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A team leader or business owner without good communication skills can lead to a slump in employee productivity. Ideas may not be clearly defined and as a consequence projects may fail to meet deadlines. By making small and simple adjustments you can turn this around, not just for the leader but for the whole team. We look at how to improve communication in the workplace so you can boost productivity and have more positive business outcomes. Learn more about transitioning from office to cloud culture.

For starters, try these small and simple adjustments around the workplace for more effective team communication.

1. Clarify roles & responsibilities

Identify your team and make sure that everyone is clear about roles and responsibilities. This will help to streamline office communication, so people know who to talk to if they need information. Often productivity can be boosted by simply having clear reporting lines.

2. Give feedback

Constructive feedback for your team is important because it pinpoints areas that employees need to work on. It also gives them a chance to communicate how you can help them improve. Do they need guidance or more creative freedom to perform better? Having a culture of open dialogue makes it easier for there to be a two-way conversation.

3. Give praise

Everyone likes to be acknowledged for their efforts, and giving praise is a simple way to inspire more productivity within your team. Praise can be given by virtual or verbal feedback to acknowledge individual team members or to the whole team as a public act of appreciation. In fact, research by Globoforce showed 69% of employees say they would work harder if they were better appreciated and recognized.

4. Keep everyone on the same page

Provide good communication platforms so employees can share updates, ideas, questions and concerns. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute showed organisations with connected employees have a boost in productivity by 20-25%. Platforms such as Slack and Asana can help keep everyone stay in regular contact and on the same page, as well as manage tasks and project workflows. This reduces the need for long emails (which people might not read) and regular meetings (where people might tune out).

Benefits of investing in strong communication skills

Working on your communication skills can not only achieve better productivity for you as a leader or business owner but also for your employees and how they engage with each other. Creating a workplace culture that values effective communication will help everyone to:

Work together more cohesively
Be more comfortable engaging with each other
Make tasks and projects crystal clear so there are less errors
Manage diversity within the team and different personality types
Be more transparent around discussing and dealing with issues

Want to learn how to improve communication in the workplace?

If you want a noticeable long-term transformation in your workplace, it’s best to invest in professional communication training for you and your team. When you invest in their communication skills it:

Yields a bigger impact on your team’s productivity
Helps them to build confidence in their abilities
Inspires everyone for greater workplace productivity and
Achieves more positive business outcomes.

After sending a team from ANZ to our training program, Capability and Performance Manager, Michael Ziccone told us “there [had] been a noticeable uplift in our sales performance, resilience and morale, as our employees recognise the time and investment ANZ has made in their personal development.”

Creating a positive work environment greatly influences employees’ attitudes towards their job and coworkers, performance levels and productivity. Providing a positive work environment goes far beyond the actual space to include corporate culture and leadership too.

Benefits of Creating a Positive Work Environment

Cultivating a positive atmosphere, where employees feel respected and important, can yield many benefits.

Did you know that research from Deloitte shows that 94% of executives and 88% of employees think a positive corporate culture is an essential part of a company’s success?

A positive work environment also:

Increases employee happiness by as much as 33%.
Prevents or reduces long-term sick leave.
Boosts productivity, creativity, and profitability.
Decreases employee turnover, in some cases by 58%.
Increases company revenue by a whopping 33%.

With so many benefits, creating a positive work environment should be an essential part of your ongoing corporate strategy. After all, it’s one of the best ways to invest in your employees and make sure they can perform at their best.

How to Create a Positive Work Environment

There’s a lot to think about when creating a positive work environment. Here are some of the ways we make sure our employees are happy, healthy, and are their best selves here at Change Recruitment. Learn more about this hybrid working model.

1) Protect Employees Mental Health

According to the Mental Health Foundation, 14.7% of employees encounter mental health problems at work. Women in full-time employment are also twice as likely to struggle with mental health issues.

So, it’s possible that your employees could experience mental health problems while working for your company. Poor mental health can often lead to sick leave, which negatively impacts your business and team.

Employee Assistance Programmes are a great way to address problems before they begin and create a work environment where employees are happy and healthy. EAP programmes, like Health Assured, allow employees to access a range of services including online and telephone mental health support.

You should also work to create a culture that encourages employees to talk openly about how they feel, both with their coworkers and line managers. Talking about mental health can go a long way towards helping employees feel supported and happy at work. Don’t keep mental health in the closet.

