Improves processes and procedures and ultimately creates greater efficiencies and reduces costs. The impact of ineffective communication Ineffective communication may increase the chances for misunderstandings, damage relationships, break trust, and increase anger and hostility. Two-way communication HR professionals may initially think of communication mainly in the context of delivering messages to employees about business issues, policies and procedures, but two-way communication plays an essential role in a comprehensive communication strategy.
Building a Communication Strategy To develop a communication strategy, employers should begin by linking communication to the strategic plan, including the organization's mission, vision and values; its strategic goals and objectives; and its employment brand. Effective communication strategies: Safeguard credibility to establish loyalty and build trust. Maintain consistency to establish a strong employment brand. Listen to employees and to members of the leadership team. Seek input from all constituencies.
Provide feedback. Prepare managers in their roles as organizational leaders. A communication strategy includes the following elements: Highly effective strategies that are often top-down, with senior management setting the tone for a cascading series of messages.
A budget that allows for the use of various types of communication vehicles depending on the message to be delivered and any unique issues associated with it.
A process by which leaders evaluate any particular situation driving the need to communicate and from which key messages will emerge. A method for generating feedback and using it to shape follow-up messages. A customized delivery approach with communication materials that are easy to understand. Constituencies Everyone in the organization has a role to play in communication: The CEO and senior managers are ultimately responsible for setting the tone and establishing organizational culture.
Key leaders should be coached on their role in ensuring effective companywide communication. The HR professional and communication leader also have critical roles, especially in challenging economic environments.
Managers are responsible for daily communication with their employees and for relating to their peers and colleagues. All employees have a responsibility to voice concerns and issues, provide feedback, and listen effectively.
Training Communication training may encompass any number of topics, including: Company communication policies. Effective writing and presentation skills. Train-the-trainer initiatives. Responding to employee issues There is no better way to cause resentment among employees than to ask them for feedback and then fail to act in response to their concerns. Dealing with external media External communications—including public and community relations—may also be a part of an organization's communication strategy.
Measuring results While organizations generally agree that measuring and quantifying results of communication plans are beneficial, this goal is difficult to accomplish. Despite the difficulty of doing so, organizations should strive to collect qualitative and quantitative information to evaluate their efforts: Qualitative data may include anecdotal evidence that employees' attitudes were improved after the handling of an emergency situation or that focus group information supported the strategy for communicating benefits changes to employees.
Quantitative data may include measures such as turnover rates, productivity rates and employee satisfaction benchmarks, as well as use of employee service center options. Audience Identifying audience issues is a key task in ensuring effectiveness in any communication strategy. Communicating "up" While much of a communication strategy is focused on imparting information to employees, another central component is permitting employees to have a voice with members of senior management.
Geographically dispersed audience Organizations may have multi-unit operations with a variety of worksites within a city, state or country, or even globally. Vehicles and Approaches One of the major challenges in developing and executing communication plans is to select the best vehicles for delivering any given message to and from employees. When selecting the best communication vehicle, organizational leaders should consider: Timing.
The timing of the information may be imperative, such as in emergency situations. Employees' location may affect this selection. Are all employees in one building, at multiple sites or situated globally? Do they work virtually? Another issue that affects the decision is the sensitivity of the information. For layoff or termination information, most professionals agree that face-to-face meetings trump any other means of communication, but some issues may make these meetings impossible due to the geographic location of the employees, the number of employees affected and other factors.
Handbook The employee handbook is used to communicate standard operating procedures, guidelines and policies. Newsletters Newsletters are used to communicate new information about the organization, its products and services, and its employees. Town hall meetings Town hall meetings are an option to gather employees together to share news, celebrate successes or communicate companywide information that affects all employees.
E-mail Electronic communication is a fast and easy way to reach many employees at once. Face-to-face meetings Face-to-face meetings with employees are one of the best ways to relay sensitive information.
Telephone The telephone is another way to communicate information to employees. Stories Storytelling creates a picture through words so that the message becomes memorable.
Social media Many individuals regularly use social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, not only for recreational purposes but as a business communication tool. Messaging apps Messaging applications such as Jabber and Slack and chatbots that interact with applicants and employees through automation may be the future of workplace communication. Virtual team meetings Organizations may have employees located across the city or across the globe and may need to rely on virtual team meetings to get work done.
These quarterly development conversations create the optimal conditions for meaningful conversations that reflect an investment in their future and their success. Monthly town hall meetings. These structured meetings enable employees to fully understand and engage with the direction, purpose and priorities of the organization. The best town hall meetings provide space and opportunity for questions to be asked and updates to be shared, ensuring a flow of two-way communication across the organization.
Many companies have offices in multiple locations, which adds a degree of complexity to town hall meetings. For these companies, telecasting or recording the meetings, or rotating their location, ensures employees across all offices can remain engaged with the meetings and with executives. To stay connected with the frontline employee experience, a CEO can meet with different groups of employees on a monthly or quarterly basis. The CEO can learn firsthand about challenges and successes in the organization, as well as ideas for improvement.
These intimate coffee meetings also aim to create a personal connection that endures long after the coffee, when employees return to their work and share the experience with other colleagues. We all want to be connected with something greater than ourselves.
Always pivot to helping your employees understand, adapt to and adopt change by showcasing how it benefits them. There are so many right and wrong ways to communicate with your people, but not communicating is the worst. Address all of the changes right out of the gate. To ward off information overload, be sure to give them only what they need, and end with how you, as an organization, will support your employees.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify? Make it a best practice to post here consistently so it becomes routine.
Virtual fireside chats, open hours, employee newsletters and small, cross-functional, geo-diverse cohort meetups allow messaging to cascade and thread across the organization.
Provide a feedback loop so you can respond honestly, clearly and with care to ensure you always strive to build and reaffirm a safe and open culture. You need to identify what mode of communication works perfectly within your organization. Employee communication has changed over the years, in the past decade most parts of the communication was face-to-face. Now we have a plethora of different channels of communications. Effective communication is where your employees are well informed and all the functions run smoothly in the organization.
Organizations need to create a world-class, engaging communication program. They should leverage feedback received from the Human Resources department to improve their internal channels. Learn more: Employee engagement survey questions template. There are multiple channels that can be used for employee communication, but we have shortlisted these Traditionally communicating with your employees has been a top-down process.
Management creates policies, procedures, etc. These traditional methods are only one way of communication. To achieve desirable results it is important, channels of communication should be two ways.
Papers and memos and traditional ways are all good, but the world is evolving and so should your practices. All most all organizations across the globes communicate with their employees via emails or instant messaging for their daily communications.
From updates to latest organizational developments your employees can stay informed and up to date at all times. The advantage of emails messaging is the speed of communication and the ability to communicate with everyone in the organization at the same time.
A big disadvantage though could be people assuming the tone. Your employees carry a very powerful tool of communication with them and that is the cell phone. These days phones are no longer attached to the desk.
Cell phone technology enables your employees to stay in touch with whatever that is happening within the organization even if they work remotely. One powerful platform that organizations have adopted as a part of employee communication is social media. Your employees can access these platforms from literally anywhere. These sites are definitely increasing the usage of handheld devices also allowing everyone to be constantly in touch with anything that goes around within the organization.
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