Five Steps To Better Employee Communications

from sci​ence​and​so​ci​ety​.info

Commu­ni­ca­tion is really impor­tant, spe­cially when you are mak­ing some changes in your busi­ness. Change man­age­ment is pain man­age­ment. And pain man­age­ment is com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­age­ment. It is impor­tant to be very pre­cise, con­cise and under­stand­able so that peo­ple will know what to expect. Pre­dictabil­ity is one of the facets of a good change man­age­ment pro­gram and is some­thing that peo­ple will appre­ci­ate as they move from one tran­si­tion point to the next.

by Lance Haun on May 11, 2009

I have always been one of those guys who sees the world in non-exact, change filled, and neb­u­lous ways. I am hes­i­tant to say I am a big pic­ture thinker because every­one loves to say that they are a big pic­ture thinker (while, of course, still being great with details). That’s always a load of crap though. I don’t think I am the best big pic­ture or details guy, I just think I deal with change and uncer­tainty bet­ter because that’s what the world is to me.

Then there’s my wife. She has a very sci­en­tific view of the world and there will be order in the world. She wants to explain every­thing to me and she expects me to do the same. And while I am a trivia buff, I don’t always know why things work the way they do. I can tell it is a source of frus­tra­tion at times. I know the answer but not the expla­na­tion behind it.

After three and a half years of mar­riage, I’ve learned to either explain the why or help her research it more her­self. Sim­ply leav­ing the answer to her ques­tion out there with­out fur­ther expla­na­tion is madening.

What I’ve found in com­mu­ni­cat­ing to employ­ees that there are the same expec­ta­tions. Some deal bet­ter with change than oth­ers. Some just want to know what the change is and they’ll move on. Some want expla­na­tions and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions (and they still might not be sat­is­fied). And when­ever you com­mu­ni­cate some­thing new, you have to meet the needs of all these peo­ple in an easy to read com­mu­ni­ca­tion. A cou­ple of sim­ple ways I’ve done this:

1. Write like a news­pa­per story. If you have read a lot of news­pa­pers like I have, you know the basic for­mat: a con­cise title, the most per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion in the first few lines and the details to fol­low. I can’t tell you the num­ber of times that I’ve seen an employee com­mu­ni­ca­tion start with an expla­na­tion and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion before deliv­er­ing the news.

2. Sim­plify every­thing. Don’t use $64 words. Don’t use cor­po­rate speak. Imag­ine you have an employee that just started and was read­ing the comu­ni­ca­tion that you send out and for­mat it appro­pri­ately. Again, peo­ple that are just look­ing for answers will drop off after they get the infor­ma­tion they want so you can use more words to explain if needed to avoid cor­po­rate speak.

3. Don’t lie and don’t spin. I think this is a good idea regard­less of what you’re doing but I think it is incred­i­bly impor­tant in employee com­mu­ni­ca­tion. If you are going to spin your way to a pos­i­tive mes­sage or lie about any­thing, despin and tell the truth or don’t send any­thing out. Your employ­ees deserve the truth from you and if you can’t deliver that, you shouldn’t deliver a bad mes­sage that peo­ple assume is true (or worse, they assume it is false because you’ve lied and spun before).

4. Use a con­tact per­son for your employ­ees that ques­tion every­thing. Employ­ees should be clear that they can speak to the con­tact per­son if they have any ques­tions. Often times, these are the same peo­ple every time that ques­tion every­thing and always have way more ques­tions than every­one else. A con­tact per­son can save you from writ­ing a novel for a cou­ple of peo­ple that ques­tion everything.

5. Recom­mu­ni­cate when nec­es­sary. If your con­tact per­son is being bom­barded with ques­tions, your com­mu­ni­ca­tion was prob­a­bly inad­e­quate. In order to effec­tively com­mu­ni­cate, you have to be com­mit­ted to send­ing out more infor­ma­tion and admit­ing your orig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion was inad­e­quate. Use the same tem­plate as before in your recom­mu­ni­ca­tion but address the ques­tions you have received.

While employee com­mu­ni­ca­tions can be a chal­lenge, using an effec­tive approach can elim­i­nate chal­lenges. And I guess in that way, I do have a sci­en­tific way of doing things.