Are you having trouble accomplishing work in your office? Is it hard to work with your employees? Are you failing to meet deadlines? If you said yes to all these, don’t fret. These are natural problems that occur in the workplace.
What matters is how you deal with it. Most businesses are unable to solve the problem because they don’t get down and dirty to figure out the root cause. More often than not, the culprit of the problem is a poor communications process.
Effective communications are crucial in achieving corporate goals. It enables you and your team to work efficiently and productively. Without it, you simply won’t be able to get things done properly.
If you’re having trouble accomplishing work and meeting deadlines in your office, then you might want to take a second look at your communications processes. Here’s how to improve communication in the workplace.
Encourage communication
Probably, the reason why your employees are not communicating with you is that they don’t know if they can. So it’s up to you to set an example. Take the first move by speaking to your team members. Encourage them to speak up as well.
Keep your door open. Let your employees know that you’re there for them to talk to and that you’re willing to listen to their feedback or opinions. Be careful about giving an unapproachable impression. That will just hinder the effective communication process you’re trying to achieve.
Keep constant communication
Because everyone is busy with their own thing, it’s easy to neglect monthly meetings or one-on-one sessions. The tendency is that meetings become too seldom that it’s not healthy for the company.
Despite the workload, you and your employees have to take the time to meet. Make your annual meetings monthly. Talk more often to keep on tabs with what’s happening around different departments, what goals are being achieved, and what concerns need to be resolved.
But meetings don’t have to be all about work. Use the time to talk casually with your employees as well. Get to know them, how they’re feeling, and ensure that they’re in their optimal health and wellbeing.
Use a communications platform
If an employee needs to give an update about a project but has to walk long halls and pass through countless offices to get to you, there’s a chance they’ll just decide not to take the trip. As a boss, you probably have the same pains. It’s understandably a hassle to walk to different departments to get tabs on what’s going on.
Nowadays, everything is going digital. So you have to take advantage of that. Set up a communications platform, look into VOIP solutions for your business, or simply create a chat group with all your employees in it. That way, they can send updates and raise concerns simply by picking up their phones.
Not only will this make your communications process more constant, but it will also save you a lot of time and energy.
Ask for feedback
The truth of the matter is that you really won’t be able to spot the problem yourself. You need the people from the other end of the spectrum to help you pinpoint them. They’re the ones directly affected by the processes and procedures of the company, so their opinions count.
Encourage your employees to give their feedback and suggestions regarding different areas of operations. Some might be too shy to voice out their concerns, so maybe you can make the feedback process anonymous.
Most importantly, be sure to consider these inputs. They’re very valuable information that will help you identify your points for improvement.
If you narrow down all the problems you’re encountering in your workplace, you’ll find that most of them boil down to how effective your communication process is. Make sure you make efforts to have good communication with all your employees to make your operations more efficient and productive.
