Employees often face the challenge of miscommunication when talking to colleagues. Ambiguities that arise in intra-corporate communications have a rather serious impact on the efficiency of workflows. Whether you run a small or large business, even the tiniest strife within your team can cost you dearly.
On the other hand, when the communicative process is established well and everything runs like clockwork, engagement and performance of employees skyrocket, thus bringing you more profit. The right communication strategy can help you build effective team collaboration, as well as develop the necessary skills in your staff members to keep projects running smoothly.
Communication strategies are a set of actions aimed at improving a company's internal communications. Such strategies are needed to establish connections between management and performers, build effective team collaboration, and thus ensure flawless and clear information exchange without time loss.
To create a successful communication plan, you should first determine its purposes and then pick the right tools to combine different communication types.
All communication strategies are divided into verbal, nonverbal, and visual. It is recommended to combine two or three types to boost productive interactions between teammates.
Verbal strategy includes two channels: written and oral communication. The most popular written channels are emails, chats, and task management apps. Oral channels include audio and video calls, and, of course, in-person conversations.
Nonverbal strategy mostly involves implicit signals, such as gestures, intonation, smile, maintaining personal distance, etc. It is rarely used in the pure form in business environments, but should be taken into account as nonverbal signals are an important component of verbal interactions.
Visual strategy incorporates primarily visual content, i.e. various illustrations, slides, infographics, videos, and photos used to draw your colleagues' attention to your speech.
There are different strategies you can implement to empower communication for both remote and in-house teams. Follow these steps to foster collaboration and build healthy relationships between your employees.
Engagement is one of the most essential aspects of staff management, as well as a catalyst for company growth and development. Sometimes it can drop when employees are overlooked during group discussions, which makes them feel a bit left out. Therefore, try to run regular brainstorming sessions and weekly meetings, where each team member can share thoughts and ideas, thus feeling an essential part of the working process. It is also important to encourage active discussions between employees so that everyone feels a positive contribution to the common cause.
Sometimes employees may have sensitive issues that require careful handling by their managers. In such situations, one-on-one conversation is the best way to avoid misunderstandings and contribute to creating a favorable psychological climate in the team.
When planning a private meeting, on the phone or via video chat, be prepared to talk openly and show that you value colleague’s time — check the calendar and specify the topic of upcoming sensitive dialogue in advance. In fact, face-to-face conversations are a unique opportunity for management and their staff members to communicate freely and lay the foundation for trusting relationships.
To build a strong teamwork, you need to create friendly relations between co-workers. When employees feel like family, they are more successful in achieving goals, which is facilitated by an atmosphere of mutual assistance and understanding.
This is where team billing can help, which involves interaction of colleagues through various activities both inside and outside the office, such as celebrating birthdays and corporate holidays, quests and hikes, outdoor sports games, etc. During these events, employees also have the opportunity to communicate with top-level management, thereby breaking down hierarchical barriers.
Feedback from management motivates employees to work better and achieve goals with more enthusiasm. Thus, it is important to track not only the overall statistics of the company's progress, but also the dynamics of professional development of each team member. Reward your staff for their personal successes and praise them for a job well done, because everyone appreciates the recognition, regardless of the position held.
Everyone makes mistakes, even the top executives. For this reason, it's crucial for the company leaders to be open to feedback from the staff, and anonymous surveys or polls are a good way to get it.
This way you can better understand whether employees feel comfortable and what they lack. Remember that constructive criticism is important from both the management and the performer because it helps to rethink actions and deeds positively.
Whether your team works in the office or remotely, your mission is to create a secure unified communications space for seamless information sharing. You can do that by implementing a feature-rich video conferencing software that can keep your workflows productive.
For example, TrueConf UC platform can bring your staff together in a powerful collaborative environment, where teammates can:
Holding intra-corporate communications effectively may seem simple at first glance, but this aspect is actually much more complicated. The thing is that people perceive the world differently and have certain life experiences behind them that affect the way they communicate. Therefore, it is recommended to use the above strategies to avoid misunderstandings and provide rich opportunities for healthy interactions within your team, thus boosting workflow productivity and business profitability.
