Successful organizational communication can often be difficult to implement in our busy world where a business’s bottom line is paramount to its success. However, if you want your business to be competitive, it’s vitally important that all employees feel comfortable with your company’s communication policy. In this article, we will examine eight strategies that all employers should consider implementing in order to improve the level of organizational communication in their business.
1. Transparency is key
There is little that troubles employees more than feeling like their company is hiding information from them. Your employees will understand if you are unable to release confidential information about a topic right away. However, you need to let them know why you aren’t showing them the whole picture.
2. Address issues quickly
If you don’t have all the answers right away, it’s ok to convey that to your employees. You shouldn’t feel like you have to have a complete and perfect answer for every issue that arises, but you should practice prompt, effective communication to indicate that you know what your employees are concerned about. This will also serve to stop rumors from developing, as tends to happen when official announcements have not been made.
3. Consider every employee
When delivering a message to your team, you need to consider how your message will impact everyone in the company. While the message may be more important for some parts of the team than others, all workers should know about any issues that may affect them.
4. Provide means of top-down and bottom-up communication
Managers and owners should have a means of effective team communication to use with employees, and employees should have the same ability to communicate appropriate concerns to management. Giving your employees a voice and an easy way of communicating with the managers of the company is crucial for the success of any business.
5. Effective communication through multiple mediums
Everyone processes information differently. When you are attempting to communicate with those in your company, you need to consider how not everyone will process the message after hearing it just once. Additionally, when providing organizational communication, you should attempt to provide the message in different ways such as through both verbal and written announcements.
6. Be Consistent in your organizational communication
You should use the same language when addressing a given topic, regardless of which medium you are using to convey said message. If your tone is very formal in one instance of addressing a topic, and very casual at another time, your employees may feel that you aren’t taking the issue seriously.
7. Provide information in pieces, as appropriate
There are some messages that need to be communicated to your employees in one fell swoop. Sometimes this can’t be avoided. However, if you are able to provide smaller, easier to digest communication, your employees will have an easier time understanding what it is you are communicating.
8. Encourage employees to communicate across departments
While some information doesn’t need to be shared across the entire company, it is a good idea to promote effective internal communication between departments so that individuals in various departments of the company don’t feel like separate entities, but rather one part of the whole business.
