If you have effective team communication in your business it will make your projects move forward, and in the end, enable you to deliver better results. It’s crucial that your employees understand the objectives, mission and strategy of your company. However, creating a dynamic, collaborative and open-minded work environment, is also as important. Internal communication needs to run smooth in order for any enterprise to succeed, but unfortunately it’s not as easy to achieve as it seems.
Here are 5 awesome tips to improve your internal communication at work.
1) Set clear objectives and realistic expectations
One thing that every project has in common is that they all have a goal or objective to meet. However, it can be difficult to clearly communicate them to your team members. If they don’t understand these goals, it will only lead to confusion and miscommunication. But on the other hand, if they are effectively communicated, your team will be able to get instant results.
The first thing you have to do when setting a goal, is to identify what has to be achieved. Then you need to establish specific outcomes and necessary actions required to achieve them. Use the SMART method to this and follow these criterias: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. This will help you set clear expectations to your team and you can then strengthen your task management system. It’s also essential to define a clear communication process and stick to it. Always remember; by setting motivating goals, your team members will feel emotionally attached to them. This will then encourage them to do their best to deliver great results.
2) Listen to your employees
Listening to your team is what will strengthen the relationship with your employees and engage them to the max. If you do this, you will also make sure they are in line with the values and goals of the company.
So, how can you achieve this? Have transparent information, in order for your employees to easily access and understand it. Try to communicate horizontally as it will make your team feel more connected to their job. You do this by keeping the transmission of information between people and departments on the same level of hierarchy. Communication is a two-way concept and it’s important to give and receive feedback in order to maximize performance. Having an ongoing dialogue with your employees will make sure you and your team are aware of the progress of different projects as well as understand how you can improve the performance of them.
3) Use gamification in a business context
It can be hard to engage your team and promote innovative communication methods at work. However, today “gamification” is used to achieve company goals and objectives. Gamification is used to motivate your employees by using games in a business context. Applying game theory to internal communication will encourage interaction and most importantly understanding of tasks and projects.
By making something employees would normally find difficult or confusing, into something fun and rewarding, will improve the overall performance. A good example of this can be the employee onboarding process. Make it an exciting experience and transform it into an informational treasure hunt. This way, your employee will feel rewarded when finding pieces of information while meeting his/her new coworkers. Bringing gamification into your workplace will definitely increase your team’s productivity and business outcome.
4) Implement an online collaboration platform
Email is becoming one of the biggest productivity killers at work. It is not as effective as you may think. The read rates are low, it’s almost impossible to get good employee feedback and it’s not a dynamic way of communicating. According to The Guardian, you spend around 40 % of your entire day of answering emails. The time wasted is huge. With a company chat you will be able to organize your communication based on project or department, message your team and have smarter, more segmented conversations. One of the other perks to switching to this type of tool, is that it facilitates brainstorming and idea generation. It enables more people to contribute in real-time. You will also be able to track the progress of your projects and get better results. All your work is recorded, searchable and accessible anywhere, anytime. No more searching through email chains for an important conversation or document.
There are plenty of great enterprise collaboration platform on the market to choose from today. One alternative is Hibox, a powerful collaboration platform that integrates a task management system, chat and videoconference in the same app. Hibox is great for small teams and startups who are working on a bunch of projects at once and want to move fast and still be able to keep track of everything they are working on.
5) Engage your team with emojis and GIFs
Communication at the workplace is slowly going from being strictly professional to more warm and creative. We are becoming more digital than ever and we seek for instant communication. A lot of people can find it difficult to express their emotions when writing an email or message to their co-workers. However, for many that is no longer a big issue today.
Using emojis is the new and modern way of communicating. Why? Well, for starters it gives of an instant vibe of friendliness. It also adds humour and personality to it, making it easier to express yourself more accurately. GIFs (moving images) are also slowly starting to become more common to use in the workplace. As more millennials are starting to walk into more and more businesses, it’s important to adapt to their way of communication in order to connect on deeper level. Using Emojis and GIFs, can help younger workers to bond better, engage conversations and socialize more at work. Implementing these methods, can create a pleasant and dynamic work environment, and most importantly, improve your internal communication. You will find a bunch of online collaboration tools which have these features integrated into their platform!
We hope these tips inspired you to step up your team communication. To conclude, having effective internal communication is an ongoing process which needs to be maintained. To achieve it, employers need to spend time and effort as well as apply creative approaches and methods to it.
About the author:
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Helping teams to be more productive. Founder of Hibox.co and Joincube.com #digitaltransformation #collaboration
