Top tips to master the art of effective communication
Communication is no longer considered a soft skill, says Carmine Gallo in Harvard Business Review. "Leaders who reach the top do not simply pay lip service to the importance of effective communication. Instead, they study art in all its forms — writing, speaking, presenting — and constantly strive to improve on those skills".
“You cannot over-invest in communication skills — written and oral skills,” says former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, who now serves on Amazon’s board. “If you cannot simplify a message and communicate it compellingly, believe me, you cannot get the masses to follow you.”
So when there is so much that needs to be said, how do you cut through the noise and get your messages to the people that need it?
In a recent survey at Oak Engage, we found that a staggering 81% of HR leaders agree that weak internal communication contributes to low morale, lack of motivation and a disengaged workforce. The survey also found that more than half (57%) of HR leaders believe that poor internal communication causes staff attrition. This proves that having an effective internal communications strategy is essential to the success of your business and the wellbeing of your employees.
As a result, many businesses need to adapt their practices to help better support their employees and communicate with them effectively. Let’s take a look at some best practices for your internal communications strategy from industry experts to keep your workforce engaged, connected and motivated.
As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 60% of companies have no long term strategy in place for their internal communications and for those that do only 12% measure the effectiveness of their comms. All great ideas need a great strategy.
What do you want your communications to do for your team and your company? What do you need to do to achieve it and make it happen? Having a well formulated strategy and the ability to analyse your content should keep you on track and ensure you reach your internal communications goals.
We’ve created a practical strategy guide to help get you started.
2. Utilise storytelling
Storytelling is a really powerful way of bringing your ideas and concepts to life, it makes your ideas relatable, memorable and creates a more enjoyable experience for those engaging with your messages. So what makes a great story?
3. Open Communication
Effective and open communication can have a huge impact on employee engagement and productivity. Open communication should be clear and it should make people feel safe, as well as strengthening trust and fostering creativity and innovation.
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A great way to communicate openly with employees is to listen to their ideas and opinions on things like projects, policies and culture. Not only will it strengthen innovation and creativity in the workplace, it will also have a huge impact on trust. Feedback tools like polls and pulse surveys are essential for gathering ideas and opinions, but also really make your employees feel valued and that their opinion really has an impact at work, which will in turn encourage them to communicate openly.
Lisa Seagroatt, Workplace Culture Expert told Oak Engage: “Strong leadership and good communication are more critical to creating healthy workplace cultures in a physical and digitals sense. The key to ensuring that a lack of workplace visibility doesn’t have a negative impact as a result of remote working is communication. Anyone managing a team needs to ensure that they ‘check in’ regularly with their team members.”
4. Inspire action
Your messages should inspire and motivate colleagues. The main goal with internal communications is to incite action and encourage your teams to go the extra mile and really get involved with what’s occurring in the workplace. Here are some ideas for inspiring action amongst employees:
Want to enhance your knowledge even more on business communications, we have a comprehensive guide that covers the types of communication, why it’s so important and how you can improve your business communications right here.
5. Embrace technology
Tools should enhance our lives and our ability to do our jobs and therefore any internal communications system that you implement should really be an addition to the daily lives of your employees.
Oak Engage offers a huge variety of amazing features that really give your employees the tools they need to collaborate and work effectively, no matter where they’re working from.
Will Murray, CEO at Oak Engage said: “The current tools that businesses are using to connect with their staff just aren’t cutting it and we believe that intranets should be working a whole lot harder for them.”
“The technology that internal communicators have at their fingertips is currently not fit for purpose and that’s why they’re looking for new ways to engage with their employees. Hybrid working is here to stay in some capacity and businesses need to adapt their practices in order for their people to feel motivated and engaged.”
“Oak Engage can empower businesses to reach every employee, every time by using personalised curated content which will stop your employees being overloaded with irrelevant information and boost employee engagement. Today’s teams need a new way to communicate that reduces noise and this will continue to be our priority.”
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