Effective communication doesn’t only make the workplace feel better. It shows up in results as well! In fact, companies that have tactics in place to continuously improve strong communication skills at work are 50% more likely to report lower turnover levels compared to those that do not communicate effectively.
Hybrid and remote working models have necessitated the need for new communication models, which means that there’s no better time to focus on the communication efficacy within your workplace. From checking your body language to fostering deep connections with your team members and paying more attention to written communications, there are many ways to develop communication skills.
Miscommunication often leads to misunderstandings and frustrations, but to help combat these issues, we’re sharing 20 easy ways to improve communication skills within the office environment. These are tips that any organization can use to build strong communication skills within their workforce and improve overall relationships within teams.
But before we get there, the new post on our Day Translations blog explores the role that good communication skills play in the workplace, and the types of communication organizations need to focus on within the workplace.
The Importance of Communication in the Workplace
Great communication is the only way to ensure that everyone within the team understands what’s being expected of them. It keeps every team member working towards the company’s overall goals. But perhaps more importantly, it also builds trust and transforms the workplace into a more enjoyable space.
Whenever there’s a gap in workplace communication, it can lead to frustration, confusion, and lack of trust between key players within the organization. Absenteeism, increased staff turnover rates, and decreased customer satisfaction levels are some of the drawbacks of poor communication skills.
A group of people must be able to communicate effectively and work together to achieve a common goal. Collaboration strategies for the product team will help to elevate the performance.
Common Types of Workplace Communication
Strong communication skills don’t just revolve around personal conversations. In fact, there is a range of delivery methods that can be used to deliver clear and concise communication, and depending on the type of information being conveyed, you might need to deploy the use of various tools and skills to communicate. Nowadays, various online platforms offer different communication channels as a way of solving any communication issues.
Leadership Messages
Company leaders generally use one-way comms to their teams to update or inform them about changes within the organization. They often use their strong communication skills and body language to encourage and inspire commitment from their teams and focus more on the use of stories more than complex data.
Upward Communications
Memos, emails, reports, and slots in standing meetings are great ways for project managers to communicate with their other managers and leaders that aren’t in their line of command. In general, these types of communications are more formal.
Updates
By nature, updates are short, sweet, to the point, and brief. They’re used to summarize obstacles, risks, and wins within the organization and make use of visual trackers or dashboards to keep verbal and written communication down to a minimum. And when you deploy smart written communication skills when sending out updates, they can lay the foundation for fostering personal relationships, showcase great leadership skills, and drive workplace success.
Presentations
Harnessing the power of both spoken and nonverbal communication skills, presentations work well for large audiences where higher objectives need to be highlighted. They’re typically used to inform, influence, and persuade the audience, which is why they also tend to receive the lion’s share of attention.
Meetings
Meetings are, more often than not, grossly overused and the least understood method of communication in organizations. They should build team synergy and be used only to convey information that might potentially be misunderstood in other forms.
Informal Interactions
Informal interactions include the chats we use on a daily basis to gain more information, put in requests, and give (or receive) support and guidance. But aside from keeping the flow of work moving within a company, these workplace communication skills also foster social connections, build company culture, and help employees find common ground.
Why Communications in the Workplace Is Often Less Effective
Poor communication in the workplace inevitably leads to confusion and demotivated employees. Here’s a look at some of the reasons why internal comms aren’t always as effective as they could be:
- It’s Not Personalized – personalized, on-demand content is what modern employees expect in the workplace. And many organizations just don’t value the importance of this aspect. But language and cultural barriers can also play a role here, especially in our diverse modern workforce.
- There’s No Plan – If conversations are consistently incoherent, it’ll restrict your attempts to build connections.
- It’s Not Interactive – Great conversation is constantly in dialogue. But if you’re doing a lot of sending and little listening, you’re missing the whole point. Effective workplace communication is a give-and-take setup that requires speaking as well as listening to set the stage for good communication and a successful conversation.
- Bad Timing – when utilized accordingly, internal communication can be a strategic tool. But then it must be done frequently and with well-defined goals in mind. Only have meetings when they’re required, being careful not to overdo it.
The Drawbacks of Poor Communication
Poor communication always comes at a cost. And while the value of good collaboration skills might seem obvious, they aren’t always pervasive. This, in turn, poses a threat to your organization’s ability to operate profitably, execute on strategies, and be agile in the face of changing customer needs.
