Relationships between employer and staff members form the foundation of creating a microclimate in any organisation. Many Chief Executives fail to learn the principles of effective employee communication and assume that they innately possess effective communication skills. Let us not forget that we live in ever-changing and dynamic times. The modern job market is full of confident and competitive representatives from various occupations. In the past, employees were expected to silently endure unprovoked aggression, bias, penalties, and reprimands. Nowadays, even the least qualified workers carry themselves with respect and change jobs on a whim without fearing being undesirable in the job market. Many experienced employers know just how hard it is to find qualified, honest, and loyal employees. That is why finely-tuned organisational communication plays an important role in any company. For a business to run smoothly, both employees and employers have to compromise and weigh every said and heard word while maintaining a level of courtesy. Let us try to figure out the proper ways of communicating with staff members and the measures that should be put in place to make your team the most effective workforce you have ever had the pleasure to manage.
Most commonly utilised internal communication techniques
Being the head of a company is not the easiest task. Financial liability and employees themselves are areas of your responsibility. A senior company manager has to be wise, flexible, constantly weigh their decisions and know the proper ways of delegating power. There is a vast number of team management seminars, webinars, and training, where you can acquire the required knowledge and necessary skills. Any self-respecting employer has to attend at least one of these seminars to keep up with the latest trends in hiring and managing staff. You must also work on your own style of employee management.
As a rule, there are several internal communication techniques that are discussed during various professional training seminars:
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Authoritarian. All important decisions are made exclusively by the employer. They impose strict systemic control over the execution of all assignments. Under this management, all initiatives and individuality are severely suppressed.
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Anarchistic. The employer tries to stay out of company daily business and employee work as much as possible, letting things go completely loose while having abandoned all responsibility for results.
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Democratic. An employer aims at increasing the role of employees in decision making, gives them an opportunity to voice their opinions and make decisions of secondary significance on their own. Additionally, all new solutions, collective goals, and company objectives are regularly discussed, with each worker having the right to vote.
In addition to this, employers can use joint creativity in employee management. The core of this approach lies in achieving positive results, set goals and tasks by combined efforts of employees and employer.
Each of these methods is good in its own way and appropriate under certain circumstances. The authoritarian approach yields somewhat decent results due to constant control but can be used only in critical situations. The democratic method can be implemented when the company lead is highly intelligent and possesses good managerial skills. Without this, it is practically impossible to achieve good results from the democratic internal communication technique.
An experienced company owner must possess a certain degree of foresight. First and foremost, he has to analyse the behaviour and character traits of all team members, determine the potential of all employees, and foresee the possibility of various situations emerging. All these factors must be considered when searching for the right style of organisational communication.
Feedback is a valuable skill in communicating with employees
The ability to establish proper feedback is regarded as one of the most important communication skills necessary for effective employee communication among company leaders for quite some time. Even the young and experienced Chief Executives have to be able to talk to employees, resolve any inaccuracies, commend or highlight areas for improvement, properly delegate authority, and provide advice on various tasks. Communicating with staff members should pose no problem for a Chief Executive. A head of the company must be able to communicate with any employees, even the most unruly and capricious ones, as proper feedback is the cornerstone of mutually beneficial communication. At first, it seems that summoning a worker to discuss concerns is the simplest thing to do. However, it turns out it is not easy at all. The majority of psychological and sociological research conducted by hundreds of companies worldwide has shown that feedback is the most problematic part of employee-employer relationships. Many workers feel stressed during poorly handled face-to-face conversations with their superiors and due to the absence of a properly established feedback process. They are too afraid to speak their mind, feel underappreciated, worthless, and humiliated. A non-existent or poorly established feedback system disorients workers in the organisation and diminishes their desire to strive for the common goal. A talented and wise Chief Executive has to understand that feedback is a good tool that allows them to:
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Correct an employee’s behaviour within the team
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Guide an employee towards growth and development in a particular department
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Express gratitude and highlight the importance of an employee
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Motivate workers towards new achievements
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Identify the reason for an employee’s misconduct
Now let us examine some of the internal communication techniques that will help you establish a proper feedback system. By following them, you will be able to easily communicate with your employees.
Rule No. 1: Be precise with goals
Before having a meeting with an employee, understand what goal you are pursuing and write it down on a piece of paper. Ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve during this meeting?” You will make the conversation easier this way.
Rule No. 2: Have a time and a place for talks
It is vital that you discuss only recent events when talking to the worker. The best practice is to contact an employee and discuss an event that has recently happened to them. There is no point in bringing up the time they were late for work three years ago if they were coming in late last week. When you observe that some employees experienced issues with the project yesterday or a few days ago, it is time to discuss this issue and provide some advice.
Rule No. 3: Involve employees in discussions
All employees across all companies wish to be needed, important, and heard. Allow your employees to express their thoughts. Firstly, it’s a good way to foster worker independence and responsibility for decisions you will make during the discussion. Secondly, by denying staff the right to voice their opinion, you may deny yourself useful information and even find yourself in an awkward situation. You may also learn about the true potential a particular employee has, obtain a few good ideas, and even gain new experience.
Rule No. 4: Praise in public, criticise in private
This is a very important rule! There are numerous reasons to do so. Public criticism humiliates and deeply demotivates employees. There can be no proper communication if the head of the company permits themselves to publicly criticise employees with a touch of mockery. Understand that if you do this to some employees, you will do it to other workers, which will instantly put you on their bad side. Praise should be given sincerely, whether publicly or privately.
Rule No. 5: Discuss events and actions
It is not acceptable to get personal and label people under any circumstances. When talking to your employees both privately and collectively, only discuss events and actions, not individuals. It is really easy to label or offend people, but it may take months or years to re-establish team communication.
The way you communicate with your employees and the communication style you adopt entirely depends on you. You can ignore our advice and fail to establish feedback with workers, but that way your career will be very short-lived. As a Chief Executive, you should understand one simple thing: Both you and your employees have to be oriented towards achieving common goals and tasks, as well as making the team atmosphere as pleasant as possible. Good luck, dear employers. Do not give up on improving your skills and you will achieve everything!