2) Look at Your Actual Working Environment

As we discussed in an earlier article, your physical workspace greatly impacts employee morale and relationships.

For example, collaborative spaces can reduce employee stress and encourage more physical activity. Likewise, a mixture of open plan, breakout areas, and private spaces allow employees to choose where they work based on preference and project needs.

Different people work better in different spaces. As such, most experts suggest providing a range of options and giving employees the freedom to work where they feel they can achieve the best results.

3) Host Company Events

Research from the Center for Talent Innovation shows that a collective spirit and sense of belonging can significantly boost a company’s success by increasing productivity, motivation, and engagement by as much as 350%.

Company events are an excellent opportunity to allow employees to come together and build strong relationships outside the boardroom.

Here at Change, we host a wide variety of events, including off-site as well as onsite socials. We even have the occasional ad-hoc drink.

As our employees come from a range of backgrounds and represent a plethora of diverse lifestyles, we try to create events suitable for everyone. So, some might include after-work drinks, while other events happen during work hours or focus on learning and internal networking.

4) Healthy Body = A Healthy Mind

We all know it’s essential to be physically active and try to make it to the gym at least once a week. The NHS recommends getting at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a week and strength training. However, only one in three British adults get enough exercise.

And, the most common excuse?

Not having enough time.

When our schedules are jam-packed with essential meetings and pressing deadlines, it’s easy to skip the gym. But, there’s a real business benefit to encouraging employees to leave their desks and break a sweat.

Exercise not only prevents long-term sick leave, but it also reduces stress, boosts energy levels and can even improve productivity. A Harvard Study connected physical activity with improved brain functions like increased creativity, quicker learning, shaper memory and enhanced concentration.

So, if you really want your employees performing at their best, make sure they get to the gym and prioritise their physical well-being. We encourage employees to get active in all sorts of ways like discounts at local gyms, health initiatives, walking and running at lunchtime and of course, our famous internal table tennis competitions.

Our Glasgow office offers onsite fitness classes so that employees can get their heart racing during business hours.

5) Create Strong Lines of Communication

Modern technology, in some ways, makes it easier than ever to communicate at lightning speeds. More than 269 billion emails are sent each day across the world and global workforces increasingly rely on online communication tools like WhatsApp, Slack, and Zoom.

Yet, having so many options, on-hand may not be a good thing. It’s far too easy to miss messages. For example, employees only open 24% of all emails.

Poor communication can negatively impact every aspect of your business, including customer service, employee retention, productivity & your team’s ability to meet deadlines and even affect your bottom line.

As such, it’s crucial to think about how you and your employees communicate when creating a positive work environment. Consider how you speak to each other and leaders’ communication styles.

For example, we host businesswide monthly catch-ups to talk about our company’s progress, how it aligns with long-term goals and employees’ role in the process. Managers also host one-to-one sessions to make sure any issues are addressed ahead of time and employees feel completely supported.

6) Promote Diversity

We believe diversity is an essential ingredient for creating a positive workplace.

And, research from Glassdoor supports this notion as 67% of individuals said diversity was an essential factor when deciding where to work.

A diverse workforce yields many, many impressive business benefits too. Not only does a diverse workforce make it easier to attract your industry’s best and brightest, but it also increases productivity and profits.

Employees are naturally more comfortable, which opens the door for creative thinking and innovative ideas. Plus, when employees are happier with their work environment, they’re less likely to spend their time looking for another job.

Our work environment promotes diversity in all of its forms. We actively look for ways to support mothers, recent graduates and people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We have employees from around the world and a multilingual workforce, which has allowed us to expand our international recruitment offering and extend our reach beyond Scotland.

7) Provide Opportunities for Career Development

Almost everyone wants an opportunity to learn and improve their skills. Research from LinkedIn supports this claim as 93% of employees reported they’d prefer to work for a company that provides regular training and career development.

Encouraging your employees to grow not only helps engagement but also boosts retention rates and increases your available resources as staff can handle more complex tasks. As employees become more advanced, you can scale your business.

Training should incorporate both hard as well as soft skills and provide opportunities for personal and professional development. Some companies give employees a monthly allowance to spend on training, allow for staff to spend one day a quarter on personal growth or create mentor programmes.

All of which creates a positive work environment, where employees are engaged, happy and performing at their best.

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How To Improve Communication In The Workplace: 4 Ways To Boost Business Outcomes