Effective communication is essential when it comes to keeping employees engaged and streamlining work. Here’s how to do it well, and do it right.
As remote work has become common with most companies around the world, effective communication is becoming increasingly vital. With remote work limiting communication options, employees now heavily rely on emails, text messages, and online meetings to communicate. This arrangement has led to many individuals struggling to navigate the changing avenues of communication.
Failing to communicate well can lead to stress and resentment, leading to long-term impacts on employee engagement and work quality 1.
Hence, it is a key to build effective internal communication within a company. Here are four important tips to achieve effective internal communication with your employees and prospective hires.
1. Prioritise clarity when communicating
With increasing use of communication apps and smart phones at work, keeping up with messages can be a source of stress for many employees. To avoid unnecessary miscommunication and time being spent deciphering messages, always aim for clarity to effectively get your point across in the least amount of time. Try the three simple step process of communicating context, progress, next steps when you provide status updates. A simple example is indicated below:
Context: I am preparing the slides for the quarterly meeting
Progress: I am halfway done with it
Next Steps: I am expected to finish it by Friday
2. Remember that effective communication is a two-way street
No conversation can occur without good listening skills. One key aspect to a good engaged team is when everyone listens as well as they speak. Here, the goal of listening is to understand what the other person is saying, and not listening to figure out what to say next.
The key difference here is to listen to understand, not listen to respond. Active listening and reducing interruptions during online meetings would also help elevate the quality of your company’s internal communication.
3. Speak to the right person for effective communication
When working in remote teams, it is possible to mix up projects or leave out colleagues in an email thread. This may lead to miscommunication, which can be avoided.
Therefore, it is important for employees to take time to determine who are the relevant parties in an email before sending it out. This is where keeping note of who attended the meeting and who were the key stakeholders would help in the crafting of effective emails.
4. Be mindful of your tone of voice and body language
Non-verbal communication is 80% of all communication. Beyond the words that you type or say, what also matters is how you say it and how your words come across.
This is why it is important during an online meeting to look friendlier and more approachable. Employees should be mindful of their facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language in order to achieve better internal communication.
This can be done by using positive body language. Avoid crossing one's arms during conversations and adopt a more open posture. This is especially useful for job interviewers, as it would help the prospective hire be more open during the interview.
With these four tips, your company can achieve effective communication with employees and prospective hires. To keep up the good style of communication across all departments and employees, a PEO service such as AYP might be a useful tool to have.
AYP is an award-winning end-to-end HR solution with the expertise and knowledge to ensure all things HR go according to plan, which includes effective communication and employee management. Fill out the form below to learn more about AYP Global Pay
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