How Can we Communicate More Effectively?

Recently there has been some discussion in social media as to how technology has changed the HR profession with respect to communication.  With the changes in how people work, their role vis-à-vis working remotely, along with the competitive business climate, HR departments are learning that poor communication channels are impacting the bottom line.  As HR professionals we can do three things to improve communication.

Communicate Consistently

Communication is often sporadic with conflicting messages.  While organizations attempt to share information with their employees and want their staff to be given the tools to complete their daily tasks, a lack of consistent communication is hindering their ability to be successful.  Effective communication is very important and employers must invest time and energy into building and establishing clear and consistent methods.  One of the most common communication problems in the workplace and solutions are poorly written documents, policies and procedures or announcements. Poorly written communication pieces will cause confusion, inhibit success and foster frustration amongst the employees.  To correct this challenge HR must always proofread the documents before distributing the final product.  It is also important to have the various stakeholders review and agree with content prior to its release.

Improve Internal Communication

Many companies with internal communications challenges have them because internal communication with employees can often be overlooked or seen as being less important than external communications. By keeping your employees informed from the company’s management team versus external sources (i.e., the media) confusion can be reduced and false information disseminated to the employees can be mitigated.  The easy solution is to over-communicate, do not assume that employees understand the business decisions that are made and always keep employees informed when you have a major announcement to make or have to react to bad news. Whenever possible, tell them before you tell an external audience.

Use Technology in Moderation

Organizations are utilizing internal social networks more extensively. These tools enable the sharing of information and best practices.  E-mails, instant messages, and other communications can be easily forwarded; however, messages are often not reframed for the individual or team to whom the message is directed.  This lack of customization can foster confusion and damage the credibility of the author.  Using technology to communicate is very efficient; however, it does not give the same warm feeling as being connected personally. Technology oriented connections are less meaningful and lack the human need to connect.  Organizations must understand that technology can have damaging effects. An over-reliance on technology can lead to people feeling isolated, and this can lead to challenges at work.  To take advantage of all the benefits that technology in communication offers, it is crucial to ensure that organizations implement policies and guidelines for how technology should be used to communicate.

Using the existing communication channels at your company along with conducting an employee survey to evaluate your communication challenges and successes is an easy way to assess and evaluate your strategy for the future.

What are the Four Key Traits Exhibited by Engaged Employees Today?

Top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement with the business is a key driver of success. Engaged employees are team players, productive and customer focused.  Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest time, energy and effort to support the strategic direction and vision of the organization.  Engaged employees tend to produce greater results, have higher productivity, and remain with the company longer.

As a result, organizations possessing high levels of satisfaction and engagement are more likely to be financially successful.  Based upon our employee survey data outlined below are the four key attributes that engaged employees demonstrate.

#1 Demonstrate Satisfaction with their Career

Satisfaction with one’s career is a key driver of an engaged employee.   Employees who enjoy their job, are satisfied with their career progression, contribute to the success of the company and are more engaged and aligned with the business.  Engaged employees will also remain at the organization longer which can result in less turnover.  This directly impacts the bottom line.

#2 Are Decision Makers

The ability to make decisions and be held accountable for those decisions builds trust between the employee and the leaders of the company.  Challenging employees to take risks empowers and engages staff.  Building trust between management and staff allows for those closest to the customer to make decisions that are based upon the current reality and typically results in more satisfied customers.  Engaged employees are “take charge” individuals and are willing to take calculated risks.

#3 Possess Excellent Communication Skills

The leaders of the organization need to be able to communicate the vision, values and mission of the company.  Their efforts in sharing the strategy result in an informed employee base that understanding the successes and future challenges that the company may face.  Leaders also need to listen to the employees and process the information in such a way that allows for all employees to contribute to success of the company.

#4 Are Problem Solvers

Engaged employees examines problems and working with the team is able to provide a solution either independently or as part of a team.  Engaged employees encourage a team approach to problem solving as a way to better support the customer.  They will also seek out problems and view them as an opportunity and a challenge.

Finally, engaged employees are committed to their organization’s goals and values, they are motivated to contribute to organizational success, and are able at the same time to further enhance their own sense of purpose.

How Business can Thrive During A Global Pandemic?

Your business is based upon relationships with your customers, vendors and employees.  Keeping in touch with these three stakeholders is particularly important to ensure your business survives the current economic downturn as a result of the global pandemic.  By creating a plan to ensure that you maintain communication with these three constituents, your business may succeed and even thrive during the global pandemic.  Whether as the leader of your organization or a manager of your business unit evaluating how you approach your three contributors to your success will help you and your business survive.

