6 signs your organisation has communication issues
Are you facing the same issues time and time again but are uncertain of the cause? You could be facing an internal communications crisis which is bad news for your business. A study released by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that communication issues were the root cause for the following problems; 54% said stress, 44% said delay or failure to complete projects and 25% said they missed performance goals because of poor communication. Discover what the most common signs are of having bad comms and how you can fix them.
1. Processes and best practices are never followed
If your staff are constantly doing things differently to the way you want them to carry out tasks, then this is a sign of communication issues from the top. Do you frequently find yourself frustrated because employees are making mistakes and leaving you open to health and safety or compliance risks? If so, you need to take charge and develop your communications strategy. This will ensure that everyone is following your processes which will minimise risk and failure. Discover how to come up with a solid communications strategy in our latest article.
2. Your employees don’t know your company’s purpose or mission
If you were to stop one of your employees in their tracks and ask them what the purpose or mission of your company was, would they know? This is an easy test. Leave your office and head out to where your frontline employees are working. Ask them if they know. If the majority of them don’t then you’ve got a communication issue. Everyone throughout the business needs to have an idea of what their aim and purpose is within their role. Here are a few top tips to keep communication levels strong within your business.
3. Hardly any employees show up to your events
So you decide to hold a cheese and wine night for one of your training workshops. But when the day comes, hardly anyone has turned up. “But I announced it” I hear you say? This isn’t enough, comms is about knowing when to strategically announce your message many times throughout the day or week.
It’s not enough to announce it once on a Monday and expect people to come. You need to be reminding, nudging and persuading people whenever the time is right. If you have a lot of no shows at your company events it’s a sign that your communications aren’t very good.
4. Work is being repeated
This is a big one if you have communication issues. When things aren’t spoken about, confusion always follows. People end up doing a job that’s already been done because they weren’t told about its status. For example, a health and safety officer asks the compliance officer to carry out a risk assessment for him as he doesn’t think he’ll be there in the afternoon. Turns out the health and safety officer is there in the afternoon so he does it himself. But he fails to let the compliance officer know, this means they have both wasted an hour doing exactly the same assessment.
5. The end result of a task or project isn’t what you had in mind
You ask your employees to do something and they never seem to get it done the way you want. You blame them and say they are bad at their job. When in actual fact, it could very well be that there was a breakdown in communication. You didn’t properly explain how you wanted the job done or what you were expecting. You didn’t communicate timelines with them or perhaps you didn’t tell them exactly what the purpose of the task or project was for.
When you don’t give a detailed picture of why you need things done the results are not going to be as you’d expect. Ensure you articulate exactly what you want, why you want it, who’s it for and when you need it by.
6. Everyone’s priorities are all over the shop
When communication amongst a team is strong, everyone’s priorities are usually aligned. When you have communication issues you find that everyone has a different idea of what they think is most important to get done. For example, you may be stressing about the number of audits that have been completed that week. But your boss is more concerned about the low level of engagement rates across your health and safety training. You need to improve your communications to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
A good way to overcome this is to send out weekly summaries. In these summaries, your heads of departments should state what their biggest strengths and concerns were from the previous week. This way everyone will know what challenges they need to start addressing for the week ahead.
Want to unlock the performance of your frontline teams?
Ocasta Engage unlocks the performance of your frontline teams through comms, microlearning and knowledge. Customers include Next, Virgin Media O2, Burgertory and Tesco Mobile, who have achieved desirable results, including;
98% engagement rates
3.75x more recognition amongst their teams
94% of all comms being read.
