Communication Best Practices: How to Improve Your Organizational Communication

With the fast-paced changes in communication, it can be a challenge to stay up to date. Now is the ideal time to evaluate how your organization communicates and make sure it’s still effective. From employee engagement to customer experience, a lot is riding on getting this right. Here we’ll explore some best practices for both organizational and personal communication that you can use as a guide when reviewing your company’s communications. Let’s get started!

Points Communication Best Practices:

1. Design a Plan for Success

A successful communications strategy requires careful planning. You need to think about the objectives you want to achieve, identify different audiences, consider the types of messages that need to be sent out, and decide on appropriate channels for each message. Lastly, allocate a budget so you can prioritize what’s important. Having a strategic roadmap in place will make it much easier to follow best practices when it comes to effective communication.

2. Personalization

Nowadays, it’s important to create targeted communications that stand out from all the noise. Setting communication preferences on team chat is a great way to do this – by creating #channels like #sales, #marketing, or #big ideas, staff can decide which topics they want to follow and turn notifications on and off when needed. An intranet newsfeed can also be personalized so that relevant company and industry news gets mixed in with team updates, colleagues can even use social features to create activity walls and choose who to follow. All of these strategies help employees focus on what’s important without being overwhelmed by irrelevant messages. In other words, when communication is personalized, there’s less blah and more action!

3. Stories

Telling stories is a great way to bring your corporate message to life. Instead of simply sending out a memo about an employee wellness strategy, make it more meaningful by providing real-life examples that people can relate to. Employees are sure to be more engaged with the messaging if they can see themselves in the story! To further encourage engagement, consider creating platforms where employees can share their own experiences. For example, you could create a ‘day in the life’ feature, set up a team blog or even highlight an employee of the month. Doing this will help draw your workers into the message and make them feel heard.

4. Virtual

Visuals are a powerful way to communicate ideas in an easily digestible format. They can inspire, educate, and entertain audiences more effectively than text alone. That’s why successful organizations have made visual communication best practice. By incorporating visuals such as infographics, videos, or presentations into your messaging, you can make sure that your message resonates with your audience in the most impactful way.

5. Two-Way Communication

Gone are the days of top-down communication. Today, successful communication requires multiple channels and perspectives from all levels of the business. With IMs, blogs, forums, and activity walls, there’s now a way for everyone to share their ideas and feedback with leadership. Two-way communication creates bridges between different departments and remote staff so collaboration becomes easier than ever. It also shows employees that their opinions matter which can lead to improved morale and greater commitment to reaching company goals. By embracing two-way communication, businesses foster an inclusive culture where everyone is valued.

6. Allow For Informal Communication

Remote working can be lonely and isolating, so it’s important to provide opportunities for staff to connect socially. Slack or team chat channels are great for this – create some #timeout or #random channels where your employees can chat informally about their weekend plans or exchange tips on home-working. Emojis, quizzes, and activity walls add a fun element that people enjoy. By making an effort to bring your remote workforce together, you can help reduce loneliness and isolation.

7. Selecting a delivery channel is as important as delivering messages

It is important to stay on top of how people are communicating and ensure that your message reaches the right audience. To reach frontline workers, a text message or business IM may be the most effective delivery channel as many non-desk workers do not have company email addresses. Check-in with employees, customers, and stakeholders to find out what communication methods they prefer. Don’t let messages get lost by using the wrong channels!

8. How to measure success?

Gone are the days of setting and forgetting your communications. Best practice now involves regularly measuring and reviewing the success of your campaigns, as this is the only way to understand how effective they were.

To get a thorough overview, you should look at below metrics:

• Open rates
• Downloads
• Click-throughs
• Interactions (likes, shares, and comments)
• Surveys
• Focus groups.

With these measurements in hand, you can see if your strategy has been successful – so don’t forget to check in on them from time to time!

5 Best Practices for Improving Personal Communication

Communication is not limited to the corporate level. Communication in any organization is only as good as the people who use it. Here are five techniques to improve the effectiveness of your communications.

1. Listening

Effective communication requires active listening. That includes keeping eye contact, having an open posture with uncrossed arms, and showing interest through expressions and nods. It’s also important to confirm your understanding by summarizing what has been heard and asking clarifying questions. Doing this helps ensure that both parties understand each other and that communication is effective.

2. Be Clear And Concise

When communicating, it’s important to write like a human. Keep your sentences concise and avoid repetition. Finally, add emotion to your writing to make it more engaging. Tools such as Grammarly can help you sharpen up your work and get rid of any unnecessary clutter.

3. Be Relevant

When communicating, it’s important to tailor your message to the needs and understanding of your audience. Above all else, make sure to craft your message in a way that resonates with your audience.

4. Be Responsive

The finest communicators are considerate of others. And there is no better way to demonstrate respect than to be responsive. Make it a priority to respond to people as soon as possible. Respond to emails and phone calls as soon as feasible, from colleagues to customers and vendors. Your coworkers will feel appreciated, and your customers will enjoy your excellent service.

5. Verify Before You Send

It’s essential to read over your messages before sending them. Even when you’re in a hurry and using a mobile device, typos can slip through easily with auto-predicting text. These kinds of errors make it look like you aren’t professional or careful, so use spell checkers or get someone else to review it. Make sure to always double-check your communications – it’s an important rule that shouldn’t be forgotten!

Communication Best Practices: A Short Overview

Organizations need to invest in communication strategies if they want to stay competitive in 2021. Effective communication can boost employee productivity by up to 25%, reduce staff turnover, and improve customer satisfaction. To develop an effective plan, incorporate storytelling and visual media. Also encourage employees to review their communication styles, using best practices as a guide. For more tips on how to create better communications, check out the Creative Social Intranet blog! Creative Social Intranet is here to help – try it for a free demo.