Creating an Employee Newsletter

By Jennifer Blanchard | HRTools.com Business Writer

As many employers are starting to realize, communication is key in the workplace. It’s key to gaining and keep customers. It’s key to making things run smoothly. And it’s especially key when it comes to your employees. 

Creating an employee newsletter (also often referred to as an in-house newsletter) is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your employees.  

But many companies don’t have employee newsletters. The main reason for this is often because the company doesn’t know what to include or how to find content each week/month (depending on how often they send their newsletter out). 

Some suggestions for newsletter content could include: 

• A message from your company president, CEO or other member of the executive management team
• Employee birthdays (month and day only), promotions and anniversaries with your company
• Achievements, recognitions or awards you’ve given out since the last newsletter
• Activities at your company, including milestones, volunteer opportunities, training, BBQs/picnics, open-houses, etc.
• Profile employees who’ve done something spectacular or very interesting
• A feature article on a business unit, department or location within your company
• News about your industry/market
• Policy and/or procedure changes
• Changes to your products/services
• Updated information about your company’s products and/or services 

Remember, this is a list of examples. You can add in/not add in anything that makes sense for your company. 

How to Create Your Newsletter

If you’re interested in creating an employee newsletter for your company, here are some steps you can take: 

1. Determine the Newsletter’s Purpose—Before you create a newsletter at your company, you need to first decide what its purpose will be: Are you trying to communicate more with employees? Do you want another outlet for spreading news and information? Are you attempting to improve employee relations overall?
   
   Once you know what the goal of your newsletter is, you’ll be better able to determine exactly what the content should include.
   
   
2. Choose a Budget—Newsletters can cost next to nothing to produce. Or they can cost a pretty penny. It all depends on how much you’re looking to spend.
   
   Determining your budget before you go any further will help you know if you’re going to hire an outside company to create your newsletter or if you’re going to produce it in-house. If you’re going to hire an outside company, ignore the remaining steps.
   
   If, however, you’re going to produce your newsletter in-house, move on to step three.
   
   
3. Appoint a Newsletter Team—Next you’ll need to decide who will be in charge of your employee newsletter. Will you ask the HR department to create it? Or will your management team be in charge of it? Or would you rather appoint a team of employees to head it up?
   
   Most newsletters are created within the HR department. Other companies, however, have a newsletter “team,” which often consists of an editor, writer(s), a designer and sometimes a photographer (depending on your company resources. Sometimes the photographer, editor, designer and writer are all the same person.).
   
   The newsletter team would be in charge of creating each newsletter. The team would decide on the content, write it, take accompanying photos and make sure the whole thing is designed, approved by upper management and distributed to employees.
   
   
4. Create a Newsletter Mock-Up—Before you distribute a newsletter to your employees, you’ll want to create a mock-up, which is basically a sample of the newsletter you plan to send.
   
   Once you have the mock-up, you can review and tweak it.
   
   
5. Distribute Your Newsletter—Once you’ve completed your first newsletter, it’s time to distribute it to your employees. Sending it via e-mail is the most common—and green—way to distribute it, but some companies still print out and distribute paper newsletters. 

Additional Tips

Following the steps listed above should get you started with your employee newsletter. And here are some additional tips to make your newsletter even more effective: 

• Ask employees to submit content ideas. Since the newsletter is for your employees, it’s always a good idea to include content that they are requesting.
• Your design should remain consistent. This is the way to maintain readership among employees. If you change the newsletter’s layout every month, no one will know where to find what they’re looking for. That’s why creating an initial mock-up is so important.
• Planning is extremely important. If you don’t (or your newsletter team doesn’t) plan out each month’s issue, you may end up not sending it at all. One way to do the planning ahead of time is to develop a monthly editorial calendar.
• Be consistent with when/how often you distribute the newsletter. Employees will get used to seeing it and will be looking for it.
• Review your newsletter at least every quarter. You’ll want to make sure your newsletter is doing its job, includes valuable content and is actually being read by your employees. You may even want to ask your employees to submit suggestions for improving the newsletter.
• If you want to guarantee readership, offer a contest in each issue. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or huge, even a small contest (such as find the hidden logo or answer a trivia question) in each issue will almost guarantee your employees will read your newsletter. 

Additional Resources

If you’re interested in learning more about creating an employee newsletter, check out the following resources: 

• Tips for Creating a Great Internal Newsletter by Deborah Zanke
• Make an Employee Newsletter Part of Your Internal Marketing by Mustard Seed Marketing
• 7 Creative Ideas for Your Employee Newsletter by Ladan Lashkari