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While you may be patting yourself on the back for your communication skills in the workplace, your employees might think otherwise: a Gallup poll showed that 87% of employees don’t think their leaders communicate effectively. Let’s dive deeper into why communication is important in the workplace and how you can uplevel your communication skills!
\n","post_body":"While you may be patting yourself on the back for your communication skills in the workplace, your employees might think otherwise: a Gallup poll showed that 87% of employees don’t think their leaders communicate effectively. Let’s dive deeper into why communication is important in the workplace and how you can uplevel your communication skills!
\nWhy you should prioritize communication
\nMost people don’t know they have a communication problem until it’s too late. Think low employee engagement, poor performance, and even voluntary churn that feels out of the blue.
\nIn a 2018 Economist survey, a significant number of employees said that poor communication was responsible for escalating stress, making it harder to meet deadlines, decreasing morale, and delaying performance goals.
\nWhen you prioritize communication and are intentional with your communication goals, you can avoid these pitfalls. Employee churn is expensive — and almost completely avoidable.
\nBenefits of great communication
\nGreat communication skills will help you do more than avoid bad outcomes. They will actually help your business become a stronger, more mature organization.
\nEmployee engagement
\nHow does communication strategy boost morale in the workplace? Retaining key employees is a boon to operational maturity, and much harder to accomplish with poor communication. In fact, low retention at a business can be attributed to ineffective communication almost 30% of the time!
\nMore alignment
\nGreat communication in the workplace yields faster decision-making and less confusion on priorities, because you and your team stay aligned instead of in the dark.
\nBetter accountability
\nBeing strategic about your workplace communication helps build a culture of clear expectations. Intentional communication also helps build audit trails so there are fewer surprises for both you and your reports.
\nBoost your bottom line
\nGreat communication does more for your business than boost morale; it boosts your bottom line. Gallup showed that when workers who felt engaged and happy with their jobs, their business made 23% more profits.
\nMain reasons for communication in the workplace
\nWhen creating strategy and processes around workplace communication, it’s good to be discerning. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) communicate all things with all people at all times.
\nTo begin your communication, first figure out the “why” of what you’re sharing. It could fall into any of the following categories:
\n- \n
- Inform. This type of communication is usually transactional information that doesn’t need a lot of follow-up, like a % price increase that’s already been decided or a spontaneous 3-day weekend for all employees. \n
- Inspire. You should always keep an eye out for ways to communicate inspiration to your team. Maybe it’s stellar feedback from a client or a story about how one of your team members excelled on a project. This helps boost employee motivation, bigtime! \n
- Teach. This type of communication helps drive employee development, engagement, and operational maturity. Think trainings, policies, or playbooks that help give structure to how you operate. \n
- Drive action. Whenever you kickstart a company-wide initiative or request a change in how people work, you need to find the best way to communicate the reason for the action and the desired outcome. \n
- Make decisions. Communication is a key component of decision-making. Whether you use a framework like SWOT or approach your decision in another way, it’s important to make sure you’re communicating with the right people about the decision before it happens to minimize friction. \n
- Collaborate. While you want to avoid groupthink at all costs, sometimes putting a group of your best and brightest together on a tiger team or a project can lead to better outcomes. Great communication during a collaboration will help the initiative move along smoothly. \n
Main types of communication in the workplace
\nThe second piece of any workplace communication is “how” you say it. WIth all of the communication tools available to us today, it’s important to choose the best medium for the message you’re sharing.
\nSynchronous communication in the workplace
\nWhile much hay has been made about “conversations around the watercooler,” we really should think mostly about the intentional communication methods we lean on at work. Spontaneous chit chat can be good for employee morale, but it also has a downside— it’s not documented or directed, which is what we want most professional communication to be.
\nWhen communicating at work in real-time, be just as intentional as when you’re using asynchronous methods. Here are some tips for each kind of synchronous workplace communication.
\nCommunicating via planned meetings
\nWe have written a lot about meetings. It makes sense, since Strety’s meeting agendas are one of our most popular tools — we think a lot about how to make meetings better!
\nMeetings often get a bad rap as time-wasting exercises in futility. When you approach them with intention, they can be productive and even fun! Quick tips for great meetings: have an agenda, stick to the agreed-upon time, and document, document, document.
\nCommunicating via spontaneous chats/calls
\nWhile we generally prefer to have important communication in meetings that are agenda-driven and documented, sometimes you need to have a quick chat to bust through a blocker. If you’re reaching out to someone for spontaneous but important communication, try to stick to meeting “rules” — make sure all parties know the goal of the communication and the next steps when you sign off.
