Why Medium-sized Businesses Need a Budget for Internal Communication

Employee engagement is typically seen as something of no monetary value. Yet, neglecting this aspect of business experience can lead to serious financial consequences.

Although it presents a huge part of everyday work life, intercompany communication is usually not strictly defined as an independent operation in medium-sized businesses. While bigger companies have structuralized departments specialized for internal affairs, smaller ones typically lack the resources for this.

After some thorough examination, we managed to determine that you can actually put a price tag on internal communication (let’s simply call it IC from now on). In this text, we’ll show why and how should business owners create a separate budget for intercom processes.

Why is IC budget so important?

Let’s borrow a quote we believe hits the target with great precision:

“Creating an initial budget can be difficult, but it gets easier when organizations recognize there is more to lose by forgoing internal communications projects entirely.”

— Rich Kneece for the FastCompany.

One of the main reasons why a properly defined IC budget can be greatly beneficial for medium-sized businesses is that it can guide spontaneous communication between coworkers and turn it into a valuable asset for the company. Most employees use the official IC channels to simply (i.e. unofficially) comment on their colleagues’ work. It can be both complementary and derogatory, but it always provides valuable input on how could things improve around a company. Some employees will only suggest a different brand of coffee for the office. The others will try to push the idea of making their office a pet-friendly space. And a few of them will use this channel to suggest other, possibly cheaper tools necessary for their work that could potentially save the company a significant amount of money.

All of the above are examples of unplanned work and spontaneous collaboration that every company should cherish and nurture. Developing a solid IC strategy…