The challenge for businesses in 2023 will be to remain focused on evolving business processes, digital technologies, and flawless communication while operating in an unpredictable environment. Among them, workplace communication has become one of the most essential business priorities for contemporary leaders, and it will continue to grow. Effective communication in remote teams can be tricky, but it is not impossible. Let us explore the top reasons why it is important and how to nail it.
Workplace communication can be in form of writing emails, group meetings, brainstorming sessions, catching up with the team in the break room, project and task discussions, phone calls, presentations, chats, or just walking up to another desk to discuss quick points with team members.
Workplace communication is crucial to the passion of employees and business success. But how to make this communication effective when you don’t have a direct face-to-face interaction with team members? Whether you are working remotely or from the office, effective communication at the workplace will always be an essential ingredient for your business.
Read on to find out about workplace communication, the top reasons why it is important, how certain strategies can make all the difference, key tools to improve workplace communication, and how a digital workplace platform can foster workplace communication.
- What is meant by effective communication in the workplace?
- Why communication in the workplace is important?
- What are the benefits of workplace communication?
- Common internal communication mistakes
- How to improve workplace communication?
- How can BizPortals 365 intranet foster workplace communication?
What is meant by effective communication in the workplace?
Workplace communication includes every type of communication at work. It can be face-to-face, video conferencing, drafting emails, group meetings, sharing project updates, or giving feedback to employees. With the emergence of the new world of work, internal communication fatigue has reached an all-time prominent level. For the same reason, the volume of instant messaging and email increased by 45% and 100% respectively. Rather than relying on conventional communication tactics, now is the time to speed up and adopt a modern approach to workplace communications.
Also read what is internal communication? – The ultimate 2023 guide
Why communication in the workplace is important?
Effective communication is the cornerstone of every business. More specifically, it has become crucial for remote teams from dispersed workplaces. It improves many important key performance indicators around employee productivity, engagement, motivation, retention, satisfaction, talent attraction, and overall experience.
What are the benefits of workplace communication?
Let us take a deep dive into how organizations can leverage the benefits of managing workplace communications.
1. Boost employee engagement and productivity
Workplace communication is much more than ensuring the accurate delivery of information. It works to keep an open channel of communication between employees and other team members of the organization. It helps you maximize the benefits of employee engagement and leads to a healthy work culture and better employee satisfaction. When employees feel connected to their work, they get a clear understanding of job role expectations and are more likely to perform efficiently.
2. Enhance business profitability
Poor workplace communication has a direct impact on employee performance and profitability. A survey of 100,000 employees has indicated an average loss of $62.4 million per year due to ineffective communication between employees. Investing in an effective communication strategy outweighs many other tangible benefits for the long-term profitability of the business and it also leads to higher returns to shareholders.
3. Build stronger customer relationships
Open communication helps people communicate and collaborate seamlessly. If employees enjoy communicating with each other, they are more likely to perform better and build better connections with customers. Moreover, when employees connect, they are more comfortable sharing their problems and thoughts. This helps in building stronger teams and working better to improve customer experience.
4. Improve employee motivation
Several factors influence employee motivation, including a positive environment, company culture, career opportunities, digital workplace tools, recognition, empowerment, and a lot more. While these factors are important, workplace communication plays a vital role in maximizing connectivity among employees and informing employees about key happenings within the organization.
5. Fewer team conflicts
Poor workplace communication can create a toxic company culture and poor relationships across the organization. Effective workplace communication can prevent misunderstandings between the top and bottom line of management. An effective workplace communication strategy helps in refining distinctive styles of communication that focus on having empathy, listening to others, and considering cultural differences.
Common internal communication mistakes
1. Using the conventional systems for workplace communication
Mistake: Even though mobile apps have become one of the most common features, most businesses fail to realize the importance of technology in the workplace. Using inefficient systems such as paper document systems and email trails is the biggest mistake in today’s modern workplace.
Solution: A workplace communication platform is the best solution in today’s world of remote work. It can help you communicate information across the organization. It also allows you to segment information based on the role, department, and location of employees.
Check out the top Microsoft 365 productivity tools organizations should use to communicate and collaborate effectively.
2. Ineffective workplace communication strategy
Mistake: Creating a comprehensive communication strategy is a huge task. Since the primary purpose is to keep employees updated with company news, events, organizational developments, values, and culture, it seems like just information distribution, but it is much more. Without effective workplace communication tools and strategies, employee engagement levels can drop at a high speed.
