Any married couple will tell you that communication is the foundation of a good relationship. Well, the same principle applies in the workplace. While the dynamic may be completely different, the tenets of honesty, integrity and active listening are crucial to success in the workplace.
But just why is two-way communication so important in the workplace?
Workplace Communication: Getting it Right
Establishing a dialogue between employer and employee opens lines of communication that will benefit all involved. It’s not just about management sending orders down through the hierarchy: it’s about both parties listening and engaging in a conversation. After all, employees aren’t robots designed to follow commands unquestioningly. They’re invaluable members of the team and part of the larger mechanism that makes a business run. They have critiques, queries, and ideas of their own, all of which come from a different perspective than management.
If a business is a machine, both managers and employees are cogs, working together to make the whole operation run smoothly. If there is a lack of two-way communication, the machine simply cannot achieve peak performance. Everyone needs to pull together in the same direction to meet their goals.
Subjects of two-way communication in the workplace can include:
Work performance: either how it can be improved or how it has been successful
The personal and/or professional needs of your employee/s
Future plans: either as a company or on an individual basis
Employee feedback
Employee to Employer Communication
Soliciting and applying employee feedback can be an invaluable tool for employers. They see and hear things that managers don’t and can often provide much-needed insight that can benefit the business and brand as a whole.
Not only can employees offer crucial knowledge to your business but keeping open lines of communication can also make your employees feel heard and valued. Being recognized and appreciated as an asset to the company is a highly positive experience for many employees. You may be surprised by what a remarkable difference it makes in attitude, performance, and loyalty.
Employer to Employee Communication
Of course, communication is a two-way street: employers should also be able to carry a dialogue with their employees, offering both feedback and insight about the future. Discussing feedback with employees is perhaps not the most well-liked activity in business. After all, no one wants to hear or deliver bad news, like telling an employee their performance isn’t quite up to par. However, offering feedback is a crucial opportunity to help employees do better; with effective communication and improvement strategies in place, both parties can benefit from these feedback sessions.
But communication isn’t always about critique, either. It can also be an opportunity to share plans—both for employers and employees. In the current state of the world, members of the workforce are looking for some semblance of job security to assuage employment anxiety.
While employers can’t offer certainty about the future, they can offer an ideal insight into how the company plans to proceed. Communicating goals, guidelines, policies, approaches, and expectations can help set employees’ minds at ease and inform the choices they will make about their future with the company.
If you’re not utilizing two-way communication in your business, you may be missing a chance to optimize performance and overall satisfaction. So, what are you waiting for? Get the conversation started today!