Communication Advice to Connect Your Workplace

What are the costs of a disjointed business? You end up needing extra time and effort to compensate for a poorly-led project. Not only this, companies without a unifying work strategy suffer from disengaged employees and low productivity. All of this has an effect on your company’s overall performance. That's why communication is key.

In order to root out any disconnect your business is experiencing, you should target the problem at its source. Since communication is the best way to foster a unified vision, keep team members engaged and encourage collaboration. Honing your business communication skills is a valuable strategy for remedying internal issues as they arise. 

1.Offer channels for employee feedback

Regardless of size, your organization’s communication strategy should include a specific space for reviews, recognition and other kinds of feedback. And since a workplace with highly engaged individuals can yield over 20% greater profits, every business should be concerned with the ways that they can facilitate a culture of open communication and feedback. 

These types of conversations clarify work expectations, provide direction on projects and cite specific examples of great work. 

Most importantly, a business with healthy communication practices ensures that their feedback channel functions both between employee and employer. When employees provide upward feedback to their managers, your business will benefit from better leadership and honesty across the company. Businesses who train managers to give regularly scheduled feedback will foster a company culture that thrives on engagement and productivity. 

2.Research new tools

How often do you experience technical difficulties while conducting business? Outdated tech is time-consuming and can make communication, in particular, a challenge. 

If you need to call remote help during meetings or make external calls, you’ve likely experienced unreliable phone lines. Because it doesn’t rely on traditional phone cabling, services like Voice over IP reduce the risk of dropped calls. It may be tempting to invest in new tech impulsively, but it’s important to research VoIP and other tools like it to see what works best for the specific needs of your business. 

Similarly, looking into what employee engagement software is might be a good idea to have a metric-driven platform for company-wide communication. Equipped with feedback components, these platforms provide opportunities to engage employees through a myriad of communication solutions. This allows managers and leaders to tailor the channels they use for a unique experience with each team member. 

3.Cross-communication

Especially for businesses, productive collaboration can only occur in the wake of strong communication. Company leaders who recognize this and best actualize it for results are the ones who harness the power of communication across departments and leadership levels to create a culture of idea-sharing among all team members. 

By fostering conversations beyond department spaces, employees will have opportunities to hear new solutions to their old problems, gain a high-level understanding of business functions, forge new professional relationships, plus many other benefits. 

So how can you begin to transform a business entrenched interdepartmental conversation into one concerned with a bigger picture? The flexible workspace trend uses open office floor plans, relaxed seating and mingling spaces to encourage productivity and collaboration, which has a tendency to occur naturally throughout the day. 

Other solutions, such as cross-departmental brainstorms and after-work team-building events, provide ways to collaborate with fewer furniture rearrangements.

4.Embrace constructive criticism

Chances are, your business experiences one of two problems when it comes to criticism. Either your teams are inexperienced at receiving suggestions from others, or they aren’t offering suggestions at all. 

The former often derives from a lack of collaborative workplace experience. The latter typically involves team members who are afraid of insulting others. Fortunately, you only need one solution to solve both. 

By holding team-wide sessions that instruct on giving and accepting criticism, you’ll ensure that your entire team stays on the same page and pushes each other to deliver the best work possible. Because you want to emphasize strong communication among teammates, keep sessions focused on targeting ideas (as opposed to individuals).