HEADING: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY AT WORKPLACE?
You are at your workplace for an average of 8 hours to 9 hours. Working with different personalities in the same room for long hours every day, trying to meet deadlines, is a recipe for conflict. Your colleagues might be having the best intentions but at the end of the day, minor issues become major. The conflict could be overwork assignments, appraisals, promotions or minor problems like jamming the printer. It is always important to have an open communication line amongst colleagues and the workforce.
Small conflicts need to be addressed at the earliest to prevent it from exploding into a major crisis. It is the responsibility of the leaders to create a healthy and conducive environment and ensure that the decorum of the workplace is always maintained.
In autopia where the workplace is full of positivity, is stress-free and happy and workforce are full of enthusiasm and good spirits. This world would be productive and successful. People would be inspired and motivated. Creativity and innovations would be a natural outcome of clear and calm minds.
Can we really have all this or it’s an imaginary world? Everything is a possibility with a little planning and imagination. The keyword is communication with wit and humour. Laughter creates a bond and is like a magnet. It brings people together and forms long-lasting teams. Creative inflows are possible, and productivity is a natural outflow.
Some ways to be an effective organization in the parameters of communication are:
- Develop a communication strategy with the Leaders/Managers having excellent skills in developing a rapport with all employees and be non-judgemental. The environment of confidentiality must be created where any issue is sorted with compassion and maturity. Employees should feel free to vent their frustrations and have open conversations.
- Where the message or communication is to be sent on a wider platform, use email, newsletter, bulletin boards, business website, social media, staff meetings, text messaging, or video conferencing.
- Intra communication amongst colleagues can be conducted once a month when all issues and grievances are addressed. It can be like a social gathering over food and drinks, where fun activities are also included.
- There should be a feedback platform where ideas, brainstorming sessions are conducted to make it an interactive session instead of one-way communication. This can be during staff meetings or an internal office online platform.
- For an organization, it’s important to keep the workforce in a loop about the developments and changes. Keep communicating with the staff, it gives them a sense of purpose and belonging.
- Use humour in your communication. It makes the whole process interesting and involves your attention. Humour can be used to get a negative message across in an inoffensive way.
- Once a mistake is made, it is important to acknowledge the error and move on. Be Always prepared to accept your mistake and not pass on the blame. It will ensure respect for you and will win confidence amongst your peers.
- It is important to have face time with the employees on a regular basis. The meeting can be weekly or monthly and all employees should have their inputs heard on various aspects of the business organization. Internal communication would be improved and would be beneficial for the entire organization.
- When an organization inducts new employees, it is difficult to adjust to the environment and work culture. The organization requires new and informative training programmes and induction courses. The programmes should be so conceived to be informative about the work, organization and recreational exercises to enable the new HR to adapt and communicate with their prospective Managerial team and colleagues.
- In an organization, the main obstacle is the line of communication between the employees and managers/CEO. They are not comfortable in approaching the boss, which results in anxiety and concerns. This may lead to many innovative ideas being lost and may in-turn be a major loss to the organization. Always have an open-door policy where the employees can comfortably approach you with their ideas, opinions, and concepts. This would be greatly beneficial in having a comfortable ambience to your office space.
- One of the most powerful and effective media of communication is social media. It has proven itself as a strong and formidable tool for businesses to communicate with employees and customers. It can be beneficial and effective for improving workplace communication. Meaningful, useful comments and information can be shared and liked by the employees.
- Each organization has a set of common goals that revolve around the core values and ethos of the business. All employees are required to be well versed with the value system of their organization and identify themselves with the company’s targets and goals. Having communication in verbal or visual form can be beneficial in the long run for all concerned.
- Offices that function from physical spaces are many times hindered by the layout of the place. If there are cabins, cubicles and closed work areas, communication can be hindered and cut off. It’s important to have an open layout and fluid workspaces to enable free-flowing conversation and communication. Isolation of employees should be avoided and the boss needs to move amongst the general work area for continuous flow of ideas and communication.
- It can be very exhausting to work long hours with the same monotony of work. You need to recharge otherwise communication can become difficult. For revitalization and rejuvenate your senses it’s important to give employees some space and liberty. This can involve some extra lunchtime, an outdoor official stay caution, hiking, team-building exercise etc. for better results and performance, the opportunity needs to be given for the rebooting.
In conclusion, we can safely state that improving workplace communication within your organization is an ongoing process and it consumes time. Once you have the correct approach to handle the various facets of the communication module in place, it can be easier to bring it into existence in real-time and see the positive results in your business growth.