Effective communication will significantly improve your organization’s performance and business returns. Most companies underestimate the power of communication. When you use communication well, you will improve your employee morale, experience low turnover, increase productivity and raise your company’s bottom line.
Make every effort to boost your company’s communication for you to experience high-level growth. Before showing you how to better your communication, let’s see why you need to improve communication.
Why You Need Better Communications
About 75% of employees waste valuable work time looking for information they need to do their jobs. When you mismanage communication tools, you make the situation worse. Research reveals that 60% of employees receive irrelevant information in addition to the critical information they should get to work.
According to dynamic signals, 50% of a company’s workers feel added pressure arising from the tools of communication they use. You need to guide your workforce on the available communications tools and how to use them effectively.
From the statistics, you can confirm a need for you to adjust how you communicate. Failure to do so will result in abysmal morale and high turnover for your employees.
You are now ready to take the necessary steps to boost your company’s communications. Read the guide below to find out more.
1. Use Technology to Enhance Your Communication
Your HR tasks don’t need to give you sleepless nights. There are better, more advanced ways you can manage people, improve performance and take care of compliance issues.
Technology will come in handy in streamlining communications processes in your organization. As explained at Enable HR, utilizing technology can make HR tasks easy, especially when creating accessible communication. When you use technology, you will find free time for other, more valuable tasks.
The laborious communications and processes that may deny you effectiveness do not have to stress you anymore. Let the software do the routine tasks for you. It is also a better way to have knowledge management and have employees get the exact information they need to work effectively.
2. Reduce one-way communication
Top-down communication is essential in ensuring control and direction at your workplace. You should, however, not lock out employees’ input. Bottom-up communication has its value in facilitating employee morale and ownership.
You agree that feedback forms the basis of innovations that drive profitability or performance improvement. Bottom-up communication is also an excellent avenue to get ideas that may unlock some uncertainties.
Therefore, it would be best if you had a healthy mix of the two modes of communication. You will then reap the benefits of motivated employees who feel valued and have a greater sense of belonging.
3. Communicate bad news promptly and clearly
You won’t escape breaking some disturbing or uncomfortable news to your staff. Maybe you lost a significant client, and this will hurt staff benefits. Or maybe you have to lay off some workers.
Research shows that whatever the bad news, how you share can either strengthen or compromise trust. Trust is a valuable asset you don’t want to lose. It would be best to build trust with your employees as you deliver any bad news.
Use the tips below to improve how you communicate bad news to your employees.
- Try not to spin the news by sneaking it in as a by-the-way. Rather be quick, precise, and thorough in your communication.
- Do not pass blame; take responsibility for the bad occurrence.
- Elaborate how your company will respond and stick to those plans to the end.
- Allow time for questions, venting, and feedback from your workers. Listen attentively and respond empathetically but honestly and with transparency.
4. Hold meaningful meetings
A communication strategy that will increase your productivity is holding meetings with your employees. Even so, don’t hold meetings for just anything; some sessions are wasteful and will kill morale. See below the tips that you can use to add value to your meetings:
- You don’t need a meeting to share obvious routine information or messages you can send via other methods.
- Cancel any meeting that does not have a goal
- Don’t call everyone to a meeting. Limit your sessions to the employees responsible for a particular goal you intend to achieve by that meeting.
- Don’t meet endlessly. Set time limits and observe them
- Provide necessary materials before the meeting for employees to review to improve the quality of the meeting you will have.
- Don’t allow distractions into the meeting; keep cellphones and laptops off.
- End your meetings with clear action plans.
You can make significant improvements in your company by adjusting how you communicate both internally and externally. Follow our guide above and reap even better business returns.