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Communication across your organization has probably always been top of mind when looking at company values and culture. With teams working mostly remote or in a hybrid work environment, communication is vital. It really is the backbone of your company culture. How you speak to employees and how often sets the stage for how teams talks amongst each other and how they perceive the business.
So, how important is it? One study showed that 97% of respondents claimed communication impacts tasks every single day1. On the contrary, in another study, 86% of people polled cited ineffective communication and poor collaboration as reasons for failure in the workplace2. We need to communicate to do our jobs, but one of the alarmingly high reasons for failure is poor communication. Effective communication starts at the company-wide level and must be an integral piece of company culture to be successful.
Understandably so, communication strategies and how we stay connected to our employees have changed. Rather than doing any sort of in-office communication, everything has pivoted to online and to personal devices. Here are some important pieces of your communication strategy you should implement now to help boost employee engagement and culture.
Study after study has shown that employees like feeling a sense of inclusion when it comes to communicating with each other and about the business goals. Promote open communication across the organization so employees feel empowered to ask questions and participate in discussions.
Use employees in leadership roles to implement regular check-ins with their direct reports. These regular check-ins are one of the most important and effective communication strategies to help employees feel engaged and part of the company vision. These one-on-one discussions also give employees a chance to get to know each other, which is another important component to building a strong company culture.
Casual office chats are not currently an option, but they are equally as important as formal communication. Use communication tools to provide informal discussions among employees. With tools like slack, you can create a variety of different channels to open up lines of communication. These informal forums allow employees who may not otherwise communicate to get to know each other and get a brain break from talking about work with fellow employees.
Celebrating milestones, company wins, and good news is an easy way to keep everyone connected. Being transparent and communicating positive results boosts morale and has been shown to improve employee productivity.
Don’t overcomplicate what you’re trying to say or how to say it. Quick, bite-sized messages will be best received. Some messages aren’t meant to be short, and that’s okay, too. Creating a centralized communication strategy so that employees know when and where they can look regularly for need-to-know information is vital. Try to keep communications in one place to ensure the information is being received.
Communication is the motor of your company culture. The strategies and the plans go nowhere if they aren’t shared and then modeled to your employees. The stress of deploying a communication plan to your employees may seem overwhelming but keeping it simple and consolidated will be the key to success.
Using a single platform like Appspace can help take the existing tools you use to create clear and concise communications with your employees anywhere, anytime. To learn more about Appspace’s employee communication solutions, click here.
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