Wednesday, April 20, 2011




How to Maintain Good Communication With Employees

To keep your employees in the loop, schedule staff messages in advance so they correspond with media or market releases. Scrolling news tickers and desktop alerts are effective in attaining high message cut through and let your staff receive news releases the moment they become public. If you want to personalize announcements to your employees, you can create an internal news ticker and set it to appear at the right time.

To manage rumors, release information early and tell your staff that you will provide regular updates. If you stall, rumors can get out of hand and employees may accept them as the truth. Some organizations put up an online message board where people can anonymously post anything they have heard. Some managers may disapprove of a "rumor mill", but keep in mind that rumors will still exist without it. A message board provides an opportunity to correct them right away.

It is a good idea to involve your managers in delivering messages, as employees prefer to communicate with their immediate superiors than with any other management level. This is especially important during uncertain times. See to it that your team knows what and how to communicate. It is also helpful to establish a wider communications support team aside from the core communications or management group.

What is success for your company? This vision needs to be expressed at a high level and interpreted down to individual departments and staff in terms of what it means to them. Line managers and supervisors are great at providing this perspective.

Set up blogs for your managers and have them write about relevant issues. Invite staff to ask questions and post comments. Blogs will help employees realize that managers are also human.

What gets measured gets done, so don't forget to evaluate the effectiveness of your managers as communicators. Staff surveys and polls can help you with this. A short poll can give you insight on how well each employee understands key messages, and this information can be used to measure each manager's effectiveness as a communicator.

And finally, make internal communications two-way. Encourage employees to ask questions, raise concerns, and provide suggestions. Be open to all kinds of comments including negative ones. Address sensitive issues in face to face meetings, and place suggestion boxes around the office.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Meagor

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