1. Intranet Intranets are one of the most used channels for internal communication. They are designed to keep employees informed about what is happening in the company and share important materials with them. Since they have been in the market for decades now, organizations that like to “play it safe” are still prone to implementing intranets into their organizations. However, intranets serve as content repositories. Ideally, you would like to provide your employees with fresh and relevant content that helps them keep up with the company news, which you can't do with a static communication channel such as an Intranet. What's more, only 13% of employees use their Intranet on a daily basis. In fact, low usage rates with Intranets is one of the biggest challenges internal comms teams are facing now . Here's why those usage rates are so low: 2. Emails In the business world, emails are probably still the most popular means of communication in the workplace. However, should they be the primary internal communication channel? Within enterprise companies, there is still an enormous flow of critical information delivered through emails. Some of them are more important than others, some require immediate attention and others don’t. But can your people prioritize them easily when their inboxes are full of irrelevant or unimportant information? Lost of productivity and inability to instantly focus on what really matters are the two main reasons why internal communications departments are now replacing emails with more modern communication solutions. In addition, emails focus on individual conversations while organizations are more and more focusing on teamwork and collaboration. Unfortunately, this is hard to achieve through emails. 3. Project management tools Even though one would not consider them as communication channels, project management tools do enable better team collaboration. Project management tools let employees create and assign tasks to team members, organized into ‘boards’. Using such tools, employees can create actionable tasks in one click. A calendar view allows employees to schedule tasks in advance and to see upcoming deadlines at a glance. Even though project management solutions have revolutionized the way employee collaboration and project management work, they are certainly not a replacement for internal communications solutions. Moreover, 29% of employees say that poor internal communication is the reason for projects to fail. Project management tools are simply not designed to keep employees informed about the happenings within the organization, neither they ensure easy access to company-wide information. Therefore, one should not use them as the primary internal communication channel. 4. Employee newsletters Employee newsletters, if done right, can be a great way to inform your employees about what is going on within the company. Employee newsletters, with a little bit of creativity, can be a great way to engage your employees and keep them up-to-date with information that is relevant to them and their interests. You can send company updates, share CEO’s messages to employees, introduce new hires, celebrate big wins or announce important events. However, newsletters are usually sent through emails. As mentioned earlier, emails can be pretty inefficient way to communicate with employees as they are hard to prioritize. What's more, communicating with your employees through email newsletters doesn't allow you to personalize the information you share with them. With standardized newsletters, you can't tailor the information you share with your employees based on their roles within the organization, their location and the languages they speak.5. Private messaging softwares Private messaging software solutions became extremely popular and they are now used in most organizations. Indeed, they enable team discussions all while making it easy for employees to have private discussions with their colleagues on a daily basis. However, private messaging apps have some limits:They don't enhance conversations around specific pieces of content.Even though private messaging apps encourage team communication, they don't enable organizational communication. For example, they don't help you inform the whole workplace on important company updates, key business trends, or internal processes employees need to know. Private messaging apps are great for team chats, but they won't help you communicate company-wide information with your entire workforce.6. Document sharing softwares Not able to immediately find important documents that you need to complete your tasks or the project you're working on? Besides causing frustration among employees, employers are still not aware of the real cost of extensive information search. This is exactly the reason why document sharing tools have been developed; to structure and organize important documents so that employees can access them in seconds. However, implementing this type of software is just the first step toward great internal comms. These software allow you to store key documents, but they don't help you share specific documents or information with the right employees when they need it. Just consider these stats: 86% of employees say that they usually experience difficulty searching for office files when they need them. (SmallBizTrends) 46% of employees say it’s time-consuming and challenging to find the documents they need. (M-Files)83% of employees must recreate existing documents since they can’t find them in their company network. (M-Files) After the implementation, information still needs to be grouped, organized and segmented in a way that makes sense to your employees. If the search process is not intuitive to employees, they will be unlikely to use it. 7. Video conferencing softwares Every company today has a video conferencing software in place. This is not surprising as we live in the world where we don’t have to be physically together to work successfully as a team. Video conferencing software solutions enable us to connect our remote employees on a more personal level than just via messaging apps. In addition, they are one of the most popular ways to reduce travel times and other related business costs. Video conferencing solutions, however, are made to ease conversations among teams, not to drive ongoing company conversations, share updates and drive engagement at the company-wide level. Therefore, they are never used as the primary communication channel to keep all employees informed and up-to-date. 8. Internal podcasts Studies from LinkedIn show that 42% of people between the ages of 18-34 listen to podcasts at least once a week. When done right, employers can leverage the rise of podcasts to effectively communicate with their employees. Because of this communication channel’s storytelling capabilities, they have become one of the preferred methods for younger generations to take in information. With podcasts, however, it is important to recognize that this type of communication is largely one-way. Therefore, podcasts are most effective when they’re part of an integrated internal communications plan, combined with a more complete digital workplace communication solution.9. Internal company blogs We see many organizations starting an internal company blog. This is a great idea to encourage both employees and leaders to generate content employees want to read. These blogs can cover a variety of topics related to internal or external company happenings. Some of the topics include company-wide event announcements, big changes such as digital transformation projects or mergers and acquisitions, employee stories, company achievements, milestones and many others. For example, Google’s re:Work is a great example of a blog where they cover organizational values that they wish their employees to adopt. Even though the company's internal blog may be a form of creating interesting content to employees, we need to make sure that the content is actually consumed by e