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One of the most important elements of a well run business is effective communication. Without effective communication, business processes that would run efficiently otherwise can completely break down. Issues that could have been solved immediately may never be fixed. You could end up losing a good percentage of your would-be profit to this kind of incompetence. Overall, fostering effective and efficient modes of communication within your company is required to achieve long term success. Below are a few strategies for improving communication within your business.
Invest in the Right Communication Tools
Communication within a company can also be hampered due to a lack of access to the right technology. Make sure your employees have the right tools that can allow them to easily communicate in a productive manner. Facilitating effective communication does require some investment.
This may, for example, include collaboration software. Collaboration software can allow members of a team to use a virtual workspace to collaborate on a shared project for the company. Without such software, the ability of team members to efficiently coordinate can be much more difficult. This is much more so the case for employees that telecommute. The number of employees that telecommute is currently at an all time high due to factors like the world wide pandemic. Since it has been estimated that telecommuting could save US companies as much as $700 billion a year, you can expect the use of this employment strategy to become permanent for much of the economy.
Create a Company Culture that Fosters Open Communication
One of the reasons why communication does not occur within an organization is because the company culture suffocates it. This can happen for a multitude of different reasons. For example, a specific department may be afraid to report bad news to upper-management because they know they will be swiftly punished for it. Lack of trust between management, middle-management and other departments can be absolutely detrimental to a company’s long term success.
Instead, you need to help create a company culture in which news, both good and bad, can be easily passed along to different entities in the organization without fear of reprisal. Being able to get bad news to individuals up the chain that need to hear it is integral to making the proper course corrections. If that news is never received, you will always receive the maximum worst impact of a negative development on your business’s performance.
Customize Your Communication to Your Needs
Another thing you need to realize is that communication across different industries and specific companies within an industry is not the same. This is not a bad thing. Different companies have different business models, and that requires different modes of communication. Think, for example, of how a company that makes fish sticks sold in grocery store freezers needs to be in constant contact with fishing boats out at sea. Obviously, the methods of communication required will be unique to that company versus a company in another industry.
Try to obtain talent, technology and solutions customized to your own needs. If you are a private foundation or do extensive charity work with private foundations, you will need access to HR professionals with extensive experience in human resources for private foundations. If most of your employees telecommute, you will obviously have to make different software investments than if they were all housed under the same roof.
Make Communication Habitual and Reciprocal
A lack of communication within a company may simply come from the fact that you have not made it routine for the right kind of communication to occur. Instead, communication should become another part of your standard business processes. Meetings, conference calls, employee reviews and more that happen on a routine basis can help to better circulate the right kind of information throughout the company.
Make sure the communication that happens in these routine meetings and other events is not completely hierarchical in nature. While it’s important for management to disseminate information among the workforce, it’s just as important for management to hear what those below them in different departments have to say. Listen to their input intently and implement it when it can improve the company.
Conclusion
Communication is the lifeblood of a successful company. If important information can’t be transmitted to the right parties within your organization, your entire business is likely to fail. Make fostering honest, efficient and effective communication a top priority within your company. You will certainly benefit from doing so.