Customers

Keeping your current business and winning new business does not just mean winning customers.  It is much easier to secure existing business than it is to acquire new clients. Your current clients already know you, like you, and trust you. Right now, businesses need to prioritize reaching out to current clients before new clients.  A personal check-in goes a long way. All businesses are a relationship business. Now, more than ever, it is important for you to remember this.  Check on how your customers are doing before you check-up on how their business is doing. A heartfelt email or phone call to show customers you are thinking of them is always appreciated.  If you get the sense that they are willing to talk about business, ask them about their current priorities.  What are they struggling with during the pandemic? What new objectives are they trying to achieve?  Can your expertise solve one of those problems? Can you help them achieve their new goals and objectives?  If you can add value, support your customers and see where your assistance can help them out.

Vendors

Your budget is tightening, and your service providers might be willing to examine their current pricing structure. That does not mean you need to eliminate their services; however, getting creative with their pricing and examining ways you can create more value for less expense may be an option. If your vendors do not have the ability to reduce their fees request something that still creates the outcome that you desire, but maybe involves less of your involvement or a longer arrangement at the current pricing level. These smaller offers also pave the way for a longer relationship when the pandemic is no longer an issue and the vaccine has created herd immunity.

Employees

The Human Resource profession over the past ten months has changed dramatically.  With many employees working remotely HR professionals will continue to face significant changes in the near-term.  The need for timely information to support the immediate needs of the staff will only get greater.  HR metrics to evaluate performance, gauge communication challenges, support effective talent management practices, retain employees, along with the evaluation of employee satisfaction and engagement will become a key focus for the future.  HR leaders will need to find new ways to reach out to employees to evaluate that their needs are being met.  A plan to contact the staff to ensure that communication remains uninterrupted and that questions are getting answered will need to be implemented. 

Action Step: Choose & Implement Your Strategy

To be successful, select one of the targeted audiences above and act on it.  Reach out to a customer, vendor or employee and ask how they are managing the changes as a result of the pandemic. Listen to their concerns and if you can help solve one of those problems, put together a plan and strategy to help them.

What is HR’s Role During COVID-19?

Over the past six months business in the United States has changed dramatically.  We have gone from exceptionally low levels of unemployment and a healthy economy to a work environment where 40+ million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance, business failures and constant chaos.  During this time HR has played a unique role in developing polices to meet this challenge.  However, given that the pandemic will not be ending until a vaccine is available and administered; HR will need to adapt and play a strategic role that is focused on three areas to assist their employees work more effectively, become more productive and improve communication.

Using Technology to Work Effectively

Technology over the past several months has been the life support for many employers as they continue to have many of the team members working remotely.  Internet applications such as Teams ©, WebEx © and Zoom © are invaluable program to support the sharing of information.  HR will need to continue to support these strategies so that employees remain in touch, are given information to complete their daily tasks.  Training and webinars to support on-going learning will help build confidence to empower the staff to learn how to utilize these tools.  Video conferencing will be the future of most meetings and serve as the key communication tool.

Providing the Staff Tools to be More Productive

Many of the employee’s resources before the pandemic were just down the hall from where they worked.  Whether it was an HR issue, a systems problem resolved by IT or a product pricing question answered by the Sales department; these issues were handled by reaching out to those employees that could address the issue quickly and efficiently.  Today that is not necessarily the case.  HR now and in the future will need to create a checklist to ensure that the employees have the tools to be productive.  This may include a FAQ of typical problems that employees may encounter while working remotely and to whom they should contact.  One of the most common issues raised in our pandemic survey was the lack of resources to deal with systems issues.  While many employees are skilled in their technical area of expertise, systems challenges remain a significant burden for many staff members working remotely.  In addition to a checklist HR will need to periodically audit what is need by the staff to determine what has changed over time and how they can address their needs.

Communicate, Communicate and Communicate

Employee communication while always a challenge will need to be further enhanced to ensure that managers are successfully supervising their staff.  This will help guarantee that they have the tools to be successful in this new normal.  Constant and consistent communication will be critical as employees will be working Independently with little supervision and minimal support.  Managers and the leadership team will need to be highly organized to evaluate roadblocks that their staff may encounter and determine the best course of action to address these barriers to success.  Daily communication from managers to their direct staff, weekly communication from the division leaders and monthly communication from the leadership team will need to be calendared and adhered to.  Given so much uncertainty in the business environment along with insecurity in one’s personal life a structured work environment will help.

While the challenges of COVID-19 are many, human ingenuity and the resourcefulness of the Human Resources profession has not changed.  Your team will learn new skills, become more effective communicators and contribute to the success of your business.

What is an HR Metric that is Useful Today and how Does this Metric Impact Fairness?

The Human Resource profession over the past several decades has become much more sophisticated by utilizing metrics to examine employee trends.  Our profession has become better at anticipating future challenges and opportunities through the use of metrics that evaluate historical patterns and trends.  As a result, we are better able to respond to on-the-job challenges.  Metrics are also a common measurement across all professions and are used as a way to hold people accountable.  One key metric that is being used by thousands of HR professionals is the employee engagement survey.

