Wasteful communication is a major problem faced by businesses all over the world. However, poor employee communication skills alone cannot be blamed for this. Actually, a major portion of the blame has nothing to do with employees communication skills at all. Much of the cause of inefficient communications is from the use of poor communication systems.
Poor communication systems group a lot of problems together. This includes using too many tools to achieve too little, using the wrong tool for your industry/business, using a tool the wrong way, and the list goes on and on.
Let’s first talk about the use of many tools. This occurs because many organizations believe that using specialization tools for each task gives flexibility to their employees. They don’t realize the negative impact of using too many disconnected systems. For example, many organizations use a tool for email, a different tool for chat, another tool for documents, and another tool for social media management. Although these tools are helpful, the lack of collaboration between apps can actually end up lowering employee productivity. This is because of the time spent switching between the applications and searching for information.
The time that is wasted in searching for information reduces productivity which in turn increases employee stress. According to a Holmes (a voice of the global PR industry) report, the annual cost of poor communication is pegged at $37 billion.
The main reason behind these shocking stats is that the very tools that were meant to improve productivity have created new barriers to the workflow. Tools are either too interruptive with constant pings and notifications, or the information flow between them is disconnected.
The study on Workplace Productivity and Communications Technology by Webtorials has found that each employee, on an average, spends 68% of his time in communication and collaboration tasks (about 6 hours in a day), out of which 1.26 hours ($11,000 per employee per year) is wasted due to communication inefficiencies.
Most employees use emails for internal communications as it is considered as better proof of documentation. Similarly, a majority of employees are forced to spend their time attending long unproductive face-to-face meetings and internal phone calls in their workday. A lot of this wasted time can be saved by using a chat system for internal communications, as long as the chats are properly categorized for context and to-do’s, and not lost in long text streams that are hard to review and act on later.
As part of a communication strategy, businesses should be looking to implement an efficient communication system. It will reduce the time spent on unproductive activities and utilize the time for other productive work. This makes a strong case for implementing apps that connect multiple systems together. Collaborative tools take the stress out of searching for information. They also make communicating faster, and overall really do make your workflow.
It’s time for businesses to start reshaping their communication framework. The cause of poor communication from ineffective systems is an easy fix. In fact, many communication tools even offer free plans. So make that an easy and inexpensive, if not free, fix. Now, we acknowledge there are many other sources that cause poor communication, but let’s start with the baby steps first!
For more information on how to find the right collaborative tool for your organization, read our blog post on, “How To Choose The Right Business Communication Tool”.
