In our last blog, we talked about how businesses can create a better experience for their customers. Now, let’s look inward and talk about how businesses can create a better experience for their employees.
Organizations put a lot of time and effort and money into their strategic marketing so that they’re connecting with customers as effectively as possible. And rightfully so. But if you’ve already made the investment in external communications, you already have the foundations to make your internal communications just as effective, and it will pay off just like your strategic marketing.
When internal communication runs at peak performance, employees are primed to better think and problem solve, and they’re primed to better share those insights with the company at large.
Below, a few tips to get everyone talking.
Get Everyone Together. If your company is small, try and schedule time for everyone to periodically get together and open the floor to anyone who wants to talk. For larger organizations, or if finding time to get everyone together is too difficult, take advantage of technology to start a conversation. Whether it’s a Google Hangout or a platform designed specifically for organizational communication, employees and management can participate in the conversation at their leisure. Plus, you’ll have an archive that you can later reference. But keep it simple. Communicating is hard enough, don’t let technology make it even harder.
Vertical & Horizontal. This is biz-speak for management-employee communication (vertical) and peer-to-peer communication (horizontal). Employees should be encouraged to communicate with each other across departments. When the sales team communicates better with the engineering department, insights will pass from department to department and the whole business will be stronger for it. And everyone will be better informed when employees can comfortably talk to management and management can comfortably talk to employees.
Top Down. Effective organizational communication is antithetical to top-down communication. But leading by example is top-down governance in the best way possible. When senior management treats communication as a two-way street, everyone in the company will better communicate with each other.
Big Picture, Little Details. The c-suite can sometimes get lost in the big picture and staff can sometimes get trapped in day-to-day details. When an organization communicates with itself, execs will have a better picture of what’s happening throughout the entire company, and employees will have a better understanding of where the company is headed. That will make everyone’s job easier and will make the company even stronger.