How to Foster Open Communication in the Workplace
Open and effective communication in the workplace is essential in securing success for a team. If team members can feel confident that they can openly communicate with one another, this can foster collaboration, conflict resolution, cross-training, and so much more. The benefits of open communication in the workplace are invaluable.
Unfortunately, open communication isn’t something that can be easily established overnight. In fact, many managers may find themselves struggling to encourage open communication within their teams for one reason or another. If you find yourself in this same situation, keep reading for tips on how to foster open communication in the workplace.
Encourage and ask for feedback
No one wants to feel unheard and depending on how fast-paced or large your team is, employees can often feel like they are lost in the mix of things and that their personal contributions or input are left ignored or unappreciated on a daily basis. Actively seek out your employees’ feedback on various aspects, from current projects you are working on to training you are asking the team to take part in.
Employees have the opportunity to see things you can’t, and can offer valued insight into day-to-day operations. Let your team know you actively want their honest feedback and when they do offer feedback, be sure to acknowledge it.
Be respectful in communication
When you are communicating with employees, make an effort to demonstrate respect for employees. Showing respect demonstrates that you value them and what they are communicating to you. Give them your full attention, maintain eye contact, and acknowledge what they are saying.
If they come to you to offer feedback, you don’t want to be turned away and typing in an entirely different conversation on your laptop. This just comes off as disinterested and dismissive, and will only discourage the employee from communicating openly in the future.
Take action and be proactive
When you get feedback from your employees, make sure you are actually taking it into consideration when making decisions going forward. Let’s say you are currently having your team go through training in order to have a new task run by your team. As training is ongoing, you invite your team to send in their feedback on the progress and what type of support they would want to get going forward as they continue to learn the task.
Don’t just ask for feedback only to turn around and keep things going completely unchanged. Take the time to look at the feedback and how it can be used to improve the training. Have your employees been faced with written instructions, but prefer live walkthroughs or demonstrations? Actively listening to their feedback and demonstrating that it makes an impact in the workplace will help foster open communication going forward.
Set an example
As someone in a leadership role, you will be looked at as an example to follow. If you want to foster open communication in the workplace, make sure you are contributing individually to that effort as well.
Open communication in the workplace can make everyone’s day-to-day work better – good luck!