Solution: The best way to address this problem is to conduct a gap analysis to identify the scope of improvement in the existing communication infrastructure. This will provide a clear overview of the challenges and set specific workplace communication goals. For example, conducting an employee survey to understand their problems and consider their responses while developing the strategy.
3. Sharing too much irrelevant information
Mistake: Most companies pass on every piece of information to everyone in the organization. It might seem extremely complicated to communicate targeted company information to specific team members but having an effective content distribution strategy can help you to always share relevant information.
Solution: While it is not possible to communicate information to every employee and ensure that the original message has been delivered to the target audience. With the emergence of remote working and dispersed workspace, it is important to adopt an effective workplace communication platform to connect employees anywhere at any time. It will eliminate communication barriers by allowing employees to use their preferred mode of communication and ensure the delivery of the correct message directly.
4. Avoiding the feedback of employees
Mistake: Not every business values employee feedback and it creates a myriad of communication issues. The poor communication channels make it difficult for employees to raise their concerns or express their opinion to management. So, gathering employee feedback is important but using it effectively is the most essential part because employees should not feel ignored.
Solution: The right communication channels help employees to share innovative ideas and share knowledge base across the organization. It also speeds up the process of identifying other communication issues at the workplace and helps employees feel that their contributions matter. An effective workplace communication platform allows employees to share their feedback through multiple channels of feedback modules and enables two-way communication.
5. Complicated delivery of information
Mistake: Sending mismanaged, confusing, and complicated messages is quite common in workplace communications. It is vital to convey the messages succinctly and neatly while removing all the extraneous content. When the messages are confusing, it leads to increased rumors and distortion.
Solution: Using plain language along with visual aids makes it easier for people to digest the information. A workplace communication platform helps you to distribute information with a neat dashboard and targeted content to increase the likelihood of information absorption. It also provides multiple designs and layout options to deliver information in the best possible ways.
How to improve workplace communication?
1. Have an “open door” communication policy
Having transparency is one of the best approaches to developing an effective communication strategy. Reach out to employees periodically to build connections, encourage meaningful conversations, and make a positive change to your workplace.
2. Make documents and knowledge sharing easy for employees
Communication is not just about the exchange of information, but it is also about storing and managing the information effectively. It is important to manage information and share knowledge when employees need to find relevant information. An intranet on Microsoft 365 can help you centralize the information in a common knowledge base and improve workplace communication.
3. Social tools
In this hybrid era, most employees experience isolation while working remotely. Here, the functionality of social networking in your workplace communication platform is important to boost open communication. An intranet on Microsoft 365 allows you to launch individual or group chat channels to connect over shared interests, give every employee a voice, react and respond to leadership content.
4. Surveys and polls
Two-way communication is an unavoidable component of workplace communication strategy. It is also linked with organizational benefits as the employees who feel heard and valued at work are 4 times more likely to become top performers. From surveys about hybrid work setting to polls about employee engagement evaluation, leverage a Microsoft 365 intranet to encourage employees to share their feedback.
5. Provide mobile accessibility
Most businesses struggle to deliver information to their remote employees and then employees feel that they are not informed adequately. The team members spend most of their day at a computer screen but still miss blog updates and emails. Rather than sending endless email trails, an intranet can help you send relevant information to the mobile devices of your employees.
6. Welcome questions
Not everyone is an expert on everything in the organization. Questions are one of the key components of effective workplace communication. With the “Ask an Expert” feature of BizPortals 365, employees get very comfortable reaching out with questions to subject matter experts, managers, or colleagues.
7. Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and achievements
The key to treating employees right is to celebrate good times with them. Small gestures like wishing birthdays, anniversaries, and recognizing achievements can help you make everyone appreciated and build an employee-oriented community. Posting small announcements on the homepage of the intranet can help you leverage the maximum benefits of effective communication in the workplace.
How can BizPortals 365 intranet foster workplace communication?
In a personal or professional setting, when you speak to people properly and listen to them calmly, they are more likely to go out of the way to deliver better work. But improving workplace communication requires effort and equal participation from everyone in the organization.
A modern intranet simply holds the key to boosting internal communications in the organization. The right intranet platform is a must-have to resonate with the new normal and allow your team to have modern communication tools. Using a modern intranet platform like BizPortals 365 can help you to communicate effectively at the workplace, get social, foster company culture, coordinate across all levels of the team, establish a productive environment, onboard new employees, and much more.
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