Improving Communication in the Workplace

Improving Communication in the Workplace

Over the course of a busy day, it can be tough to block out time to interact with your team. One day leads to the next and soon, you're completely out of touch with what your employees are thinking and feeling.

But communication is essential to a healthy work environment. Not only can poor communication hurt morale and slow productivity to a crawl, but it also means you don't know what's going on. You may not realize that employees are unhappy until they walk out the door. Worse, your customers may become aware of issues before you do.

So how do you improve communication? Here are a few tips that can help.

Schedule One-on-Ones

Meetings and memos tell you nothing about individual employees. Make a habit of having one-on-one conversations with every single employee on your team. Even if it's a short, half-hour conversation once every week or two, your employees will likely enjoy knowing that you're interested in what they have to say.

Practice Active Listening

It isn't enough to interact with your employees. You need to actually listen to what they have to say. Active listening is about going beyond staying silent while the other person talks. With active listening, you make it clear you're hearing and processing what is being said. Make sure your responses build upon what the other person just said. Example: "So you're saying you're unhappy with the current noise level in your office?"

Request Anonymous Feedback

Your employees likely have plenty of useful information, but they fear speaking up. Will complaining about current conditions have repercussions? Set up a way for employees to submit anonymous feedback whenever they want. You can do this through a Google form on your intranet, a survey app, or old-fashioned paper note boxes.

Use Virtual Communication Tools

Even if your entire team works in one place, face-to-face interaction may not always be possible. Tools like Slack and Trello encourage communication between team members throughout the day. You can also use video chat to stay in touch when you can't all be in the same room. The best part of these tools is that they loop in remote team members who might otherwise feel left out.

Express Pros specializes in recruiting and placing employees in a variety of industries. With offices across the U.S., we can help you find employees who are the perfect fit for your work culture. Give us a call at (615) 441-8898 to find out how we can help you build a winning team.