Improving Employee Communication

Internal communications includes all communication within a business. It could be oral or written, face to face or virtual, one-on-one or in groups. Today there are a plethora of techniques and technologies used to communicate, both up/down and side-to-side within an organization.

Whereas the ‘top-down’, employer-driven communication is great for setting a communication agenda or discussion point, it is the peer-to-peer employee communications that often determines the tone of the business. As you may have experienced in the past, employees are given a message and then informally discuss with each other their views and opinions, out of earshot of ‘the boss’. Smart organizations recognise that employees will always talk with each other, so it is better to set the agenda and informal discussion points than have them dictated by uninformed staff.

A large number of studies by both management groups and communications bodies consistently finds that ‘communicating with employees’ is a useful and powerful way of engendering greater ‘engagement’ – the propensity of the employee to want to come to work and want to contribute to the success of the company.

Some employee consultants argue that engagement is at a lower level now than 20 years ago (mostly due to the changes in job security, the shifting demographics of the workforce and the more fluid requirements of businesses to be able to change to meet the demands of their rapidly changing marketplaces).

Smart businesses realize that in environments where employees are able to move from one employer to another with relative ease, it is in the company’s best interests to retain the smarter and more productive employees; doing all they can to communicate with them, inform them, influence them and enter into some sort of psychological contract with them is a wise move. Implementing these key principles can assist in this.

Equally, in environments where employees have less chance to move, smart employers recognise that an unhappy and trapped employee is a potential liability. The University of South Australia’s Centre for Human Resource Management has found that 31 per cent of organisational leavers are poached away. But of even greater concern is the finding that just under half of all employees who left their employer did so because of a bad experience, such as being passed over for promotion or because of ongoing unresolved issues.