If you’ve ever had to conduct a task with a two-line description of what is expected of you and have then gotten yelled at for failing to complete the assignment correctly, you know just how passionately you’ve wanted to give your employers feedback on how to improve internal communication at work. The unfortunate truth is you probably didn’t go ahead and tell them, for fear of getting into trouble for making an issue. Improving internal communications in the workplace can benefit a company in innumerable ways, from helping employees build better bonds with each other to helping each person at the organization fully understand their roles. The importance of internal communication cannot be ignored as it affects the day-to-day functioning of an employee and extends to the overall potential of the organization as a whole.
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Importance of Internal Communication
The day an employee joins an organization, the onboarding process allows the new hire to fully understand the full extent of their role. Over time, they begin to settle into their role, asking different departments for the necessary resources in order to be able to conduct their work. They attend meetings where they discuss ideas with their team members, get assigned new tasks, and provide progress updates on how their current tasks are proceeding. Their assessment of these matters allows an organization to plan further for upcoming projects and rationally allot the resources necessary for the same. With so much riding on an employee’s understanding and communication abilities, it is surprising how little we invest in making sure this communication happens as smoothly as possible.
Your business model might be flawless and your product might be the best on the market but if you compromise on understanding how to improve internal communication at work, you might find your business going nowhere as your employees sit scattered and uncertain about how to proceed. When team members stop sharing information with each other, they might each have a different understanding of what they need to do and create entirely different content that has to be changed in a rush at the last minute when everything is finally put together. These misunderstandings might also escalate to a level where conflicts arise between employees who lay blame on each other.
The matters worsen further when bosses and managers do not acknowledge the importance of internal communication. A report by the Workforce Institute found that 74 percent of employees would prefer to have a trustworthy employer but trust cannot be guaranteed when employees are left in the dark about matters concerning the company. When the company’s vision does not reach every employee of the organization, the employee is left to figure out their own direction, which may be entirely different from those of the company.
How to Improve Internal Communication at Work: Best Practices
If you agree that improving internal communications in the workplace is a good idea, then the next step is to get started with making a change. Before you explore any tips for effective internal communication or start devising a strategy, you should probably conduct a review of the state of internal communication currently established within your workplace. You might already have useful channels and platforms that are just not being optimized to the best extent and reintroducing them to your employees can be much simpler than investing in something new entirely.
An assessment might also introduce you to the major problem areas that need special attention, like a gap in interdepartmental communication or a problem with how managers distribute information. Once the assessment is complete, here are some other suggestions on how to improve internal communication at work.
Devise Communication Channels
Ensure that there are clear avenues on how employees can reach others. Within a physical office space, it might be easy enough to locate someone to direct your questions to, but this becomes much harder online. Ensure that employees have access to contacts across departments and are also given permission to contact each other. By providing employees with a clear pathway, companies can ensure that they do not have to pass a complex loop of people before getting information across to each other. If an employee has to talk to, and bother, three different people before determining how to reach the one they need to communicate with, they might just prefer to complete a task with the basic understanding they have already.
A content writer might need to talk to the developer team that manages the company website to best understand how their content needs to be adjusted for the website layout. Without any opportunity or encouragement to keep each other in the loop, both might just keep working on their tasks without coordinating with each other, leading to a messy, unplanned website. By setting up a regular meeting between these teams or opening up specific channels for such communication, you can ensure that employees have direct paths to each other.
Use Technology
There are multiple tools and technological resources that go beyond email communication. Try to explore the methods that best suit your organization’s needs and facilitate real-time collaboration between your employees. Simplify the layers of communication by using project management software, intranet portals, messaging services and other tools that make communication natural and simplify the process of engaging in it.
Encourage Employees to Ask and Answer Questions
If you’re looking for tips for ensuring effective internal communication, then building a culture of communication is absolutely necessary. Even if you have all the best tech available for communication but managers yell at employees for asking “silly questions,” employees will just avoid making use of these channels to begin with for fear of being reprimanded. Training, instructing employees to keep their ideas flowing, and encouraging them to ask before acting is necessary as a step towards improving communication at work.
All members of the company need to be taught to patiently answer questions when they do come up, as clarity is better than having to invest in damage control at a later stage.
Create an Information Hub
Among the many internal communications best practices, there is also the suggestion that companies themselves display a culture of communication. Businesses that remain tightlipped about their own internal status, decisions, and successes can end up alienating their employees. Allowing their employees to feel valued is an important choice and can be a step in your company’s journey towards learning how to improve internal communication at work. When companies are going through a difficult time, the lack of information can leave employees feeling anxious, and they might begin looking for an alternate job during such times of uncertainty. Communicating with them can provide them with the reassurance they need to put their faith in their organization.
Create spaces for employees to gather information in relation to the organization and frequently update these spaces as well. Use it to communicate any critical company-oriented data but also bring in community stories, holiday reminders, achievements, etc. to this space to encourage employees to utilize it.
Create A Crisis Plan
Even if you figure out a strategy for improving internal communications in the workplace, things often tend to follow apart during a crisis. When everyone begins to panic, communication channels often get overwhelmed and at a time when you need internal communication to be at its best, this can be a very unfortunate turn of events. Create a crisis plan in advance to manage responsibilities and determine communication channels that will be reserved for emergency conversations during such times. By having a plan in place, you can ensure that at least some elements are handled automatically as your employees work to address and resolve the issues.
Such internal communications best practices can ensure that your team is able to handle the matter much more efficiently and find a solution that matches up to the problem encountered. Overall, if you want your company to grow on stable grounds and have a reliable structure, you need to know how to improve internal communication at work.
A final tip for effective internal communication? Communicate with your employees and ask them what needs to improve within your organization. Your employees will be able to clearly point out where there are very specific flaws in your communication channels and what you need to prioritize first.