Did you know that a mere 17% of employees strongly agree that their company has an open communication policy? This is alarming and also doesn’t cause surprise to learn that up to 70% of all employees describe themselves as being disengaged at work.
Aside from lowering morale and career satisfaction among employees, here’s what else you risk if communications aren’t in shape in the workplace:
- Low employee engagement
- Reduced trust
- Lower profitability and wasted resources
- Reduced job satisfaction and increased frustration
- Missed opportunity and the inability to move quickly
- Misalignment
- Slow growth
- Reduced customer churn rates
How to Improve Communication Skills in the Workplace
Building strong communication skills within the workplace doesn’t have to seem like a daunting task. There are countless ways of achieving this objective, and none of them require countless hours (or financial resources) to implement. Here are 20 easy ways to get started!
1. Set the Foundation
Reports from the American Psychological Association indicate that up to a quarter of employees simply don’t trust their employers. Employees that trust their employer are more likely to come forward and communicate problems as soon as they occur. The best way to ensure the trust is to build rapport with employees right off the bat.
It’s important for employers to show genuine interest in their employees and empathize with them. This makes them more open to sharing problems and ideas since they trust you to stay level-headed while finding a solution to the problem.
2. Prioritize 1:1s
By setting up diarized 1:1 meetings with employees to touch base on recent challenges or concerns, they’ll be more willing to share details about the office’s inner workings, giving you better insights on how to work out the kinks in the flow.
1:1 sessions with managers to discuss workflow can also help managers gain better insights on how to tackle more significant problems as employees get to air their concerns without fearing that they’re bothering their superiors with requesting meetings. When you pay attention to individual team members, communicate regularly with them, and provide them with both constructive and positive feedback during these sessions, you’re effectively building workplace culture, and ultimately, the company’s success.
3. Set Up Weekly Team Meetings
While one-on-ones are great for understanding and addressing individual concerns, it’s equally important to ensure all your employees are aligned across the business. You can do this by integrating a shared employee communication app. Weekly team meetings are ideal for allowing each employee to share their weekly goals, highlight any roadblocks, and find out essential information on what other members of the team are working on. These efforts can help improve transparency, improve communication skills, and create more opportunities for collaboration.
Team meetings are also the perfect time for managers to announce new projects and programs. At the end of these meetings, take some time for Q&A so all employees can make themselves heard. Open communications promote psychological safety, which further positively impacts your company culture and the business as a whole.
4. Create a Safe Space for Strong Communication Skills
To create the sense of psychological safety mentioned in the previous point, you’ll need every team member to work together. Psychological safety is defined as the ability to show and employ yourself without fear or negative consequences of self-image, status, or career. And unless every employee feels safe to communicate on their terms, workplace communications will always lack value.
Essentially, the workplace environment needs to make people feel comfortable with expressing their ideas, voicing their concerns, and asking ‘silly’ questions. Instead of just playing along, employees are then able to say what they really mean.
5. Promote Active Listening
Communicating well with others is about so much more than just getting your own message across. Great communication is a two-way street, and if you’re not actively listening to what the other person is saying, it’ll be nearly impossible to end up on the same page.
Make sure you ask questions to gain clarity on issues. And give the other person your full attention. Don’t multitask during conversations or start conjuring up a response before the other person is done talking. It can be challenging to deploy active listening, but it’s definitely worthwhile.
6. Break the Culture of Jumping to Quick Assumptions
One of the biggest inhibitors to quality communication in the workplace is quickly formed assumptions based on missed signals. Not every employee that lags in an area where they were expected to excel are slackers that don’t care, and this is why it’s crucial to provide non-confrontational settings so you can dig into where the problems truly lie.
7. Explore and Work Around Individual Strengths and Weaknesses
Personality analysis tests, including Enneagram, Myers Briggs, and Strengths Finder, are just a handful of the tools you can deploy to help uncover the strengths and weaknesses of individual members of your teams. When there’s a deeper understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses, it’s much easier to improve communication skills in the workplace.
8. Don’t Rely Solely on Modern Tools
Chat and emails are functional and valuable up to a point. But if it’s getting too complicated to go back and forth on a computer, it’s perfectly fine to take the conversation off Slack use face-to-face comms instead. It’s a great way to simplify the task at hand and prevent any miscommunication like reluctance or sarcasm that wasn’t perceived in an intended way.
