If you expect to accomplish anything in life, great communication skills are a top priority. Unfortunately, a lack of communication in the workplace is quite common.
There are many possible reasons why your office can’t seem to communicate effectively. It’s important to realize the issue and correct it because poor communication at work will only hurt your business. Read on to learn how to improve communication in the workplace.
4 Causes of Lack of Communication in the Workplace
The Issue: Lack of leadership
Poor leadership is a major cause of bad communication throughout an office. A leader is expected to have impeccable speaking and writing skills in order to properly manage the functions of a workplace. Lacking in this area of expertise can be detrimental to the communication levels, not to mention the overall health, of an organization. Employees often mirror their managers and leaders, and leaders that have poor communication skills will set the tone for a lack of communication in the workplace.
The Fix: Upskilling and leadership training
Upskilling, retaining employees and allowing them to build their skillset and work their way into leadership positions, is an important aspect of most businesses. Not only does it create amazing leaders that value those below them and communicate effectively, but it also saves your company money on recruitment and other operational costs.
Strong leaders will always have an open mind about learning and improving. That’s why it’s important to have leadership trainings in place to help your leaders improve their communication and leadership skills. Trainings like Leadership Stories can help managers kick their poor communication habits and start connecting more deeply with their employees.
The Issue: Undertrained employees
If employees do not have a full understanding of the work they’re doing, there’s bound to be problems. Make sure to take the right steps in bringing in new employees so that they will be on the same page as everyone else. You don’t want information going to the wrong places and you certainly want your message to be relayed accurately and in a timely manner. Keep in mind that undertraining employees can also, very quickly, lead to disengagement throughout an office.
The Fix: Prioritize ongoing training
An important first step here would be to remain adamant during the new hire training process to get your new employees off on the right foot. Bringing someone new to the team requires patience and once you’ve attained the desired level of communication, things can only go up from there! Try using gamification to spice up the hiring and onboarding process. Additional training down the road and retraining will also be essential to avoid a lack of communication at work. Look at ongoing training as an opportunity for your organization to be ever growing — not a setback.
The Issue: An unclear vision
Employees not knowing or understanding what needs to be accomplished will be a major roadblock for you and your organization. The whole idea of a team is to collaborate to reach a universal goal, and if you don’t have a clear company goal, your employees have nothing to work toward!
The Fix: Establish clear company core values
Express your organization’s mission statement and goals to employees as clearly as possible, and frequently! A full understanding of your company core values will free you both of any gray area on the subject. This is a perfect time to state what’s expected and clear up any questions.
The Issue: Disengagement
You couldn’t ask for a bigger problem than disengagement. This can be dangerous if not handled right away. It brings not only poor communication in the workplace but also a lack of effort put forth toward tasks. Prevalent disengagement can devastate any level of efficiency your office might have. However, it is an issue that can be solved.
The Fix: Engage with team building activities
Being continuously proactive with engagement strategies is key here. Team building exercises are a great help. Try: TeamBonding’s, Build-A-Boat program. A program such as this involves teams working together to accomplish a desired goal. This activity strengthens communication, boosts leadership and team spirit. When the activity concludes, get ready to take your new and improved skills back to the workplace. Plan these activities often to stay on top of your team building efforts.
Kick Your Lack of Communication at Work
We hope these four easy fixes will help you improve communication issues in the workplace. If your team needs a little more help kicking off leadership training or team building events, reach out to our team to help facilitate your communication building events!
