How to overcome poor communication in the workplace

The role of an internal communication professional has changed. Communicating with employees for the purpose of releasing big news or changes is not enough. This closed approach to internal communication is likely to disengage employees and cause your internal communication strategy to subside. In this blog we outline the 5 most common problems and provide guidance on how to overcome poor communication.

Non-Desk Employees

Not everyone works at a desk with access to company email or intranet. This creates a big logistical challenge but it’s vital you find a way around it if you are to overcome poor communication within your organisation.

Not having an internal comms app that every employee, contractor and stakeholder can access can hurt your relationships with your non-desk / remote workforce. Remote working is growing rapidly and internal communication professionals need to have a plan on how to keep them informed and engaged.

Time and effort goes into producing content for your workforce only for it to be inaccessible to Non-Desk Employees. 84% of Non-Desk Employees feel they do not receive enough support and communication to do their job.

Time Consuming

Updating multiple platforms & lack of collaboration is another hurdle many businesses need to overcome.

Creating engaging content is difficult enough, then you have to replicate it across email, intranet , staff noticeboards and social media.

In today’s fluid business world, internal communication professionals need to ensure much better cross department communication takes place. This ensures an even spread of content workload, fresh and interesting articles for your workforce and ultimately – far more engaged employees.

Customer facing teams like, marketing, sales, development and account management cannot work separately. In order to be successful, they need to communicate effectively on a regular basis.

The most effective way to do this will be with an internal comms app that all authors can access. With a single platform central to everything all your communicators do, you will ensure everyone sings from the same hymn sheet.

Low Engagement

Little or no feedback on company news.

29% of employees say their organisation’s current method of internal communication isn’t working. They feel disengaged and out of the loop.

Good employee engagement is a top contributing factor to high-performance growth culture business and an undeniable producer of productivity and payback.

Getting a better engagement rate requires three key values:

Employees want to be known and recognised as important individuals to the business.
They want to be valued. Employees want to know the company cares about them.
Empowerment. Some employees want increased responsibility, while others may want things like training and development.

Embracing a two-way engagement strategy to achieve a higher engagement rate and employee productivity with definitely help you overcome poor communication practices.

Email Fatigue

Overloaded employee inboxes are a common problem.

Email fatigue is a state that occurs when employees get tired of receiving email. They start to ignore messages, delete them, unsubscribe, or even worse – they send your emails to their spam folder.

Email fatigue is mostly the result of a company sending employees irrelevant emails or sending emails too frequently. Seeing gradual decrease in email engagement numbers like opens and clicks is a clear indicator of a tired and disengaged workforce.

An employee engagement app like VRAMP is designed so that the flow of information is faster, error free and more targeted with the use of feeds and teams. A solution such as this will not only help your overcome poor communication challenges, it will also help you attract a younger generation to work with you.

Useable Analytics

Looking for more than just open and click rates.

Feedback and analytics are key to any internal communication strategy. You need it to measure engagement and gauge opinion whilst your employees appreciate the fact their voice is heard.

The focus should really be on measuring the impact of your internal communications on employee engagement, motivation and productivity. You need to be on top of your employee advocacy. Engagement metrics go a long way to help build a suitable program for this and will help you both identify and overcome poor communication issues.

Darren Hepburn

Director

Bon Jovi loving, social media junkie and F1 fan. I spend most of my time thinking about the impact technology is having on our society and the world of internal communications. And my pug Winston…