Poor team communication can cost your company dearly. Yet, given this common knowledge, organizations still find it difficult to communicate with their employees. A recent survey discovered that 71 percent of workers interviewed felt that their managers don’t spend enough time explaining goals and plans. If employees aren’t getting the information and training they need to maximize their productivity, the bottom lines of their respective companies will suffer. And with nearly three-quarters of workers dissatisfied with team communication, many companies are apparently not as profitable as they could be.
Part of the problem with this shortcoming is that the training platforms organizations use might be ill-equipped to effectively handle the team communication necessary in today’s corporate environments. Also, managers will sometimes overlook the tools their training solutions offer, thus missing a chance to improve the communication side of training processes. Here are four things you might be doing wrong with your team communication platform:
1. Discouraging direct communication
Some corporate cultures really believe in the chain of command—lower-level employees report questions and concerns to their managers, who report to their superiors, and so on up the ladder. This approach makes organizations go through too many hoops to get an answer from the manager or exec who will is most qualified to respond. Furthermore, when feedback goes through so many different people, something inevitably gets lost along the way, thus resulting in an incomplete response. Today’s training solutions can cut through this bureaucracy so that team communication can exist directly between an employee and the manager best suited to help that employee. Platforms can also be set up so that a front-line worker can send a message without typing in or even seeing an email address, thus ensuring some measure of privacy on the managerial level if so desired.
2. Quashing collaboration
Many training platforms allow users to embed comments and feedback for other similar employees, in the store and around the country, to see and benefit from. This wiki-style approach can yield significant results, yet some enterprises are hesitant. If the goal of limiting collaboration is to produce compliant employees, companies may also be inadvertently quashing productivity as well. When teams, no matter how spread out they are, work together to solve a problem, the resulting morale boost will help a company’s bottom line, as will the fact the problem was solved, often faster and more thoroughly by a group than by dozens of workers acting alone. If your training platform supports this level of collaboration, embrace it and watch your employees further invest themselves in your company’s success.
3. Failing to make timely adjustments
If an employee learning a new process or locally implementing a product rollout has a serious concern or a detailed question, likely, the training is put on hold while that question is answered. As already stated, that concern can take time to reach the most qualified answerer. But even if the feedback is sent directly, sometimes a manager takes his or her time to provide a response. In the meantime, the training and implementation on the floor or in the field is put on hold. And time lost, especially with a rollout, is money wasted. Team communication exists partly to reach solutions and increase productivity. That can’t happen if you are taking days to answer a question that may seem trivial to you but important to workers who want to do their jobs well.
4. Ignoring BYOD
The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) craze has exploded in the past few years, with more employees using their own tablets and smartphones for work functions. This trend would seem to be a boon for team communication, but many companies are resistant because of security and HR concerns. Fortunately, many training solutions not only allow for BYOD, but also provide controls to ensure internal communications are safe, especially if a smartphone is lost or stolen.
What aspect of your company’s team communication needs improvement?
