I studied organizational communications in the university. And as a topic it has stayed one of my biggest passions over the years. There are many theories on how internal communications can be handled in an organization. And systems that work in one place, may be totally useless in other companies.
What all theories agree on, however, that it is leader’s responsibility to make sure, employees have a clear overview of what is going on and what is expected from them.
Bad Internal Communications cost money.
Setting up clear communication lines in your company carries with it many benefits. Employees who understand what is going on and what they should be working on, are more engaged, more productive, and less likely to switch jobs. Recent studies find that “Organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by more than 200 percent. At the same time, only 36 percent of businesses see engagement as a top challenge.
For you, the leader, clear communication reduces the amount of time you spend making sure information flows. That lets you spend your time on more vital, meaningful tasks. Not to mention, that if you’re one of the few companies who actually worries about clear communications and the benefits, it provides, you’ll have a clear competitive advantage.
Setting up open communications.
Open communication is a very hard concept to achieve. And bigger your company, the harder it is. Managers often spend most of their time playing telephone and making sure everyone has the right information and noone is acting on misinformation.
It’s easy to handle this when you have 3 people in your company. When you’re running a bigger, more complex company, you need to up your game. Otherwise you’ll soon see your workflow and productivity slow down due to confusion, “fake news”, and misunderstandings. Luckily there is a lot you can do for this not to happen.
One of the easiest ways to handle communications in my experience, is setting clear and universally understandable goals for your company. That way employees understand what they are working towards and that they are a team. Not a random group of people doing random things.
The best way to set goals is using goal setting methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
OKRs are a popular leadership process for setting, communicating and monitoring quarterly goals and results in organizations. The goal of OKRs is to connect company, team and personal objectives in a hierarchical way to measurable results, making all employees work together in one unified direction. OKRs are usually implemented in special OKR software.
Implementing OKRs.
However, implementing OKR technologies is hard and requires a lot of effort. It is not something you can just try out. Sociabble writes about Gatehouse’s study that takes a look at internal communications. This global survey found that 54% of respondents stated technology as a top barrier for internal communications.
To see how best to implement the OKR framework, take a look at some OKR case studies. There is no point to reinvent the wheel. Or, you can get straight to appointing an OKR champion in your team and start implementing the system.
So, if you wish to have better communications in your company, try out OKRs with your team in Weekdone now. With Weekdone, your employees will know what’s going on and get a lot more done.