9. Stay Consistent with Expectations
It’s easy to check in with employees on a regular basis when things are slower around the office, but it’s even easier to forego this consistency when the pace starts picking up. Yet, it’s one of the best ways to maintain strong communication in the workplace. Your employees need to know when you expect to follow up about a project and what elements you wish to see in their work.
10. Encourage Constructive Feedback
Aggressive and tone-deaf feedback from managers can permanently wipe out trust and destroy lines of communication. But feedback doesn’t have to be this negative. In fact, constructive feedback is one of the best ways to ensure it’s perceived in the right light.
When offering constructive feedback, it’s essential to focus on the behavior you’re discussing, not the person’s character. Always give the person you’re addressing the opportunity to share their thoughts and contribute to the process to ensure the process is optimistic going forward.
11. Keep Workflows Transparent
Let’s suppose your team is collaborating on a large project. Does every member of the team know what the deadline of the project is and who is responsible for which parts of the project? Do they know when they’re expected to hand their part of the project over to another team member?
It’s super important to organize a clear walkthrough of your projects with a tool like Trello or even something simpler like Excel Spreadsheets. This will ensure that every member of the team is on the same page and doesn’t get frustrated by possible miscommunication.
12. Encourage Regular Feedback
Actively seeking out constructive feedback from your employees is just as important as offering it to help them advance in their careers. It’s also one of the best ways to improve communication skills. A good example might be to ask for (and provide) constructive criticism after one-on-ones.
Some feedback might be positive. Other parts of it might be more constructive. However, every piece of feedback is an opportunity to get to the heart of the challenge.
13. Create a Receptive Atmosphere
If you want to improve professional communication skills within your teams, you need to understand the importance of a receptive atmosphere. You can do this by showing genuine interest, giving good news with any bad news, creating room for growth, and reassuring employees that any feedback isn’t personal; it’s just business. Avoid communications that are overly intense since it could easily lead to the message being misunderstood or not retained.
14. Use Body Language to Get the Message Across
Body language is a critical aspect of workplace communication skills, and it’s the easiest way to ensure your message gets carried across effectively. Actively focus on your body language and the way you use it when talking to your team. Use your hands often and make hand motions and signals to establish the seriousness of your subject whenever you’re addressing your team.
15. Act Out the Message
There’s an old saying that says, “Tell me what you want me to do, and I might forget it. But do it in front of me, and I will never forget it.” Acting out a message is one of the most potent ways to communicate effectively with your employees. Let them witness precisely what it is you want them to do, set the example, and then let them copy that behavior.
16. Add a Little Humor to the Mix
Communications don’t always need to feel stiff and strenuous, and one of the best ways to get every team member a little more relaxed is to make use of some friendly jokes within your conversations. By adding humor, you can effectively douse any tension.
Whenever the atmosphere is intense and unfriendly, you can use a little humor to break the ice. Just remember that if you deploy jokes, don’t overdo it. You’re not a stand-up comedian; you’re just lightening the tone.
17. Make it Personal from Time to Time
Effective communication in the workplace is about more than just setting clear expectations. It’s also about forming genuine connections with people. Therefore, it’s essential to get to know your team beyond the business world. And it can really be something as simple as inquiring about their weekend or finding a common interest you share that you can talk about when the conversation isn’t necessarily related to a work-related issue. Personalizing interactions might not seem like the kind of soft skills you need to pay attention to, but it’s something that every good communicator must be able to do.
It’s also important to keep in mind that your remote employees might find it hard to make workplace connections. Digital communications are often limited to discussing projects or business targets. And it’s easy for employees to feel isolated and disconnected from their teams if they aren’t physically present in the office environment. This is why it’s important to get to know all your team members on a personal level, to help them feel like they belong and that they’re part of the group, regardless of where they are based.
18. Understand the Value of Communication Tools
Remote work and hybrid working models are probably here to stay for good, even in a post-pandemic world. And it’s likely that your employees won’t always be in the same place at the same time. Face-to-face conversations do feel more productive than Slack chats and video call sessions, but that doesn’t mean that remote employees should feel less important.
Phone conversations and messaging tools won’t become replacements for one-on-one meetings. Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t use them to your advantage. Many instant messaging tools enable employees to share voice chat on the fly. And this replicates, and in some instances, improves the shared workplace. Video conferencing apps like Zoom can provide much-needed visual support and nonverbal communication between employees, something many remote employees miss when working from home.
