Alternatively, conduct Q&A sessions to answer team members’ questions. This makes them feel valued and builds trust within the team. Encourage team members to share ideas so they feel valued as contributors rather than being silent spectators.

3. Recognize Every Contribution and Accomplishment

A great way to motivate your team members is to recognize their hard work effectively. When team members feel appreciated, whether they work from the office, remotely, or deskless, it pushes them to try harder.

Employee recognition creates a robust workplace community, and employees are 8 times more likely to feel a sense of belonging. This translates to a 43% boost in employee retention. Some tactics to undertake this step are:

a. Publicly acknowledge efforts

Recognize every individual employee’s achievements and the team’s milestones publicly. This can be through virtual meetings, company-wide newsletters, or emails. Acknowledge both big and small wins without fail.

b. Offer peer-to-peer recognition

Peer-to-peer recognition is essential to creating a supportive, appreciation-filled culture in the company. So, pick a platform where all employees can give each other a shoutout and keep the spirits high.

How to implement it in your organization:

Send a congratulatory email to the entire team every week to highlight a particular team member’s contribution.

You can also host award ceremony nights for big achievements. To entertain everyone, hold these events both in person and virtually!

Moreover, host a poll where all employees nominate one peer to be recognized.  This builds a positive work environment.

4. Offer Professional Growth Opportunities

Another amazing internal marketing method is to offer professional growth opportunities to hybrid workers. Some effective strategies for this are:

a. Ensure Continuous Learning

Offer paid online courses, skill-building workshops, and diplomas and certifications. If any particular job role requires frequent certification renewal, enroll them in required courses.

These will help employees stay updated with the latest industry-level skills, learn continuously, and grow their skills. They’ll feel more confident to work in their respective roles.

b. Promote Cross-Department Projects

Encourage employees to collaborate with different departments and join projects beyond their scope. This pushes them to learn new skills in different company operations.

How to implement it in your organization:

Invest in a reliable mobile app that offers easy access to learning and training videos and documents with your team members. This will let them learn new skills for their current position or a promotion at their own pace.

Motivate employees to pick new skills without directly pushing them by highlighting employees who have benefitted from the programs.

5. Ensure Top-Tier Work-Life Balance

According to a 2022 survey by FlexJobs on 4,000 respondents, 63% of them cited they’d prioritize work-life balance over pay any time!

So, ensure a healthy work-life balance for hybrid employees. Offer them enough flexibility to perform all duties at their chosen time so their personal lives aren’t affected. Some effective strategies for this are:

a. Encourage autonomy

Let employees pick their work schedules and, of course, establish certain rules and boundaries. Autonomy displays how you trust your employees. As they create their own schedule, they can plan their day better, which ensures greater productivity!

b. Boost employee mental health

A 2023 poll by Monster shows that 35% and 28% of employees mentioned their mental health at work is poor and fair, respectively. 89% of the respondents even mentioned they’d rather quit or get laid off than continue in such a toxic environment.

So, boosting employee mental health is a must-follow strategy. Offer them paid access to wellness programs, mental health resources, and counseling services.

This way, you can show that you care about employee wellness, ensure a positive culture, and increase loyalty.

How to implement it in your organization:

Launch new initiatives to offer more flexibility to employees and boost their health. Offer more paid time off and additional mental health support, including fitness classes, meditation classes, and virtual yoga.

Instead of nine to five, offer work-hour options like eight to four and 10 to six. Employees can choose their hours accordingly. Set right-to-disconnect policies so nobody is disturbed beyond work hours. Offer daycare facilities or stipends for new parents.

6. Implement Personalized Onboarding Processes

Another way to boost internal marketing is to build a well-curated and personalized onboarding process. This is important to impress your new recruits, boost employee engagement, and strengthen your internal brand identity.

Some strategies to effectively follow this are:

a. Launch a warm welcome

Personalize the onboarding with special welcome kits and special notes with recruit names. Put branded merchandise, like t-shirts, laptops, and any other on-job necessities. Employees will feel supported by this and be eager to give their all.

b. Offer virtual training and tours

Arrange virtual office tours to explain company culture and processes to remote new hires. This will show them the office environment and boost hybrid team spirit.

Offer virtual training to them as well to ensure everyone understands how to use company tools and learn the processes.

How to implement it in your organization:

Allocate an experienced employee as a mentor for every new hire to show them the ropes. This pairing for a few months will guide them and make them feel more engaged and connected.

Plan regular one-on-one meetings between new recruits and managers. Get their feedback to make them feel heard and build a sense of inclusivity and belonging.  Employees with a greater sense of belonging are 34% more likely to stay than others.

7. Build social interaction opportunities

Regular social interaction is another important internal marketing method. This builds team unity and reduces isolation, especially among remote employees. Certain effective strategies for this are:

a. Schedule virtual events

Regularly host virtual team-building activities and casual hangouts. These will let employees connect with each other beyond work.

b. Plan in-person gatherings

Although it’s difficult with a hybrid team, try to schedule at least one in-person event for the entire team. This helps team members understand each other beyond the screen and know each other better.

How to implement it in your organization:

For virtual meetings, pair employees randomly for virtual coffee breaks. For in-person events, plan lots of communication and collaboration activities. These help them make valuable connections while building an inclusive environment.

Conclusion

The modern workplace is evolving in several ways, and internal marketing stands out as an essential pillar. With the mentioned strategies, you can engage all employees, fortify internal brand identity, and build a common sense of purpose.

Internal marketing plays a huge role in breaking down barriers and enhancing productivity and in-team engagement.

To implement these strategies effectively, consider using the EMPLOYEE app and utilizing its effective communication. It’ll ensure all employees are well-informed about updates and engaged using their respective devices, regardless of location.

FAQs

1. How does internal marketing help any hybrid team?

Internal marketing builds a sense of purpose and belonging in your hybrid team. This aligns them as a team and prevents any feeling of disconnection and disengagement. Thus, both your in-office and remote team members feel valued and engaged equally.  This also helps in retaining employees better.

2. What are the best internal marketing tools for any hybrid team?

Most businesses consider tools like Zoom for virtual meetings and Microsoft Teams and Trello for project management.

However, if you also have a chunk of deskless and frontline employees, the best internal marketing tool is the EMPLOYEE app. It’s an amazing mobile platform that keeps everyone connected, updated, and engaged on the go with varied features.

3. How to make remote employees feel more engaged and seen?

A few ways to make remote employees feel seen, engaged, and valued are to:

• Offer company-wide recognition for their efforts and contributions
• Arrange virtual meetings to gather their opinions and thoughts on crucial decisions
• Arrange virtual social events as well when there’s any event for rejoicing.

4. How to measure the efficiency of internal marketing strategies?

Employee productivity, retention, and interaction are the best key performance indicators for tracking the efficiency of internal marketing strategies.