33 Best Workplace Newsletter Ideas
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Internal workplace newsletters should be valued, even if your colleagues and employees are the only ones seeing them. They are practical communication tools that keep your team up to date, involved and amused when you learn how to do them correctly.
In this article, you will find tips, some examples, and fun workplace newsletter ideas that fit into your company culture and that you can implement with your team immediately. We will also learn how to get employee engagement up and running, so stick around.
What Are the Objectives of a Company Newsletter?
As we prepare to learn how to write the best company newsletters, we have to properly understand what these email newsletter should achieve and the key elements that define them.
What is your reason for sending internal newsletters to your employees? This kind of communication is prevalent in several different departments, such as Human Resources, Employer Branding, and businesses in general, for reasons like:
- TO INFORM: information for employees affected by something can be distributed through your company newsletter. In this case, hierarchy standing doesn’t matter much; since the information included is relevant and valuable for the reached departments and employees. This means things like company events or changes to management.
- TO BREAK DOWN DIVISIONS: besides spreading relevant information to employees, your company newsletter can also have the function of fostering camaraderie among people who likely are separated by cubicle divisions, team assignments, or departmental tasks and therefore don’t have a feeling of everyday belonging.
- TO PROVIDE FRAMING AND EXTERNAL CONTEXT: each person has family, friends, and a social life outside work. Take time to explain why your business does what it does. That gives them an easy way to be proud of their jobs and encourages them to talk more about it.
- TO REDUCE COMMUNICATION OVERLOAD: you can use your internal company newsletter to spread information more efficiently. Rather than sending out multiple emails with notices, announcements, or acknowledgments to various departments or employee groups, you can send a single one.
- TO WORK TOGETHER WITH OTHER CHANNELS: In addition to other communication channels, your newsletter can reference company-wide information. For example, they can put forward or show recognition of the accomplishments of a team or department. Things like that are lost on an intranet, slack, or bulletin boards.
- TO EASE NEW EMPLOYEES IN: It is equally vital for the organization and the new hires to get up to speed quickly during the onboarding process. Your goal should be for new employees to integrate into your team quickly, not only because you may need their help with an upcoming major project.
- TO GET EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK: Losing touch happens when most work has been remote, with teams spread across many places, or even when they work in the same office but on different projects. Your company newsletter can help you learn more about your employees, keep them engaged, and retain them in the company for a longer time. Email surveys for your employees are an excellent way to gather feedback. It is crucial to show you care about individual employees and act on the issues raised.
- TO IMPROVE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: you can encourage your employees to speak up in your company newsletters. Get them to talk about fresh ideas through surveys and participate in new ways. The solution to your company’s challenge can be found by anyone. Use email to get meaningful feedback from people regardless of department. This will help employees who would not speak or are hard to meet in the corridors participate as well.
Getting people to engage with the employee newsletter is a long process. That can be achieved if your contact is regular and your content is interesting. Having a few frequent topics is recommended, but switching them regularly ensures people open and read emails.
Remember, employee newsletters have a purpose beyond business. To kickstart your internal communication project,
Here Are Seventeen Things To Consider When It Comes To Creating A Fun Company Newsletter:
1. Short And Sweet:
Have you heard of email overload? Employees nowadays receive an average of eighty-eight emails, which makes it imperative for your newsletter to get and keep people’s attention. A way to do that is by using shorter sentences in your writing, making the text easier to understand.
Make sure your employee newsletter has a clean and minimal design as well!
2. Worth Their Time:
Your newsletter should be interesting enough to be worth your employees’ time. It is your chance to wrap up important news regarding both company and employees nicely. For example, here are some internal newsletter ideas worth their time:
- company updates
- news about your employees
- trends in the industry
- blog posts from your company website
- spread the word about upcoming events
- updates from the customer service team
The continuous delivery of useful information in an easy-to-understand format is a sure way to maintain employee engagement and make the newsletter a part of their routine.
3. New Member Announcement:
Do you have new people joining your team? Your newsletter can allow them to share a little about themselves, like an employee profile. A new member intro works best with a personal angle. For example, their hobbies, a favorite book, the band they love the most, or their favorite free time activities.
This kind of information helps in forming a connection with coworkers. It can also encourage people to reach out and talk to others who share similar interests and hobbies.
4. Celebrate Milestones:
Your employees are always doing their best; they may have recently accomplished something to be proud of. Your internal communication can let everyone know when a department or team does something remarkable to act as inspiration. That builds team spirit, keeps their motivation up, and inspires others to contribute.
5. Team Spotlights:
This kind of thing is more common in physical workplaces but is not limited to giant corporations. Take time to introduce a team, its members, what they’re working on, and how to contact them. It takes a lot of work to know what your coworkers are doing. A section like this can help your entire company (especially new hires) stay updated and feel like they’re genuinely part of it.
6. Team Events
Events outside the workplace, like retreats, parties, or events, are prevalent nowadays. It’s easier to organize them if your team is small. Planning everything can take time and effort if your business has many employees.