\nAsynchronous
\nAs a remote, distributed team, we’re big fans of asynchronous communication. It helps make sure we connect every day, even when we’re across the world from each other. But asynchronous communication has also been crucial in our in-person work.
\nAsynchronous communication is great for ensuring documentation, transparency, and alignment. In Strety, we have multiple tools (both for your business operating system and beyond) that help promote and capture great asynchronous communication.
\nCommunication Tools in Strety
\nPlaybooks for when you want to inform
\nWe recently released Playbooks as a tool to help you document processes, policies, and other important company information. You can use Playbooks for things like onboarding a new employee, describing a project or process, or sharing information like company holidays. You can assign people to a Playbook, which automatically generates a To Do for them to read and acknowledge the Playbook, promoting accountability and making sure important information doesn’t slip through the cracks.
\nMessages for ongoing updates
\nIn each space in Strety (company, team, and individual level), you can turn on the Messages tool. This is a good tool to use for ongoing communication about possible upcoming changes or initiatives. You can include text, images, videos, and attach files to messages and comments on messages to communicate the way that works best for your team.
\nCompany Vision to align and inspire
\nYou can use the Company Vision tool in Strety to store information that helps make sure everyone from the CEO to the frontline employee is on the same page. The Company Vision tool includes your organization’s values, long term goals (which can be connected to shorter term Rocks), and high level strategy.
\nIssues to discuss and resolve
\nIssues in Strety are two-fold; you can discuss them in real-time during a meeting, or cover them asynchronously through subscribers and comments. They can be categorized by priority, whether they’re long-term or short-term, and connected to other tools in Strety like Rocks or To Dos.
\nOrg Chart to clarify roles and teams
\nA good, detailed org chart helps everyone in your company get a sense of where their role fits into the bigger picture. Strety’s Org Chart tool has space on each role for comments/conversation, the ability to categorize as filled, needs hire, or needs more resources, and one-click Issue creation if you want to have a more in-depth conversation.
\nGoal, metric, and project management tools in Strety
\nYou can use a Rock in Strety as a goal or a way to organize a project. Scorecards in Strety make sure people are staying accountable to their metrics. To Dos in Strety help you keep track of tasks and can be organized in To Do Lists and integrated with project management tools like Monday.com, Asana, Trello, Microsoft Planner, and Google Tasks. By tracking your most important business operating tools in a single integrated platform with customized subscribers and notifications, you’ll be performing consistent asynchronous communication that promote visibility, transparency, and accountability.
\nEmails
\nLast on the list for a reason! It is so easy for important information to get lost in emails. It’s a common way to communicate with people external to your organization, but we recommend avoiding email whenever possible and sticking with more reliable communication methods instead.
\nTips for effective communication
\nNow that you have a handle on the hows, whys, and wherefores of workplace communication, it’s time to put it into practice! Here are some of our favorite tips to being an expert communicator.
\n1. Prioritize regular communication.
\nWhether we’re talking about quarterly planning meetings, weekly team meetings, or one-on-ones, make your meetings matter! They should be prioritized and only canceled or moved for good reason.
\n2. Match the medium and the message.
\nIf there’s company news that will have an enormous impact on people’s jobs, be considerate about the best way to share the news. Dropping it in a #general Slack channel without context or conversation will likely lead to chaos. Consider moving the news to meetings, with follow-ups via Messages in Strety.
\n3. Encourage feedback, even if it’s not a 2-way discussion.
\nEncouraging feedback is a hallmark of a great communication culture. It’s a very rare (and maybe even nonexistent) piece of communication that should broker absolutely no feedback! If people want to give their two cents about something, make sure there is an appropriate space for them to do so.
\n4. Consider individual communication styles in the workplace.
\nCommunication styles are usually categorized in one of four ways: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. While you will encounter all four styles in most workplaces, we think that the assertive style is best. If you embody the assertive communication style, you can build a culture where people lean more on clarity.
\n5. Document as much as makes sense
\nWe’re big fans of documentation! Documenting your communication helps eliminate confusion, catches people up on what they may have missed, and creates a clear trail to see what happened.
\n6. Designate a communication headquarters
\nWe’re not saying you have to use Strety as your communication headquarters… but we do have all the tools you need to keep your business operating system running and your workplace communication humming. Just saying!
\nIf you want to test drive Strety’s tools for yourself, go here to start a free trial. To speak to one of our experts about exactly how Strety can help your business become a better place to work, book some time here.
