Are You Communicating In Your Small Business?

How well are you keeping the lines of communication open with your employees? If you are failing to connect with them and to keep them informed of the company's day to day business, it can often be challenging for them to stay focused on their job duties and to have any sense of direction in the company. As you are able to communicate effectively with your staff you will be able to prevent series issues from arising like stalls in productivity, ordering problems, decreased employee morale, and many other things.

Effective communication in any company comes down to the following:
- Properly transmitting your information or ideas to your staff
- Open to staff opinions and feedback
- Future planning and direction of the company

We all rely on communication but unfortunately not too many of us are really great at it. How are you communicating with your staff or co-workers? In many business settings there are meetings that are held and job duties assigned this way and often via email. Staying in touch with your staff and making sure you are "on the same page" will be vital in order to keep production ahead of schedule and to ensure your staff understands what is expected of them.

Does your staff appreciate working for you? One way you can find out is by using employee surveys. Asking them through a survey is a great way to help you understand what type of issues you are dealing with and will also be able to help you figure out areas that you can change as a manager and can help you to learn how you can communicate better with your staff. Managers may not recognize that their miscommunication could be leading to a lot of the issues within the organization.

Having the right type of communication in your company is a great way to help your staff stay motivated. When people know what is expected of them, it will make it much easier for them to be able to do their jobs but they can feel appreciated as you tell them how much you appreciate their hard work. How else will employees know that the work they are doing is appreciated if you are not telling them?

What else can communication do? It can stop misunderstandings between management and employees and just between staff members in general. In many cases people may not realize that they are having communication problems and can just feel that someone within the company may personally dislike them. When you are keeping the lines of communication open and clear, you can easily keep your employees all on the same page and to really avoid those little bumps in the road that are not going to progress the company.

Employees need to work for a company that does have effective communication so they understand when it is time to turn in their projects and reports. It is also helpful for your staff to have a system in place where they can easily provide you with feedback which can help you to make better company policies.

In addition to talking to your employees and keeping them in the loop you also need to focus on written communication. Emails are commonly used to post deadlines and other information for your staff. Watch how you word your emails as you do not want to say anything that could be misinterpreted. Emails are one of the areas that people commonly have miscommunication with as some people often write jokes in the emails and other things, which are easily misunderstood and can lead to a lot of issues within the company.