Building a successful internal culture is similar to building a house - without a strong foundation, it will collapse. Effective team communications can make your cultural foundation stronger - with the right communications strategy, the team’s ability to foresee and respond to problems can be vastly improved. By engaging with your team members, employee engagement and retention also increase. These are just a few reasons why a brand should consider implementing clearly planned and structured internal communication strategies.
Faster Response Time to Problems and Emergencies
Here’s an experience most of us can relate to. You’re working on a specific task when something goes wrong. You rush into a co-worker’s office and begin talking excitedly, in detail, about what needs to be done. The response on your co-worker’s face isn’t one of approval or disapproval. It’s something far worse: “Huh?”
Having a clear process for connecting the entire team to the right information at the right time helps stop issues from becoming much bigger problems. When something inevitably goes wrong, a fleshed-out communications strategy enables the entire team to respond quickly. No one has to be caught up on the issue. Often, the worst time to get an employee up to speed is when something goes awry. There’s high tension, and moving parts are moving too quickly. Effective team communication stops this problem before it starts and creates better communication across the board.
Make Employees Feel Valued
A one-way flow of information can only get a team halfway to its goals. Feedback loops need to be embraced. And feedback can take many forms. 360 team performance reviews, where someone reviews (and is reviewed by) a co-worker, manager, and a reporting employee are just one example out of the many resources available. Internal communication channels create safe, encouraging environments in which people feel free to share their ideas. If there's limited opportunity for verbal communication, a comprehensive communications strategy can help make employees feel valued and show them that their ideas matter. Their bosses are listening; they have attention and respect. And since their ideas matter, they break out of thinking that they’re just a cog in a machine. They become much happier for it, and happy employees are 12% more productive.
Increase Employee Contribution
In 2015, only 32% of employees were engaged at work. The Harvard Business Review discusses how improving employee engagement affects productivity, increasing it by as much as 22%. Employees who feel more valued are more likely to be engaged and to contribute more to the project, team, and company as a whole.
Reduce Retention Issues
The Harvard Business Review also reports that employees who were more engaged are much less likely to look somewhere else for employment. With a digital communications strategy in place, even engaging remote workers is within your wheelhouse. In fact, when companies with high turnover problems took steps to increase engagement, turnover dropped by 25%. In low-turnover companies, the reduction was 65%. More engagement and reduced turnover lead to a more experienced team and fewer precious resources being spent on rehiring and retraining employees. This level of retention is ultimately reflected across the entire organization as employees benefit from an established team rather than one stuck in a cycle of hiring and training.
Better Informed, More Capable Leaders
Communication failures tend to start at the top. With a solid internal communications strategy, organizations can accomplish much more than an improved flow of information. Team leaders who utilize modern team communication tools have their fingers on the pulse of what their employees are thinking and working on. This provides strong situational awareness and a keen grasp of employees’ strengths and weaknesses while eliminating the gaps that resulted in poor communication in the first place. It also puts managers in a better position to respond to current and future problems, or even to head problems off before they occur.
Improved Ability to Set and Achieve Goals
Common goals must be identified before they can be reached. As any team progresses toward its goals, it will inevitably make mistakes and learn. As a result of these positive and adverse events, those goals will evolve and change. Without proper identification and continuous adaptation, you'll be trying to hit a moving target while blindfolded. Solid internal communication (this includes remote team members) means everyone knows what they are working towards at any given moment. Fluid group communication between employees, managers, and executives results in increased productivity and builds a stronger and in-sync team that thrives off of clearer communication and a higher sense of mutual respect.
Does your company have an internal communications strategy in place? If not, you'll want to take a closer look at the communication patterns taking shape at your organization, as well as the communication tools being used. But, you're not alone. Effective communication is something that every team must continually work toward and hone. Over time, you'll see your communication skills grow to match modern workplace demands, leading to enhanced productivity and happiness.
If you're ready to take the next step in effective team communication, the Whispir platform offers a variety of different ways to engage team members and take the stress off your plate, including:
Streamlining your communication process with automated workflows that can deploy based on preset triggers like recurring surveys, schedule releases, safety checks, event notifications, and more.
Sending 2-way text messages to deliver more transparency across your organization.
With SMS, you can reach employees in different locations
with wellness checks and receive important information from the field.
Utilize omnichannel workplace communication to meet your employees where they spend most of their time - email, social, text, WhatsApp, and more.
Take a free demo of the Whispir platform to see how you can elevate your internal workplace communications - all from one easy-to-use dashboard.
