3 Ways to Improve Internal Communications in Hospitals
Marketing departments are always looking for new and better ways to communicate internally with staff. If your hospital has an intranet, this is likely the go-to place for sharing information and communication. Are you taking full advantage of the intranet, or is it nothing more than links to files and websites? Modern intranets are much more than just a platform for document sharing. Here are three ideas of ways to utilize the intranet to improve internal communications:
Keep the Content Fresh
One sure way to kill intranet engagement and communication is to leave stale content on the homepage. The homepage content should be updated a minimum of twice a week. Use this area of the site to highlight news and announcements, stories about your staff, new employees, award recognition, photos, and videos. Ensure that whoever is responsible for the home page understands its importance and makes updating the content a priority. Typically this would be done by your marketing or HR staff but this can be a shared responsibility. Fresh engaging content on the home page will keep staff coming back for more!
Tip: Is your intranet the default home page for all of your employees internet browsers? If not, work with your IT department to have them configure this default setting for all pc’s. Setting the intranet as the default home page will ensure your efforts to publish fresh content don’t go unnoticed.
Start Blogging
Blogging can be a great way to engage with staff within your hospital. Having members of leadership post regularly to a blog allows them to share their unique perspectives on things going on within the hospital and can also provide a forum for staff to provide feedback. Encourage your CEO to blog about the status of a project or implementation. Maybe you want to blog about a recent successful survey or recognize an employee for their hard work and dedication. There are many different topics and ideas to consider. Is your CEO a little more tech savvy? Why not try a video blog? Record them talking about a topic and post the video on the intranet for employees to view. Encourage staff to comment on the blogs and use this as a way to improve communications.
Ask for Feedback
Asking for feedback may seem like a no brainer, but not a lot of hospitals are doing enough of this. Making it easy for staff to give you feedback will bring you new ideas, allow for continuous improvement, and make your employees feel that their voice is being heard. Many times you will get feedback and ideas for things that you might not have thought about before and are useful to all employees.
Create simple electronic feedback forms on your hospital intranet. Use them often and encourage staff to submit them by having contests or prizes if needed. Allow staff to submit anonymous feedback when it makes sense and give them the option of receiving a follow up from someone for their idea or question. If you are getting the same questions frequently, create a FAQ’s page and post common questions and answers for staff to search. Asking for feedback is the key to improvement!
Improving healthcare internal communications at your hospital takes time. The more you invest in engaging content for your intranet the more your staff will utilize this amazing communication tool. Do you have some examples or ideas of ways to improve internal communications in hospitals? Please post your ideas to the comments section below, we would love to hear them!
If you are struggling with internal communications HospitalPORTAL can help! We specialize in internal healthcare communication and offer an affordable out of the box solution that makes sharing information simple an easy for non-technical staff.