HR Basic: Open Communication

Here is a topic that generates an interesting debate. What makes it interesting is what constitutes open communication. Most people will agree on the why it is needed, however its doing it and considering the what that makes it complicated.

Try to Google “Open Communication in the Workplace” and you will get over 500,000 web sites. While not reading all of them but doing a quick review, the main topic is about why its needed but not about what it is.

Let’s start with the why open communication is important.  The one word answer: engagement. Engagement is about employee satisfaction, employees caring about what is happening in the business, employees wanting to take care of the customer, employees interested in the sales numbers and employees understanding the direction of the company. Think about it – if all your employees truly cared about all of these items, would you have a better business? Would you have a more profitable business? Would you be able to focus on the strategy and long-term goals of the business?

Absolutely! No wonder everyone can agree that it’s important.

Onto the “what is open communication” and what it looks like and how can you implement it. After all the implementation is where it gets sticky.

Open communication is many things, here’s a partial list:

• constant communication of the vision
• how employees fit into the vision
• being open to feedback from employees
• being open to suggestions from employees
• informing employees of the business goals
• giving employees the status of the business goals
• sharing how employees contribute to the business goals
• telling everyone the sales projections
• telling everyone the status of the sales projections
• sharing stories from or about the customers

Now some of these are easy to share and others are viewed with a skeptical eye. Obviously the financial information usually raises some objections – understandable but it needs to be done. The magic is in how its done!

The best way for everyone to get the same message and not have it filtered by others is to have a meeting. Yes an all employee meeting, town hall, lunch, get together, whatever you want to call it – what’s important is that everyone is there and together. Have these on a regular basis – monthly or quarterly – determine what works best for the company.

Company Vision: As the leader of the company you need to get in front of everyone and talk about the vision. Not just the words on a piece of paper but what it means on a day-to-day basis for your employees and the customers. Take it down to the department level and how each department contributes to the vision, throw in some stories of how it was demonstrated with actual examples. People love the true life examples, they can relate to it and understand what it means. Pick a new department at each meeting.

Employee Feedback/Suggestions: This usually congers up two different images. One of the dusty suggestion box that only gets complaints about what is being done. Two of employees giving you grief for every decision that is made. Start be getting out of the negative mindset and if your suggestion box is dusty and negative – throw it out! Create a new way for people to provide feedback, whether its on a company intranet, in a town hall meeting where you ask for it or keep your door open for people to stop by. You have to be receptive for this to work, this does not mean you have to agree with everyone and everything. What it means is that you are willing to engage in polite discussion about questions, concerns and information. Make sure you let them know that this is meant for constructive feedback and you want people to provide some type of solution as whining and complaining are unacceptable.

Business Goals: You have these and hopefully they are written down. Create a presentation, a poster, anything to let people know what is expected from the business this year.  For example: if one of the goals is to increase your product line – tell them, open it up for suggestions, ask them what customers are saying or asking for.  You don’t have to do this on your own. Let each person help you! As you start working towards the goals, tell everyone the game plan, how they can help, and update the status. Think about it – wouldn’t you love to have everyone helping you achieve the goals?

Customer Stories: Not all of your employees will have direct contact with the customer so they may not know about what is working well, what needs to improve and what simple doesn’t work. You or maybe someone in customer service can provide “the good, the bad and the ugly” or customer success stories or how your product/service helped the customer achieve their goal. The possibilities are endless here. This will also help those who don’t have direct contact understand how they can affect the customer even indirectly.

Financials: This is the one that get the most push back. Owners, CEO’s, CFO’s, etc. always get hesitant about sharing financial information especially in a privately held company. Understandable, however if you want your employees to help with increasing sales and decreasing expenses – you have to tell them something. First make sure all your employees are aware of the confidentiality of the information (include it in your handbook if you have one). Second, share something – maybe the exact numbers make you very uncomfortable, that’s ok – use a chart, graph, percentages of goal and be creative.

If you are not already practicing open communication, get started and reap the rewards.  It has to be done if you want to do more than survive. Open communication is necessary to achieve success – not only with and through your people but through you and your customers.

Write us at [email protected]  for a consultation on how we can create an open communication program for you.