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Good communication is essential in the workplace. Teams working together need to communicate effectively to improve productivity and the quality of work produced. Communication can be hard to achieve in a modern office, with more focus on technology and working from home than on effective in-office communicating.
Office Design
The design of your office can make a big difference to how well your staff can communicate with each other. A design firm like Zentura can help create a space that makes working together easier. Open plan offices are popular, as they make it easier for staff to talk to each other as they work. However, you also need a mix of spaces to allow effective work. Staff need breakaway spaces where they can go to work together on collaborative projects with distraction. You need meeting space, and quiet spaces for phone calls. Remember to think beyond just allowing staff to talk to each other easily.
Online Tools
Increasingly staff are working with people who aren’t in the office with them. Whether they’re dealing with suppliers and contractors from other companies, or working with remote colleagues, they need a way to talk to these people easily. Email is of course still popular, but more instant tools can make this easier.
Instant messaging services designed for business allow you to easily share files, as well as talking to each other. Screen sharing can be very useful for remotely attending meetings or delivering distance training.
Make Time
For good leadership, it is essential that you make time to communicate properly with your team. Make time for regular one to one meetings with your team. Even if you have an open door policy, a more private setting can make it easier for employees to express concerns and ask for any help they may need to perform their jobs better. Book these one to ones as an opportunity to do this, and make sure you honour them. Everybody has to cancel a meeting occasionally, but often rearranging or missing these meetings sends a message to your staff that you don’t value them.
A weekly team meeting is also important for communication. Use this time to check in on the goals for the week and any blockers potentially standing in the way. By taking the time to go over the week ahead, you can head off potential problems and give your team better options to work in a collaborative way. In these meetings, give people an opportunity to ask questions, in order to find other potential issues and head them off before they become bigger problems.
You should also make the time to share clear expectations with your team. If they don’t know what you want from them, they can’t deliver effective results. Make sure you are communicating quickly what you want, so they can deliver the results you want. Set clear goals for you, the company, and your team so you can properly measure success and find better ways of working together.
