Communication is the cornerstone of any successful business. Establishing strong workplace relationships and streamlining projects via powerful communication is critical. And if you can make changes to build better communication in the workplace, you can improve your overall business, internally and externally.
For instance, better communication improves project delivery times. This makes clients happy. And better communication can strengthen team cohesion, thus improving retention rates. There are also bottom-line benefits. Global enterprise companies with tens of thousands of employees can lose $62.4 million per year over poor communication.
Let’s take a deeper look at how you can build better communication in the workplace for overall business growth and success.
1. Great Communication Starts With A Strong Foundation
Communication is not always about positive things. The most important communication a workplace can have is when issues and problems are communicated quickly, and collaboration happens to fix those problems. This makes having a strong communicative foundation in place important.
It can empower all employees to come forth and communicate both positive and negative things. “ If your team isn’t making mistakes, then you aren’t reaching high enough,” Forbes explained. “But if you punish mistakes, you will encourage overly-conservative behavior. Establish clear differences between acceptable mistakes versus mission-critical offenses.”
2. Build Better Communication With Technology
Technology can be very useful for building better communication in the workplace. And there is more innovative technology for communication than ever before. When teams need to communicate quickly and collaborate on projects, or with cross-border teams, tech can be an affordable and automated way to go.
For instance, you can integrate intranet software to streamline employee engagement, have direct chat available to the entire team, better management of documents and information, and the list goes on. The main aim — utilize technology to make communication a priority.
3. Have Weekly Stand Up Meetings
A great way to build better communication is to hold weekly and monthly stand up meetings. This can be done online for remote teams, and in-office for teams at HQ. The weekly stand up meeting can be one-to-one, or it can be a team meeting where everyone can get up to speed.
If you’re holding weekly meetings, but communication doesn’t seem to be scaling, you could be doing it wrong. Weekly meeting must-dos include:
- Don’t call it a meeting
- Set an agenda prior to the meeting
- Have minutes from last meeting available
- Make the meeting fun
- Listen very carefully
- Take action after the meeting to get rid of team blockers
- Be consistent
4. Build A Company Culture With Communication At The Core
One of the biggest issues when it comes to building better communication in the workplace is the company culture is not communication ready. This can happen very easily in businesses that grow fast. Sometimes company culture falls to the wayside over growth goals.
This needs to be fixed immediately in order to ensure communication becomes a priority. “The solution was to encourage my team to solve problems without me,” Brian Greenberg explained in a Forbes YEC post. “I let team members know they had the authority to make decisions on their own. I conveyed to them that they should reach out to each other for help, and only come to me when necessary.”
5. Be Actively Involved In The Process
If you’re a business owner, HR director, or team manager, you need to stay actively involved in making communication a priority in the workplace. You don’t need to be in every conversation, because this can be tiresome and slow growth as outlined in the above point. But you do need to stay involved by giving your 100 percent support and attention to the plan of action.
This means meeting with executives to build out your plan for better communication, creating team events to make company culture better, and to mark off any obstacles in the way for making communication a number one priority. To start, create a communication mission statement and release it company-wide. This sets the tone for what is to come, and lets every team member know you are invested in the process.
In Conclusion . . .
The above ways to build better communication in the workplace are certainly not the be-all, end-all. The above can be a great jump-off point for establishing communication for the future of your business’ communication, whether it is client-facing, or within. Build a plan, take action, and be very consistent with your message.
Remember, poor company communication can be costly, so start building a strategy that works for your business today. Do you have any communication strategies that worked for your business? We want to hear from you.
