In business, like in any other relationship, it isn’t going to work without successful communication. Whether that is with clients, supplies or colleagues, it all makes a difference. Proper communication can be key to business success. So being able to ‘get good’ at it can make a massive difference. Without it, it can be detrimental. It can also affect how a team works as a whole. Employees are likely to engage less, and that can, in turn, affect how productive they all are. So if you feel like communication at work is pretty low, how can it be improved? Here are some steps to take.
Get To Know Each Other
Internal communication can be a problem when people need to speak to other teams or departments, but they don’t know who to approach or how. So having open channels or internal communication is really important. A site like https://pingboard.com/org-charts/use-organizational-charts explains some of the important uses of organizational charts for internal communication. So that could be worth considering. When everyone is on there, with a photograph and a little bit about them, it makes that internal communication much less daunting.
Create an Open Space
When you go to work, you don’t want to just arrive, sit at your desk and work. While that is important, you need to remember that you are working with other humans and not working with other robots. You need to talk to each other. So create a communication-friendly environment. It might be that you want to create a separate open space in the office, where people can have more open conversations, rather than just across workstations. A physical space can help, as well as an open door policy. So speak to your team and let them know they can approach you anytime.
Hold Regular Meetings
Most people like to have consistency in their work life. So if you start with one-to-one interviews or appraisals, make sure that they end up happening each month, or what other set time you are thinking of. Then your team can come to expect what will happen, which will make it easier for them to talk to you if they know a meeting will be happening soon. A good guide of how to hold appraisals is here: https://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/performance-appraisal-career. So hold meetings and keep them regular.
Allow Anonymous Feedback
At the end of the day, if you’re an employer, your team can feel that they can’t always be as blunt as they might want to be for fear of losing their job. So allowing a platform for some anonymous feedback (that should be constructive, not destructive) can be a good way of them getting something off their chest. Knowing you will then read it and act on it if necessary, can be good for your team. It could just be as simple as having a small post box for notes or a notebook in the staff area. Whatever you choose, implementing something like that is a really good idea.
Have you ever found anything to work well for communication in the workplace? It would be great to hear some success stories.
