As remote and hybrid work have increasingly become the default way of working, most companies have realized the importance of using internal communication tools. Every day, coworkers seamlessly hop on Zoom calls, send Slack messages, record Loom videos, and book meetings into one another’s Google Calendars.

Chances are, if you’ve worked in a digital environment over the last couple of years, those tools are already familiar to you. However, there are a few lesser-known internal communication resources out there that you may not have encountered yet — but that could significantly improve your remote team’s communication and collaboration.

Below, we’ll introduce you to 10 hidden gems that you should know about, explain how they work, and explore how they can be integrated with your existing tech stack. Let’s dive in.

Relationship-Building Internal Comms Tools

While remote work comes with plenty of benefits, it also has its downsides — and one that frequently comes up is that it can make it harder for colleagues to build close relationships at work. This trend is worrisome, since closer relationships at work can lead to increased productivity, employee engagement, innovation, and knowledge-sharing. 

However, while it’s harder to cultivate close relationships remotely, it’s not impossible — and the tools below can make the task much easier.

Donut

Donut automates the process of building cross-departmental connections throughout an organization. The tool, which integrates with both Slack and Zoom, prompts team members to connect one-on-one directly within Slack, provides icebreaker topics for Zoom calls, and gets teams chatting by sharing water cooler discussion topics each week in Slack.

Coworker Coffee

Coworker Coffee connects employees for one-on-one coffee chats each week — whether in-person or virtually — using an automated scheduling assistant. It also allows employees to build customized profile pages that include their favorite hobbies and what projects they’re currently working on.

It’s similar to Donut, but doesn’t require Slack or Zoom (virtual calls take place over Skype).

Banter

Banter helps keep fun, lighthearted group conversations flowing on Slack. Rather than connecting employees one-on-one, Banter shares daily icebreaker topics in a designated Slack channel, and users can participate as frequently (or infrequently!) as they wish. If anyone has a good prompt idea, they can also share it to be used as a future conversation starter by Banter.

Sparkly

Sparkly is a Slack app that connects colleagues over their shared interests. The bot works by asking employees to share a few of their interests, then uses that data to match them with other employees with similar interests. Those colleagues can then spark up a conversation via DM or connect on a call.

Employee Recognition Internal Comms Tools

When you think of the factors that drive employees to deliver great work, you might think it’s the promise of a promotion or a raise. However, according to a 2023 survey, the number one driver of great work for most employees is employee recognition. In fact, close to 40% of employees ranked it as their most important driver of great work — while only 7% of employees said their top motivator was a raise.

So, how can you make sure employees are receiving the kudos they deserve at work? Encourage it with the employee recognition tools below.

Tellinga

Tellinga is an online tool you can use to make unique and meaningful thank you cards for employees. The platform will take the photos and stories that you feed it, and turn them into hand-drawn postcards.

Disco

Disco is a culture platform that is integrated into Slack and Microsoft Teams workflows. It lets employees give one another personalized kudos, nominate coworkers for values-driven work, and vote in weekly employee engagement polls.

Knowledge Management Internal Communication Tools

Knowledge management tools make it easier for your teams to track, access, and share information company-wide — helping streamline internal communication and saving the average employee up to five hours a week.

GoLinks

GoLinks is a team link shortener that lets employees find, share, and access resources using memorable short links (for instance, the short link “go/deals” might redirect to an unwieldy Salesforce URL). Employees can also browse through the company’s library of intuitive short links in the GoLinks dashboard, or use GoLinks’ ChatGPT-powered integration in Slack to find resources in seconds.

The result? Enterprise teams are able to save over 1,000 hours each month, boost productivity, and break down information silos.

MeetGeek

MeetGeek is an AI-powered “meeting assistant” that will automatically join and record company meetings, then transcribe, summarize, and share recaps and key insights with attendees. MeetGeek also stores all past meetings (with their associated transcripts) in a single, searchable location, ensuring that the insights generated during meetings are never truly lost.

Lucidspark

Lucidspark is a virtual whiteboard that makes it easier for hybrid and remote teams to collaborate in real time. Employees can kickstart their brainstorms with either a blank slate or one of Lucidspark’s many easy-to-use templates. Lucidspark integrates with commonly used collaboration tools like Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft, and Atlassian, making it easy for employees to share the results of their Lucidspark brainstorms wherever they work. 

Workshop

Workshop is an internal email platform that makes it easy to create branded and personalized internal emails. HR teams can use Workshop to share company news and updates, sync and segment employee lists, and measure the effectiveness of their internal communication.

Workshop also integrates with commonly used internal communication solutions like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more — making it easy to cross-post company updates to the channels your teams use the most.

Streamline internal communication, no matter where you work from

The best internal comms tools are intuitive, easy to use, and align with the ways your employees are already working, communicating, and sharing information. To make sure your teams actually adopt the internal communication platforms you introduce, you’ll want to trial them and ensure they’re easy to adopt.

Get started today with a free trial of GoLinks: over 5,000 companies, including Freshbooks, GitHub, OpenAi, and Brex, use us to simplify their communication and knowledge sharing company-wide.