Part of the hassle can be avoided by adding details about what’s coming up and what’s necessary to join in on the trip in your newsletter. Afterward, the newsletter can be used to talk about what happened, show pictures and videos, and ask for feedback so the next company retreat can be even better.
7. Special Days
Sadly, team getaways can’t happen all the time. In that case, you can always bring the party home by organizing a special day at the office. Events like this could be planned around set dates, or you can create your own events!
8. Competitions
There is always at least one very competitive person in every company, but competitiveness in small doses can be beneficial. With time you can tell that people have the same drive in their professional lives as they do in their personal lives. Why not use it to have employees compete in some event for your company?
New ideas should be easy enough to come up with: cycling, running, swimming, and other sports can be considered. Competitions could also involve other interests such as baking, cooking, demonstrating a skill, or photography are all great examples. People surprise themselves at how involved they can become when it involves something they enjoy doing.
9. Feedback
Gathering feedback is essential to succeed, no matter your area of business. And not just customer stories. Listen to your employees as well! Getting that should be a critical part of your team interactions and plans on a day-to-day routine. Doing so via email or online survey platforms is convenient due to being accessible and structured. It will also let you learn about your employees’ opinions.
Feel free to ask about company benefits, training, satisfaction with the workplace, or a recent retreat. Online surveys have an advantage over face-to-face surveys: they can be answered anonymously. Just be sure people feel safe to share and aren’t judged based on the outcome.
10. Job Opportunities
One more way to make your company newsletters more beneficial and eye-catching is to include new job openings. We are always more likely to engage with people who are like ourselves. If you’re happy with your employee’s posture and accomplishments, their coworkers will be too. This kind of thing is helpful in more competitive industries or when access to experts is difficult.
11. Growth Opportunity
If you want to help your employees thrive in their workplace, use email communications to inform them about training opportunities. If you’re already running these kinds of events, then it’s a no-brainer. Still, you can start programs internally if your company has no budget to hire external help.
12. External Context
You’re running a company, so not all communication will be exclusively about your internal workings. Your newsletter can also bring up issues affecting your business or industry. If there are any significant legislative changes, a market trend that can help you grow, or any other relevant news, plan to email ahead of time.
13. Updates
Your entire team will be affected by what you decide, so keeping them up to par with your company’s work is excellent. For example, marketing should know what’s planned and already released to create an effective campaign.
If your Customer Relations team is aware of the newest releases and services, they can assist customers better. Your sales team will work better if they know things or can test new features for your product.
14. Personal Messages From Management
Your employees should understand where your company is going so they can follow along. One way to do that is by sharing the company’s results, plans, and forecasts in your internal newsletter.
Meeting each person or chatting quickly in the corridors is hard if your company is significant. You will need alternative methods like a company-wide newsletter to discuss general employee productivity.
15. Company History
When a new person joins, they’ll need to know more than how to do their jobs, where to go for information, and who to ask for help. They also have to understand where the company started, what values are at its center, the company milestones, and your mission.
A lot of that information is available on your company website. Still, it is a good idea to include it in the communication that goes to new hires. Another good idea is to have pictures of important moments so people feel included.
16. Personnel Change
Some workplaces can treat the topic of people leaving like a taboo. But on some occasions, like when someone is retiring, it makes sense to talk about it. Or when it’s a person on the leadership team. If people go to another department or leave the company, using the newsletter to notify everyone else is a good idea.
17. For Fun
A company newsletter may not look like a place to have fun. Still, it makes more sense than anything else to insert some fun employee newsletter ideas in your communication.
Little things like jokes, puns, and trivia can brighten your employees’ days. Suppose it’s done regularly, for example, twice a week. In that case, team members may look forward to opening the newsletter just for it.
How to Make a Workplace Newsletter Ideas
To make sure your company newsletter works to its full potential, here are some elements to keep in mind:
- TARGET AUDIENCE: While employees are your intended audience, they are not all a single group. What would they like to know, and what are their interests? Consider directing your content to smaller groups if your company is big or represents various interests.
- RELEVANT CONTENT: all of your communication should have a clear goal. So be sure the content aligns with what we discussed in this article. People reading it should feel like time is well-spent.
- PRESENTATION: for your newsletter to be accessible and easy to read, the email design has to be well done. Internal emails only benefit from having a standardized format, which includes subject lines. Use a template that can be easily edited while remaining the same overall. Planning it in a grid format takes time, but it’ll save you time in the long run.
- TONE OF VOICE: What your company stands for and how it sounds heavily influence how it expresses itself. It’s imperative to have a style that reflects that and is business-appropriate. Your newsletters will be much more enjoyable if the right tone is used.
We hope these ideas are useful as you improve communication with your employees!
Paul Martinez is the founder of EcomSidekick.com. He is an expert in the areas of finance, real estate, eCommerce, traffic and conversion.
Join him on EcomSidekick.com to learn how to improve your financial life and excel in these areas. Before starting this media site, Paul built from scratch and managed two multi-million dollar companies. One in the real estate sector and one in the eCommerce sector.