One of the most important elements of business success is communication. It’s a common source of problems for companies, and when communication is poor it affects everything from staff morale through to client relationships and profits.
Improving communications should be a priority for your business, and there are different things you can do to help tackle it.
Take a look at these five ways to improve office communications for a more effective business.
1. Encourage regular communication
Creating a more open and communicative workplace requires business owners to lead by example. Provide your employees with regular opportunities to communicate so that they feel like they can have their say easily. Daily stand-up meetings where teams share what they’re doing for the day can help teams to talk to each other better, as well as provide a space to raise any problems or concerns.
2. Provide the tools to communicate effectively
Having a variety of communication tools is essential for businesses. Email, instant messaging, desktop faxing and online forums are all useful tools to have to enable employees to communicate in ways that they feel comfortable and familiar with. Video conferencing is becoming an increasingly popular communication tool in the workplace, and is ideal for facilitating meetings that feature staff based in different locations and helping everyone to feel included.
3. Create a more social environment
Teams that have bonded together are much more likely to communicate. By encouraging a more social environment, your teams can build better relationships and will feel more comfortable communicating with each other. Create a friendlier work environment by encouraging teams to have lunch together, as opposed to at their desks, and arranging after-work events to help employees get to know each other outside of the office.
4. Make meetings more meaningful
While you might think that more meaningful office communication comes from more meetings, the truth is that too many meetings can have the opposite effect. Put plans in place to reduce the amount of meetings held by teams each week, and focus on making the meetings that stay more meaningful. This will not only improve your workflow, but prevents the meeting fatigue that employees can experience when they have to attend too many meetings.
5. Design a more open working environment
The layout and design of your office can help improve communications. Open plan office spaces, breakout areas and even hot-desking are all ways that businesses are improving communications and adopting more modern ways of working. The right office design can improve productivity, so give some thought to what you can do to make your workplace more open and collaborative.
With the right strategy in place, you can make your workplace a more open place to encourage better communication among your teams. Empower employees to feel like they can raise issues and speak their minds and you’ll have a much stronger workforce as a result. Start thinking about the changes you can make to improve your office communications to experience positive changes for your business.
