Good communication can be the difference between a successful business and one that fails. You need to let your clients know what you provide while also keeping investors in the loop. However, the most important type of communication is found within your office walls.

A poor understanding of another team’s role can lead to all kinds of mistakes, and mistakes will cost you money. That is why you should always try to improve your internal communications throughout your business. So, how do you achieve this?

Plan Team Building Exercises

Your first task as a leader should be building a strong rapport between your staff. Everyone under your roof is working toward the same goal; however, their job role requires them to do things a little differently. Failing to understand another employee’s intentions could lead to tension among your staff.

The best way to avoid this issue is to provide your staff with the chance to get to know each other. You can send them on a company picnic, or arrange a series of team-building exercises in the office. Either way, it is important to build a level of trust among all of your employees. Furthermore, you may want to keep topping up these links as new people join your company and others leave.

Encourage Sharing

Now that your employees all have some knowledge about the people around them, it is time to strengthen these bonds to improve their work output. A basic understanding of other people is important; however, it will suit your staff better to understand their job roles better.

Every team will require the assistance of an employee outside of their group at some point and teams may have to work together. Unfortunately, another team’s responsibilities can seem quite innocuous without a thorough explanation. That is why it will help to encourage your staff to explain why they need help with certain tasks, linking it to the responsibilities of the other team. This level of information sharing makes the tasks seem less like a favor and more like another part of that team’s everyday duties.

Link Your Staff

Your staff should now have a great working knowledge of who works around them and what each of them brings to the company. Next, you will need to provide your teams with a way to converse with each other on the fly.

A workplace communication tool is a great way to link all of your staff on one platform. These sites allow your employees to communicate with each other in real-time using the internet. They can ask questions, form group chats, provide feedback on key issues, and send private messages all from the comfort of their own desk. The management teams should also have access to this tool as it allows them to track the progress of staff projects and monitor their attendance. Think of these communication platforms like social media sites for the workplace. You get all of the benefits of this communication method without any unnecessary distractions.

Always Have A Direct Line To Your Office

As a business leader, you are always on the move. You will have duties that require you to leave the office, which means that you can’t always have an eye on what is going on. That is why is important to provide your managers with a way to contact you directly in the event of a crisis. Modern technology has improved our means of communication tenfold over the last few years. However, all of these new devices require you to have an internet connection and this isn’t always achievable.

This means that you will have to look at something a bit more reliable.

A company phone that only you can access gives you the means to contact your office at any time without having to worry about finding a connection. You may think that having a device like this is more expensive than it is worth, which is why you should look at a SIM-only plan. These plans are a lot cheaper than other phone plans, and sites like Lebara let you compare SIM-only deals to find one that suits your needs best. It is easy to compare SIM-only deals here, and it gives you the means to stay connected to your business at all times.

Only Host Necessary Meetings

A company meeting is a good way to bring everyone up to speed with what the company is doing while setting your expectations. Sadly, these meetings take up a lot of time. This time would be better served by being productive and making the business money. What’s more, your workplace communication platform should help cover most of the topics normally covered by the weekly meeting.

Touching base with your staff on a face-to-face basis is still necessary for modern business; however, you are better off keeping these interactions to a minimum. Perhaps only hosting a monthly meeting is all you really need.

Hot Desking

Hot desking is not a new concept, yet it has recently gained popularity. Hot-desking refers to your office layout. It basically means that your staff chooses to sit where they like on any given day, rather than sticking to assigned seating.

This is a great way to encourage bonding between different teams as your staff will end up talking with people that they wouldn’t normally engage with. However, there are some serious downsides to hot-desking that many people that adopt the system do not talk about. One example of a downside is that it can create disorientation among your staff, making the act of choosing a seat an unnecessary distraction. You will have to weigh up the pros and cons of hot-desking for yourself to find out whether it can improve communication throughout your business. Some institutions benefit greatly from it while others swear off hot desking entirely.

Digital Time Sheets

A digital timesheet may not seem like it has anything to do with internal communication on the surface; however, there are benefits to knowing where other staff members are at all times.

Sometimes your employees will need to move their work hours around to accommodate their holiday time, sick leave, or personal lives. This is unavoidable, and it can often lead to some confusion among the rest of your staff. You don’t want your teams to rely too heavily on the progress of someone that isn’t there.

A digital timesheet allows your staff to clock in and out of a database that is accessible to all. Anyone that wants to find the location of someone simply needs to check this database to find out when that individual will arrive. This is a quick level of communication that can solve many problems, allowing your staff to focus on their jobs rather than locating employees that aren’t in the office. What’s more, these individuals can re-assign urgent projects to the people that are in the building.

Conclusion

Getting all of your staff on the same page is a great way to increase productivity in your business. That is why you should use some of the methods above to increase the internal communication skills throughout your company. Most of these take a small amount of effort to implement but can yield large results. So, do what’s best for your company and get your staff talking in any way that you can.

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Image 3: Photo by RawPixel on Flickr

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