It comes as a shock to me that businesses in the UK are collectively losing £2.7 billion every year due to poor communication about benefits packages, according to Cass Business School. Who knew that failing to inform your staff of the benefits you have on offer could result in such a huge loss of money? It just goes to show the effect of dire internal communication and what can happen if you don’t have it nailed.
The level of communication in your company has a knock-on effect on so many other things including employee retention, staff turnover, job satisfaction, customer experience, employee engagement and productivity. It impacts decision making, interactions between different departments and your company culture as a whole so it’s vital that you pay attention to how you can improve it.
Staff surveys
You could have all the ideas in the world but essentially, internal communication in your business is led by your employees. Try sending out a survey to get their input, feedback and concerns to help you construct a strategy.
- How many meetings are you involved in every week? Do you feel like this is too many?
- Do you feel like there is always a manager present for you to talk to?
- Are you aware of the benefits we provide?
- How often do you have a 121 with your manager?
- What way do you prefer to contact your colleagues? Would you like to have a collaborative platform in place?
- Do you feel like you’re kept in the loop with updates to your department and the company?
- Would you find monthly staff newsletters beneficial?
- Do you enjoy using your Recruitment ATS?
People will appreciate that their voices are being heard and you’ll be killing two birds with one stone as it will also boost employee engagement.
Open door policies
It’s becoming more common for companies to have open door policies where employees are free to talk to any manager at any time. It promotes communication, encourages trust and if anyone has an issue or concern then they can voice that easily rather than going through a long process to be able to do so. You will also find that having a policy like this in place will allow your employees to develop relationships with their colleagues which also contributes to improved communication in the long run.
More effective department meetings
It’s no secret that there are a lot of people who dread meetings. They can be pointless, time-consuming and make you want to rip your hair out but if they’re conducted correctly, they can really help with internal communication. Keep them short and sweet, cut out the unnecessary waffle about what everyone got up to at the weekend and stick to the agenda to avoid it overrunning.
We have a company meeting and 121 with our line manager every quarter as well as department meetings every month. These all give us the opportunity to find out about what’s going on in the business and what we can improve on. Without these, we’d lack the internal communication we currently have between teams and different departments.
Monthly staff newsletters
We’ve been sending out a newsletter to all our staff every month for the last couple of years and it has dramatically increased our employee engagement. We include the latest company news, department updates, new clients, birthdays, work anniversaries, exciting announcements, funny quotes, information about events and anything else which our staff should know about. It means everyone is on the same page and has the opportunity to submit something to the newsletter if they feel like we should all know about it.
By regularly sending out a staff newsletter it means you no longer have to worry about receiving update emails from the whole company and losing them in the depths of your inbox. It ensures everyone is informed about important announcements and nobody misses anything!
Implement a collaborative platform
There hasn’t been an increase in the number of collaborative platforms available for no reason and that’s because they’re becoming a popular source of internal communication for businesses. The likes of Yammer, Slack and Workplace all allow for employees to communicate, collaborate and connect with others through the use of their services. As well as boosting the communication in your company, they can also increase productivity, efficiency and employee engagement.
These are just a handful of ways which you can improve internal communication but really, it differs from business to business. There may be strategies which work for you which don’t work for another company, but you won’t know until you try! The basics are all outlined in this post, so we recommend putting these into practice before you start looking at other approaches.
