Regardless of the industry you work within, communication is a key ingredient to ensuring your business runs smoothly and your employees all feel they are working towards the same goal. Pre-Pandemic this was all focused on office-based communication strategies, which relied heavily on personal contact, email and a smattering of video conferencing if a company had multiple site offices. Post-pandemic we have firmly entered a world where home working is the norm and hybrid working seems to be the desired solution for most, which has been aided and abetted by electronic communication tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. It is essential that companies keep investing in their technologies as they are the foundation to implement your communication strategy. This helps you stay focused, strong and agile through positive communications and the proliferation of company values and direction.
We all like to communicate in different ways, there are numerous styles you can communicate with employees, so it is essential that you find out how your employees like to communicate and make sure all those options are available for them. Before we look at the communication strategy side of things let's look at some of the platforms that businesses have been using to do this:
1 - Zoom
We should all know this one by now, it seems to be the top word in a post-pandemic era! Zoom is an enterprise-level, collaboration tool, great for video and web conferencing solutions that have cross-platform messaging and file-sharing features.
2 - Microsoft Teams
Yet another one that has seen a massive uptake by businesses and when you get the hang of it, it can be an all-in-one business communication tool! With an Office 365 subscription, you have access to Teams, within which you get access to video conferencing, chat and Together Mode which makes it look like everyone in the meeting is in the same room. On top of that, you have collaboration tools with powerful feature-sets, like file, screen and apps sharing workflows and real-time collaboration inside Microsoft Office. It is the big beast in the room and has taken a massive market share, a truly powerful Swiss Army knife of communication and collaboration.
3 - Slack
Not such a well known one but people who use Slack wax lyrical about it! It is a multipurpose communications platform with a project management-centric ethos. It has video conferencing, screen sharing, instant messaging and file storage. The UI is clean and simple and it is very easy to create several channels for different teams, adding and integrating new members to multiple channels is easy and logical. Slack is a great tool that was championed by a lot of start-up companies in Silicon Valley as it provided fast communication and organisation.
4 - Join.me
Join.me is browser-based, it is quick and simple to get together a meeting that you can then screen share within. It lets you easily start a casual voice chat with anyone, then switch to a video meeting and webinar. It also has some powerful integrations like Outlook and Google Calendar for scheduling and applications integration with Salesforce and Slack.
5 - Windstream Enterprise OfficeSuite UC
OfficeSuite UC is a cloud-based UCaaS (unified communications as a service). It has audio, web and video conferencing. Their OfficeSuite offers unlimited free nationwide phone service and digital faxing. (does anyone fax anymore!) It also has useful mobile twinning, making all incoming calls ring your desk and mobile phone simultaneously; hot-desking to enable incoming and outgoing calls from any phone and virtual voicemail to receive messages from any phone or email. It also has great integrations with Salesforce, Skype, Google's G Suite, Slack and Microsoft Teams. On top of all that you also get contact centre services so you can create queues for calls and chats, all with the ability to see live and historical agent activity and record calls if needed!
Okay, we have had a look at some of the technology, but there is plenty more out there that can help you like BlueJeans, Cisco Webex, ClickMeeting, Fuze, Zoho Meeting etc! So having a fragmented business in terms of office location and home working is not a problem anymore. Now let us turn our attention to communication styles and techniques you can employ in conjunction with collaboration tools, to really bring this all together! We’ve listed our top ten for you to look at below:
1 - Open Meetings
Open meetings are a great opportunity for everyone in a company to communicate about the same problems and issues. In this style of forum, the whole team can listen to what everyone else is saying and take the ideas on board. This style of meeting is especially important if everyone is allowed to speak freely, regardless of their position or place and this approach remains one of the best ways to communicate effectively within a team.
2- Written Communication Trails
After face-to-face meetings, virtual or otherwise, it can often be difficult to remember what was said or what was spoke about. For this reason, emails, SLACK or any messaging tool can be seriously beneficial in helping ensure that there is a record and a reminder of what was covered in the meeting. Communication via these written tools is quick, easy and can enable you to pass messages to members of the team without interrupting their workflow
3 - One on One
Some employees may not feel comfortable talking in front of others, so you should make sure that you regularly talk to employees one on one, especially if you are in management. Some people also understand better when you take them aside, it can also allow them to express opinions without fear of feeling embarrassed, communication this way is very beneficial.
4 - Training
Training is a vital element when it comes to communication and communication training for new employees is essential. But remember, training isn’t something that just happens once, it should be something that is continuous. Continuous training gives employees the opportunity to communicate whenever there are problems that occur, as well as giving them the chance for more support if they need it at any point.
5 - Simple Words
The honest truth is that everybody has different levels of vocabulary in the workplace, so by using difficult, specialised vocabulary, you may confuse some employees. Therefore, it is important to understand your audience, it’s always better to oversimplify what you are trying to say. Just remember that when ambiguous words are used, you can be misunderstood and/or waste precious time having to explain yourself.
6 - Listen
It is vital you remember that communication is a two-way street. When you are talking to people at work, make sure you give them your full attention so that you can fully listen to what they are saying. Partake in active listening, nod when appropriate and give positive affirmation to show you are communicating too. It seems obvious, but not doing simple things can have negative effects on employees thinking they do not have a voice.
7 - Presentations
It is important to remember that not everybody listens and understands the same way. Some employees may prefer communication to come in the form of pictures and others in the form of sounds. Using presentations and visual aids will help communicate with people who prefer to see images and read in order to process information.
8 - Humour
It’s important to remember that although you are communicating with people at work, the people you are speaking with are still human! Using friendly jokes helps pass along messages in a more relaxed way and has been proven to be a really effective method of communicating. Bringing humour will also help break a tense environment, so it is a really helpful tool to bring to your communication skills!
9 - Feedback
Feedback is also a fantastic method of communication and it’s essential that you ask for it. Give room for feedback so that you take other opinions on board. You can also ask for feedback to ensure that what you have said is understood.
10 - Be Appreciative
Most importantly, you should remember to be appreciative. Appreciate the team you have around you and make sure you communicate this to them, it costs nothing and it’s a simple courtesy, especially if people have been struggling to keep positive and trying to keep any mental illnesses at bay. So being positive and appreciative can really make a big difference to an employee’s life and outlook whether at home or in the office.
Conclusion
By using the latest communication technologies and methods you can ensure that you increase communication in the workplace. This should not just be from management down, but across employee to employee too. Communication is important regardless of your job role and this should be stressed to all employees with training on how they can improve communications personally. With everyone on board and with an ethos of regular positive communication, you will have a well-run, efficient and collaborative business with happy employees.