You could also use virtual phone number apps like OpenPhone to integrate all of your communication applications, such as Slack, text messaging systems, and video chat.
19. Harness the Power of Social Media
Social Media is a very powerful aid for business communications skills. Plus, it goes far beyond just your customers and prospects. It can also enhance internal collaboration and help employees build meaningful connections within the workplace, ultimately driving workplace success.
By having employees like, comment, and share posts about the company, you’re setting the stage to boost morale. Allow employees to share interests with each other and create meaningful, work-related conversations on social media in a bid to combine relationship-building with the goals and philosophies of your organization.
20. Consider Creating an Internal Language
A fun way to improve communication skills in the office is to create some sort of internal language. You can use acronyms or monikers to describe your company’s culture and principles. This is an idea that can add an element of fun to the workplace. And everybody wants and needs more of that. By using quirky language internally, you’ll keep things interesting throughout the workweek and subtly promote communications. This trick will also come in handy when choosing the right knowledge platform, like a corporate wiki.
The Benefits of Improving Communication Skills at Work
Deploying the 20 tips and tricks we’ve just mentioned to improve communication skills is actionable in any organization. These tactics will start fostering a sense of inclusiveness among employees. It’ll also encourage employees to want to work to improve the company as a whole, in whichever way they can, boosting workplace wellbeing and success.
When employees feel personally connected to their organization’s mission, they care more about more minor details like whether or not the brand has a reputation of being a great place to work because it directly affects their career success.
Here’s a look at the benefits your organization will reap when collaboration improves:
Improved Engagement
Better communication always results in greater employee engagement. And this is a crucial metric of productivity and employee retention. Better engagement reinforces the fact that your people are key players in the success of the brand. Plus, it showcases that you value their unique skills and experience.
Increased Productivity
When there’s effective communication in the workplace, employees know what their roles entail. They also have a better understanding of what you expect from them. This reduces thrash and miscues and boosts employee performance. You can also save time and resources and get more done while simultaneously decreasing stress among employees.
Reduced Churn
Experience always equals value when it comes to how your customers perceive your brand. And no brand wants to waste finances on constantly recruiting and training new employees because their employee retention levels are low. Employee satisfaction is directly related to communication skills. Wen this is on par, it adds value to the organization by reducing the turnover of skilled and seasoned employees.
Fewer Conflicts
Most workplace conflicts stem from miscommunication or a lack of strong communication skills. And aside from creating poor relationships, miscommunication can also create hostile work environments. When you build clear communication, you can help prevent misunderstandings between employees and their managers. By listening to employees, showing empathy, and considering individual differences in the office, it’s easy to implement this.
Greater Motivation
Whenever people struggle to understand the “why” of a concept, they’re far less likely to understand the idea as a whole and remember it. When managers deploy their communication skills and pay careful attention and pick up on cues employees give when they need to understand the “why,” it’s essential that they provide them with the “because” the employee needs hearing. This approach can help keep employees motivated and avoid resistance when it comes to implementing new policies throughout the organization.
It Takes Consistent Effort to Improve Professional Communication Skills
In general, we all have the basic communication skills required to converse well with our friends and family members. But it’s a task that doesn’t always come as naturally in the workplace. This is because effective communication boils down to creating the optimal environment where team members are comfortable enough to express their honest thoughts, challenge ideas, and ask questions that might seem silly.
Managers are at the forefront of the initiative for boosting communication skills throughout the organization. Therefore, they must set examples for their teams by showing them what it means to be a great communicator. Practicing good listening skills, giving employees an opportunity to speak, setting clear expectations, and providing regular, constructive feedback are all ways of improving communication skills at work.
Assess your current setup and consider what you’re doing right now to promote effective communication skills in the workplace. How often do you make time to listen to your employees with genuine interest? Assess those two points regularly! They are key factors to measuring internal communications. And internal communication is essential for the growth of your company and the culture associated with it.
Effective communication isn’t only essential for the functioning and performance of your organization. It’s a powerful tool to promote inclusivity that ripples out far broader than just performance metrics.
Therefore, when you make it a priority to improve communication skills, you’re working on workplace wellbeing. With these actions, you can create a company culture where everyone is kept up to date, feels heard, and works towards the organization’s bigger goals.