","rss_summary":"While you may be patting yourself on the back for your communication skills in the workplace, your employees might think otherwise: a Gallup poll showed that 87% of employees don’t think their leaders communicate effectively. Let’s dive deeper into why communication is important in the workplace and how you can uplevel your communication skills!
\n","rss_body":"While you may be patting yourself on the back for your communication skills in the workplace, your employees might think otherwise: a Gallup poll showed that 87% of employees don’t think their leaders communicate effectively. Let’s dive deeper into why communication is important in the workplace and how you can uplevel your communication skills!
\nWhy you should prioritize communication
\nMost people don’t know they have a communication problem until it’s too late. Think low employee engagement, poor performance, and even voluntary churn that feels out of the blue.
\nIn a 2018 Economist survey, a significant number of employees said that poor communication was responsible for escalating stress, making it harder to meet deadlines, decreasing morale, and delaying performance goals.
\nWhen you prioritize communication and are intentional with your communication goals, you can avoid these pitfalls. Employee churn is expensive — and almost completely avoidable.
\nBenefits of great communication
\nGreat communication skills will help you do more than avoid bad outcomes. They will actually help your business become a stronger, more mature organization.
\nEmployee engagement
\nHow does communication strategy boost morale in the workplace? Retaining key employees is a boon to operational maturity, and much harder to accomplish with poor communication. In fact, low retention at a business can be attributed to ineffective communication almost 30% of the time!
\nMore alignment
\nGreat communication in the workplace yields faster decision-making and less confusion on priorities, because you and your team stay aligned instead of in the dark.
\nBetter accountability
\nBeing strategic about your workplace communication helps build a culture of clear expectations. Intentional communication also helps build audit trails so there are fewer surprises for both you and your reports.
\nBoost your bottom line
\nGreat communication does more for your business than boost morale; it boosts your bottom line. Gallup showed that when workers who felt engaged and happy with their jobs, their business made 23% more profits.
\nMain reasons for communication in the workplace
\nWhen creating strategy and processes around workplace communication, it’s good to be discerning. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) communicate all things with all people at all times.
\nTo begin your communication, first figure out the “why” of what you’re sharing. It could fall into any of the following categories:
\n- \n
- Inform. This type of communication is usually transactional information that doesn’t need a lot of follow-up, like a % price increase that’s already been decided or a spontaneous 3-day weekend for all employees. \n
- Inspire. You should always keep an eye out for ways to communicate inspiration to your team. Maybe it’s stellar feedback from a client or a story about how one of your team members excelled on a project. This helps boost employee motivation, bigtime! \n
- Teach. This type of communication helps drive employee development, engagement, and operational maturity. Think trainings, policies, or playbooks that help give structure to how you operate. \n
- Drive action. Whenever you kickstart a company-wide initiative or request a change in how people work, you need to find the best way to communicate the reason for the action and the desired outcome. \n
- Make decisions. Communication is a key component of decision-making. Whether you use a framework like SWOT or approach your decision in another way, it’s important to make sure you’re communicating with the right people about the decision before it happens to minimize friction. \n
- Collaborate. While you want to avoid groupthink at all costs, sometimes putting a group of your best and brightest together on a tiger team or a project can lead to better outcomes. Great communication during a collaboration will help the initiative move along smoothly. \n
Main types of communication in the workplace
\nThe second piece of any workplace communication is “how” you say it. WIth all of the communication tools available to us today, it’s important to choose the best medium for the message you’re sharing.
\nSynchronous communication in the workplace
\nWhile much hay has been made about “conversations around the watercooler,” we really should think mostly about the intentional communication methods we lean on at work. Spontaneous chit chat can be good for employee morale, but it also has a downside— it’s not documented or directed, which is what we want most professional communication to be.
\nWhen communicating at work in real-time, be just as intentional as when you’re using asynchronous methods. Here are some tips for each kind of synchronous workplace communication.
\nCommunicating via planned meetings
\nWe have written a lot about meetings. It makes sense, since Strety’s meeting agendas are one of our most popular tools — we think a lot about how to make meetings better!
\nMeetings often get a bad rap as time-wasting exercises in futility. When you approach them with intention, they can be productive and even fun! Quick tips for great meetings: have an agenda, stick to the agreed-upon time, and document, document, document.
\nCommunicating via spontaneous chats/calls
\nWhile we generally prefer to have important communication in meetings that are agenda-driven and documented, sometimes you need to have a quick chat to bust through a blocker. If you’re reaching out to someone for spontaneous but important communication, try to stick to meeting “rules” — make sure all parties know the goal of the communication and the next steps when you sign off.
