How to Avoid Communication Breakdown

Life moves fast inside the walls of an organization trying to grow and stay afloat. Each day presents with it new challenges to face and obstacles to overcome. The daily grind forces us to focus on what is directly in front of us at all times. At the beginning, you might be a small, lean team doing whatever it takes to keep the lights on. If you are lucky, you begin to turn a profit, hire more staff, and keep grinding away, building and scaling your business.

Moving fast, while often necessary, can leave unresolved issues in its wake. When you are operating a culture that encourages quick decisions, employees often put Band-Aids on issues and never have the time to go back and actually solve them. This may include processes or procedures when dealing with customers, billing, order processing or other integral parts of your business. They may also take the form of internal disputes, how your employees feel towards their treatment, or how they feel about the ways things are done.

On their own, they may seem like isolated, even relatively insignificant, incidents. However, these types of things can and will build up over time. Communication breakdown does not happen overnight. It slowly builds in the background of whatever you are doing each day. The only way to prevent it is to understand what it is and how it takes shape. If your organization has been up and running for a while now, you may be forced to move from prevention tactics to a full out research and repair assault.

 

What Does It Look Like?

Communication breakdown can take on many forms. The most common type occurs when lower-level employees are disconnected from upper management. Executives and managers are making decisions that are not being properly relayed to the rest of the company. Then, when an employee tells a client something that is no longer true or completes a task incorrectly, they become increasingly frustrated. This is because the issue at hand could have been avoided.

It’s vital to have a strong communication process in place. Every time a decision is made that will impact the way your employees operate, you must ensure that everyone will be notified. This starts by instructing the people in that meeting to relay this information to their direct reports and instructing them to do the same until it reaches all levels of the organization. If the decision made is a complex one, be sure to create an FAQ sheet and encourage questions.

 

It Starts With Culture

When it comes to building strong bonds of communication, it starts with your company culture. The people that work for you must feel like their workspace is a safe space to voice their questions and concerns. You may think this is obvious, but it is not. Many of your people might have come from organizations that discipline employees who speak out about the shortcomings of the company. It is your job to make sure they know this is not the case at your company.

It all starts during the onboarding process. Make sure that your managers make it a point to inform their new hires that questions and suggestions are welcome and expected. If you implement an idea or a suggestion from an employee, be sure to congratulate them in front of the entire company. This sends a powerful signal that this type of behavior is accepted and encouraged. Lastly, it is up to your managers to monitor the overall morale of their teams and call out any possible lingering issues.

 

Weekly Communication

As we mentioned in our opener, things move fast at work. This is why weekly status update meetings are crucial to keep the lines of communication open. Start with weekly team meetings where each member is required to provide status updates and state if they need something from another team member. This is also the time to voice any questions or concerns employees may have about the way things are carried out internally.

Some employees may not feel comfortable voicing their concerns or ideas in a group session out of fear of offending a team member. They may also want to bounce the idea off their manager first before presenting it to a larger audience. Each manager should have a weekly one-on-one session with each direct report. This is where they can discuss individual progress, room for improvement, and provide a safe space for open communication.

 

Quarterly All-Hands

Employees do not want to work for executives who sit on a different floor and are hardly ever seen. They want to know you are in this endeavor with them and are listening to what they have to say. Also, if you are passionate about the future of the company, you want your teams to see and feel that passion along with you. While communicating with managers is a great start, you must also communicate with your organization directly as well.

An “All-Hands” meeting is a quarterly event where the executive team of a company hosts a meeting for the entire company. During this meeting, each executive presents a detailed company update and roadmap for the future. This is also the place to present company awards and congratulate specific team members on a job well done. You may also ask your managers to nominate one person from each team to be recognized for their outstanding work.

 

The Suggestion Box

The idea of a suggestion box is simple enough. It’s a place for people to anonymously submit their suggestions for consideration. In a workplace, it’s a tool to gauge how people are really feeling about important issues that impact the entire company. Since they will not be identified as submission is anonymous, employees can open up and provide truthful feedback about how the company is operating and where they feel it is going.

Your suggestion box must have a few guidelines for everyone to follow. First, participants should avoid naming specific individuals. Those types of issues should be directed towards HR. Also, each issue should be accompanied with a proposed solution whenever possible. Lastly, each submission should include specific examples of how this suggestion will improve the company.

 

Conclusion

Strong team communication is the foundation of a successful and thriving organization. It takes hard work and consistent management to make it a reality. The key is to create and promote a culture that encourages suggestions and ideas. Then, back that up with providing various ways to communicate those thoughts throughout the company. By doing this, you will create a workspace where top talent will want to work for years to come.

 

Let’s Talk

Implementing these practices requires the right talent. We here at The HR Agent are dedicated to matching the right people to the right jobs at the right time.

We would love to talk about making this a reality for your company. To claim your FREE introductory call, please e-mail us at connect@thehragent.com.

 

#Communication #Team building #Productivity