Using normative data is important for our clients as this information serves as a benchmark which allows a company to compare their own mean scores with the client base.  Normative scores are updated continuously and, due to the size of our database, we can utilize a 99.9% confidence interval, resulting in a margin of error of +.01.  This means that our clients have a high level of confidence in the data they receive.  In the past, clients have often requested that we provide benchmark data against their industry or region in the country.  Today, however, we have begun to see a shift from benchmarking within one's own industry toward benchmarking against other “best places to work”. This is particularly true with regard to benchmarking in the areas of organizational climate, culture, engagement, management and leadership.

One key goal of conducting an engagement survey is to assess the relationship between the employee and one’s manager.  Management effectiveness is very important data point as our survey data indicates that an employee’s manager is critical to an employee’s job satisfaction, engagement and retention.  Today many organizations are experiencing moderate to high levels of satisfaction with respect to employee management relations.  Maintaining and improving employee relations and management practices has a lasting effect with respect to overall employee satisfaction.  The survey statement “People are treated the same at the company regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity or other differences” received a rating of 3.84 in 2020; however, in 2001, the same statement achieved a rating of 3.33.  This development indicates that significant improvement with respect to being treated fairly has occurred over the past twenty years.  Equal treatment of all employees will continue to be a challenge for the future to ensure that employee treatment does not decline.  One way to ensure the strengthening of this value is to continuously enhance managers communication and performance management skills.  This will help ensure that fair and consistent leadership practices are driving their management actions.

HR is the most appropriate department for explaining and addressing employee concerns with respect to fairness and the data suggests that significant improvement has occurred over the past two decades.

How can HR Professionals Create a Climate of Civility?

Human Resource professionals deal with many issues in the work-place from coaching employees, integrating new hires into the organization to placing struggling staff members on a performance plan.  One of the most important values that is currently under attack is the value of respecting one another and treating fellow staff members in a civil manner.  HR leaders are often charged with being the role model for the larger organization.  As HR professionals, we must focus on supporting four key areas to ensure a “climate of civility”.  Here are the four pillars to assist HR professionals create this new climate.

Listen Rather than Talk

Many of us do too much talking and not enough listening.  We treat conversation as a one-way communication where our goal is to influence the other person and convert them to our point of view.  Most people tend to treat conversation like a competitive sport, in which the person who says the most, makes the cleverest point, persuades others to adopt their opinion, or even speaks the longest and loudest is the winner. Many of us fall into this trap every day.  All of us find ourselves interrupting and coming up with alternative ideas to support our point of view.  If you stop and think about it, though, this approach is the opposite of the one we should actually take. In most conversations, the person who speaks least benefits the most and the person who speaks most benefits the least.  When you focus on what the other person is saying and listen to their ideas you will be in a better place to add value to the conversation.  The key take-away is listen rather than talk.

Respect  Different Points of View

Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want from their manager and colleagues and they will more often indicate that what they desire most from their employer and co-workers is to be treated with respect. Our employee survey data also indicates that respect for differing perspectives and points of view are critical for job satisfaction and engagement.  Without a high level of respect among the employees conflict and job challenges may increase. Employees who have little or no respect for others and do not consider differing points of view can engage in behavior that illustrates lack of respect for the person as well as their contribution to the organization.  The key take-away is respect different points of view.

Be Open to Change

Have you ever tried to implement a new change in your company and found you have hit a road block? The executive team is supportive, your plan is thoughtful and you have secured the financial resources to make it happen; however, your employees simply didn’t want to change. Companies can encourage change and bring their employees along for the ride by communicating and sharing the vision and the strategy behind the proposed change.  Transparency with the staff will alleviate concerns and encourage buy-in for the new processes.  Having an engaged workforce that is open to new ideas is important and will allow the organization to respond to changes in the ever-changing market.  Eliminating the fear of change is as important as improving communication and encouraging employees in become a part of the decision-making process.  The key take-away is be open to change.

Challenge Inappropriate Behavior

Behaviors that are considered to be inappropriate in the workplace include being angry, exhibiting aggressive communication (both verbal and/or written) being disrespectful,  belittling, abusive or threatening another person.  Inappropriate behavior impacts morale, employee satisfaction and workplace cohesion.  Today is it very important that not only managers take action to limit this behavior but also individual contributors need to recognize that they have a responsibility to notify management or challenge the inappropriate behavior immediately.  Employees who are disrespecting their co-workers will often times only cease this behavior if they are informed that this behavior is unacceptable and that if it continues disciplinary action my result.  A work environment that supports respectful behavior will ensure productivity, creativity and innovation.  The key take-away is challenge inappropriate behavior.

These four principals if supported, encouraged and acted upon will help companies safeguard a work environment that will promote a climate of civility with Human Resources being a champion of respect.