Effective communication is a crucial element that greatly influences employee satisfaction and engagement. However, a Gallup survey reveals a startling fact: only 7% of employees strongly agree that communication in their workplace is accurate, timely, and open.
The stakes are high. According to Grammarly’s research, poor communication costs U.S. businesses approximately $1.2 trillion each year, which translates to $12,506 per employee annually. Clearly, inadequate internal communication can severely impact your organization’s bottom line.
How to Improve Internal Communication in Business?
1 . Start with the Leadership Team
Everyone appreciates colleagues who are open and communicative, but have you ever considered evaluating your own communication skills?
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to foster a culture of transparent internal communication and establish best practices within your organization. Therefore, reflecting on how you communicate is an excellent initial step.
Remember, enhancing internal communications begins with you. By assessing and improving your own communication abilities, you set the standard for your colleagues to emulate.
2. Encourage Content Creation in Your Communication Channels
Equipping your workforce with advanced intranet tools empowers them to generate and share content within your organization. This applies to both tools like the iPhone online faxing app and more general platforms like blogs, forums, podcasts, or articles. This initiative fosters a sense of ownership and significantly enhances employee engagement.
Each tech for communication has its own purpose: online fax provides fast and secure data transfer, and iPhone apps for internal communication can bring people together and help organize the work process. But you shouldn’t underestimate any communication option, and encourage original content and employee suggestions.
3. Establish an Internal Communications Plan
Internal communications often develop naturally within organizations, but top-tier companies strategically plan their communication efforts from the outset. Your company’s communication aims are mapped out in an internal communications plan.
Pinpoint your company’s main goals and figure out how better communication can help meet them. Begin by mapping out how you’ll communicate internally, and then define key performance indicators (KPIs) that will let you know if you’re hitting or missing those marks.
Internal communication goals can be both quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative goals are measurable metrics such as achieving specific open or click-through rates. Qualitative goals look at things like how employees feel about the company’s culture or how effective they think management is. To get this info, you need feedback straight from your team.
4. Ask Employees for Feedback
Internal communication should be more than just a top-down flow of information. Regularly seeking out what employees have to say is crucial—implementing their feedback helps build trust and fosters growth within the company. Listening to your team can reveal important details about their work life while boosting morale since they’re given an opportunity to be heard within the company structure.
Make feedback part of everyday operations with scheduled check-ins to gather insights and suggestions. By making the process of giving and receiving feedback routine, it will naturally integrate into your company culture. As you develop your feedback strategy, clearly define the standards and expectations for how feedback should be given and received.
5. Be Transparent
Employees who see transparency from management tend to be more committed and effective on the job because they know they’re being treated fairly. When leadership lacks transparency, employees may feel uncertain about the company’s future and unclear about their roles and the rationale behind key strategies or decisions.
Transparency starts with keeping everyone on your team informed about what’s happening. Interestingly, while 77% of leaders believe their communications provide the context employees need to perform their jobs effectively, only 46% of employees agree.
6. Try to Increase Employee Engagement
Open and effective communication is highly valued by everyone, but have you ever assessed your own communication abilities? As someone in charge, make it a priority to foster open dialogue among your team members and demonstrate top-notch communication habits yourself. Hence, an excellent starting point is to reflect on how you communicate.
7. Openly Reward Your Employees
When employees have clear expectations, they are generally motivated to meet or exceed them. Recognizing their efforts when they excel is crucial, and it’s important that this recognition is given publicly.
This serves two key purposes:
- It acknowledges and rewards exceptional effort. Humans naturally appreciate recognition, especially when working towards a goal. While private acknowledgment from a manager is appreciated, public recognition in front of colleagues or the entire company is even more impactful.
- It sets a standard for the entire organization, providing all employees with something to aspire to.
There are various methods to reward your staff. For example, if your internal communication platform includes gamification features, you can use these to acknowledge and reward employee performance publicly.
Publicly recognizing your employees’ achievements boosts their morale. Consequently, engagement on your social intranet—and internal communications overall—will significantly improve as employees become more eager to share their successes.
8. Reinforce Your Company’s Culture
Reiterating your organization’s culture is essential. Start by consistently sharing the company mission, objectives, and vision with your entire team.
Make it a habit to discuss your business strategy and goals frequently. Mention them during one-on-one meetings and performance reviews, align employee and team objectives with the company’s vision, and provide regular updates on the organization’s performance and progress towards these goals.
Conclusion
We trust these suggestions will inspire a positive transformation in your company’s internal communications. Remember, effective communication is an ongoing journey. Continuously seek opportunities to enhance it and create avenues for your employees to connect with the organization and one another.
