Internal communication is a powerful tool has a huge impact on the success of any organization. Effective communication increases employee engagement, boost workplace productivity and drive business growth. Communication is a cornerstone of any engaged workforce. Employees are the company's most significant investment and ultimately determines its success or failure. Engaged employees demonstrate the dedication and commitment that are essential to the long-term growth of any company. One of the biggest challenges for any organization today is to find ways to effectively communicate to its employees and mainly due to multiple distractions, demanding priorities and ever-changing dynamics of the organization.
There is a direct correlation between employee retention and effective communication between leaders/managers and employees. Specifically, communicating strategies about organization vision, mission, values, strategy, career development, and management. Research shows that keeping employees informed with personal, relevant, and engaging communication gives companies a competitive edge and has direct results on the bottom line.
Increasing employee engagement is often the top priority of every management and many initiatives are undertaken by way of understanding them through numerous surveys, meetings, schemes, and other programs. However, the simplest way to increase engagement is often overlooked – it starts with day-to-day communication. How can an organization ensure that the messages they want to get across are communicated effectively in a day to day basis and help to improve employee engagement?
The most effective communication will be a one-on-one time where discussions are open. It’s during those moments that relationships are built and strengthened, where some of the most creative ideas will be sparked and where the strongest connections are made. These discussions are getting more difficult especially when people are working remotely or when everyone just seems ‘too busy’ to have a chat.
Organizations need to invest in the internal communication process and establish a clear process on how the pieces of information should flow. This will help reduce ambiguity, promotes clarity and most importantly helps connect the employees with the vision, mission, strategy of the organization. Here are some of the process to establish a communication process.
Firstly need a clear internal communication strategy. Answer the following Questions to get some clarity on the specific objective.
What are the goals, ambitions and strategic aspirations for the future?
What do the people in the organization need to think, feel and do in order to make those goals a reality?
Where are employees now, and what needs to change in their current perceptions, attitudes, or access to basic information?
What’s the role of the internal communication function in helping close the gap of what we want for the future, and what we’ve got today?
What are the roles and responsibilities of leaders, managers, employees and communication professionals?
What are the communication activities we’re going to need – and who will be responsible for what?
What’s the resource levels we need?
What tools and communications channels will we use and why?
Establish a communication process within an organization. This is critical so that information does not come from any directions and dilutes or creates confusion. Formally, organizational communication has two dimensions; vertically and horizontally. Vertical communication is a downward and upward form of direction. In other words, vertical communication transmits information among different levels in the organizational structure. However, horizontal communication transmits information among people, divisions, departments and units within the operational structure.
Downward communication is when messages flow from a higher-level employee to a lower-level employee within an organization. This arises if information runs down through an organization’s official succession of the hierarchical structure. In other words, communications start at the upper levels of the organization and moves through to the bottom levels (Tubbs and Moss, 2008). The purpose of downward communication is to assign tasks respectively, postulate instructions and directions. It is also aimed to inform employees of job procedures and policies, identification of problems that need attention at the various levels and deliver feedback on employees’ past performance. In fulfilling employees’ basic necessities, it is important that employees receive satisfactory and correct information regarding the organization and their roles to be accomplished, and there must be instantaneous feedback about their performance (Greenberg and Baron, 2008).
Upward communication is deemed very essential to the success of an organization. The absence of upward communication can destruct a company from reaching its goals and objectives. Grassroots information can make and unmake the surviving of an organization (Tubbs and Moss, 2008). Tubbs and Moss (2008) in their studies, summarises the importance of upward communication as helping employees to alleviate the anxieties and obstructions of the work situation; it also assists management with the needed information for decision-making. More so upward communications facilitate employees’ consciousness of participation and serve as a gauge of effective downward communication.
Horizontal communication occurs among peers in the institution. This type of communication is progressively usual with the leveling of the hierarchical structure and the introduction of matrix organizations (Greenberg and Baron, 2008). Thus, it is the transmission of information between people, divisions, departments or units within the same level of the organizational hierarchy.
This type of communication within an organization is a laudable channel for efficient and effective transmission of information, which also facilitates synchronization among peers. In a research analysis by (Tubbs and Moss, 2008), some significant functions of the horizontal or flat communication were unveiled. This type of communication can help improve coordination between departments regarding task accomplishment; it also encourages effective implementation of upper-level decisions the reason been that lower level members within the department are allowed to coordinate closely with one another during the formulation of the decision made at the top; conflict resolution is mutually practiced among members in the same department without the engagement of management; and to end it, teamwork is facilitated when a project requires tasks from different people or from different department in order to intensify job satisfaction and motivation by creating more empowerment in communication.
There is effective communication when a satisfactory effect has resulted from intentional or unintentional information sharing. This information when encoded by a manager is interpreted between various entities and emulated on it in the desired manner. However, the effect also ensures the message is not blocked during the communication process. In quest of this, it is believed that effective communication serves the purpose for which it was intended. Whenever the desired effect is not succeeded, factors such as communication barriers are explored with the aim to discover how communication has been ineffective. Conferring to some studies, communication is effective when the following considerations are arrived at; understanding, compatibility, display of positive behaviors, smoothness of communication, positive outcomes, positive non-verbal communication and adapting of messages communicated. communication technique employs managerial proficiency in encoding as well as decoding information in a productive manner.
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