Thinking of setting up or improving your HR newsletter? Want some inspiration? We’ve got you covered!
As the Human Resources department of your company, maintaining a seamless channel of communication is critical. An essential tool to achieve this is the HR newsletter.
By consistently sharing relevant information, celebrating achievements, and offering insights, your HR newsletter serves as an integral component of your organization’s success and employee satisfaction.
There are a few things you can implement to truly engage your employees and create an informative and inspiring newsletter. Your HR newsletter is much more than simply sending out regular emails.
👀 In this guide, we will explore the elements of an impactful HR newsletter, including effective techniques to increase open and reading rates, and share five creative ideas to bring your HR newsletter to life. Let’s get started!
What should be included in a HR newsletter?
In general, an HR newsletter should include important company updates, upcoming events, milestones, changes, or initiatives. It also shares achievements, recognitions, or employee-centric stories. With all these elements, the newsletter serves as a means to inform your employees, enhance employee engagement and foster a strong corporate culture. The goal of setting up an HR newsletter is to provide a consistent, efficient, and effective platform for internal communication within your company.
HR newsletters can play a critical role in keeping employees informed, engaged, motivated, and aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and values. A regular flow of information through such newsletters can improve transparency, reducing misinformation, and increasing overall employee satisfaction.
As mentioned above, HR newsletters typically include the following elements:
- Company Updates: This section keeps your employees informed of essential changes, business wins, collaborations, strategy, etc.
- Employee Recognition: Highlighting achievements, whether tied to business performance or embodying company values, often supported by employee recognition badges, fosters a culture of appreciation and inspires others to strive for success.
- Professional Development Opportunities: Emphasize your organization’s commitment to continuous learning by sharing available resources, scheduled training programs and workshops, and change management plans.
- Wellness and Work-Life Balance Tips: In an era where the boundaries between work and personal life are increasingly blurred, reminders about maintaining mental and physical health are crucial. These can include wellness tips, mental health resources, success stories, and time management techniques to set boundaries and prevent burnout.
- Team Building Activities or Events.
💡 As the HR department, make sure to have a constant overview of what’s going on in the company. Collect news, stories from various teams and share them in your newsletter.
Tips to build successful HR newsletters
The success of your HR newsletter is going to be measured by how many employees are actually reading it, which in turn will depend on how engaging it is, and how it is set up.
Here are some proven emailing techniques to grab attention:
✨ Catchy Subject Lines: The battle for attention starts in the inbox. Experiment with actionable language, use intriguing or icebreaking questions, or introduce the newsletter’s main highlights in an engaging way.
✨ Personalization: Making your employees feel special can start with addressing them by their first name. This might require more work, but you could also decide to personalize the content of the email based on different company entities.
✨ Deliverability Check: It’s less probable for internal emails to be marked as spam, but you can use an email spam checker for making sure.
✨ Regular Scheduling: Consistency creates expectation. By regularly scheduling your HR newsletter (even better if on the same day and time!), employees anticipate its arrival, thereby increasing the likelihood of them setting aside some time to read it.
✨ Relevant Content Over Time: No amount of design or schedule consistency can replace the importance of exciting, new content. You can try to get some feedback from employees on what type of content they like (stories, resources, etc.) and stick to it.
👋 Want to set up your newsletter with Mailchimp?
5 innovative HR newsletter ideas
“Behind the Scenes”
🎯 Goal: This section can unveil the less visible but crucial aspects of your organization. By focusing on different departments or roles in each edition, you can:
- emphasize or show (for the first time!) functions that usually don’t get a lot of attention, such as production sites vs. corporate headquarters;
- highlight the diversity of day-to-day efforts within your organization;
- foster empathy and mutual respect among different functions.
🔎 Example: A feature on the IT department can shed light on the complexities of keeping the company’s digital infrastructure running smoothly.
“Employee Spotlight of the Week”
🎯 Goal: Celebrating personal and professional achievements of your employees can go a long way in boosting positivity, empathy and closeness. Sharing personal success stories can motivate your workforce to connect on a more personal level, have new topics of conversation, and remind everyone that “Kate from the legal team” is much more than just a lawyer but also a wonderful cook, or a salsa dancer!
🔎 Example: This can range from highlighting performance achievements to personal milestones like running a marathon or publishing a book. It doesn’t always have to be about work.
“Ask HR” Column
🎯 Goal: For building a culture of transparency and open dialogue, including a feedback section “Ask the HR” in your HR newsletter can be a great idea. This not only helps address common concerns but also reassures your employees that they are being heard and valued.
🔎 Example: Employees can submit questions or suggestions – whether related to company policies, career growth, or workplace challenges – and you can feature selected questions with detailed answers in your newsletter.
“Welcome to the Team” Announcement
🎯 Goal: The “Meet the Newbies” section introduces newly onboarded employees to the entire organization. It helps foster a sense of community and creates a welcoming environment for the latest additions to the team, acknowledging their skills, experience, and backgrounds.
🔎 Example: The column can include a personalized introduction from the HR department, followed by a brief bio including name, role, department, and a short professional background. It can also include fun facts or personal interests outside of work. It’s also important to have a comment section for teammates to write welcome messages.
“Picture of the Week”
🎯 Goal: The “Picture of the Week” feature invites employees to submit inspiring or funny photographs that bring them joy. Sharing these moments aims to cultivate a positive and connected work environment, lifting spirits and celebrating the unique experiences of team members.
🔎 Example: Have your employees submit their own snapshots of cherished moments along with a short description, from captivating landscapes to adorable office pets, to brighten everyone’s day!