\nAsynchronous
\nAs a remote, distributed team, we’re big fans of asynchronous communication. It helps make sure we connect every day, even when we’re across the world from each other. But asynchronous communication has also been crucial in our in-person work.
\nAsynchronous communication is great for ensuring documentation, transparency, and alignment. In Strety, we have multiple tools (both for your business operating system and beyond) that help promote and capture great asynchronous communication.
\nCommunication Tools in Strety
\nPlaybooks for when you want to inform
\nWe recently released Playbooks as a tool to help you document processes, policies, and other important company information. You can use Playbooks for things like onboarding a new employee, describing a project or process, or sharing information like company holidays. You can assign people to a Playbook, which automatically generates a To Do for them to read and acknowledge the Playbook, promoting accountability and making sure important information doesn’t slip through the cracks.
\nMessages for ongoing updates
\nIn each space in Strety (company, team, and individual level), you can turn on the Messages tool. This is a good tool to use for ongoing communication about possible upcoming changes or initiatives. You can include text, images, videos, and attach files to messages and comments on messages to communicate the way that works best for your team.
\nCompany Vision to align and inspire
\nYou can use the Company Vision tool in Strety to store information that helps make sure everyone from the CEO to the frontline employee is on the same page. The Company Vision tool includes your organization’s values, long term goals (which can be connected to shorter term Rocks), and high level strategy.
\nIssues to discuss and resolve
\nIssues in Strety are two-fold; you can discuss them in real-time during a meeting, or cover them asynchronously through subscribers and comments. They can be categorized by priority, whether they’re long-term or short-term, and connected to other tools in Strety like Rocks or To Dos.
\nOrg Chart to clarify roles and teams
\nA good, detailed org chart helps everyone in your company get a sense of where their role fits into the bigger picture. Strety’s Org Chart tool has space on each role for comments/conversation, the ability to categorize as filled, needs hire, or needs more resources, and one-click Issue creation if you want to have a more in-depth conversation.
\nGoal, metric, and project management tools in Strety
\nYou can use a Rock in Strety as a goal or a way to organize a project. Scorecards in Strety make sure people are staying accountable to their metrics. To Dos in Strety help you keep track of tasks and can be organized in To Do Lists and integrated with project management tools like Monday.com, Asana, Trello, Microsoft Planner, and Google Tasks. By tracking your most important business operating tools in a single integrated platform with customized subscribers and notifications, you’ll be performing consistent asynchronous communication that promote visibility, transparency, and accountability.
\nEmails
\nLast on the list for a reason! It is so easy for important information to get lost in emails. It’s a common way to communicate with people external to your organization, but we recommend avoiding email whenever possible and sticking with more reliable communication methods instead.
\nTips for effective communication
\nNow that you have a handle on the hows, whys, and wherefores of workplace communication, it’s time to put it into practice! Here are some of our favorite tips to being an expert communicator.
\n1. Prioritize regular communication.
\nWhether we’re talking about quarterly planning meetings, weekly team meetings, or one-on-ones, make your meetings matter! They should be prioritized and only canceled or moved for good reason.
\n2. Match the medium and the message.
\nIf there’s company news that will have an enormous impact on people’s jobs, be considerate about the best way to share the news. Dropping it in a #general Slack channel without context or conversation will likely lead to chaos. Consider moving the news to meetings, with follow-ups via Messages in Strety.
\n3. Encourage feedback, even if it’s not a 2-way discussion.
\nEncouraging feedback is a hallmark of a great communication culture. It’s a very rare (and maybe even nonexistent) piece of communication that should broker absolutely no feedback! If people want to give their two cents about something, make sure there is an appropriate space for them to do so.
\n4. Consider individual communication styles in the workplace.
\nCommunication styles are usually categorized in one of four ways: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. While you will encounter all four styles in most workplaces, we think that the assertive style is best. If you embody the assertive communication style, you can build a culture where people lean more on clarity.
\n5. Document as much as makes sense
\nWe’re big fans of documentation! Documenting your communication helps eliminate confusion, catches people up on what they may have missed, and creates a clear trail to see what happened.
\n6. Designate a communication headquarters
\nWe’re not saying you have to use Strety as your communication headquarters… but we do have all the tools you need to keep your business operating system running and your workplace communication humming. Just saying!
\nIf you want to test drive Strety’s tools for yourself, go here to start a free trial. To speak to one of our experts about exactly how Strety can help your business become a better place to work, book some time here.
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