Communication is absolutely essential to an efficient and productive work environment. Despite this, many managers and business owners struggle with developing healthy communication habits within their office environment. Like any business asset, you need to make a conscious effort to control communication within your office if you are to reap the benefits. Creating and following policies and procedures regarding communication is the first step towards this.

Implementing Policies and Procedures Regarding Communication

Creating a standard for in-office communication is the first step towards developing successful and productive in-office communication habits. When given the freedom to communicate however they desire, many employees will get lost in a morass of confusion, often through no fault of their own. Everyone has a different style of communication, and this can lead to miscommunication. Creating standards gives everyone a shared language that they can communicate within.

As an example, older generations tend to communicate by phone while newer generations tend to communicate by email. Allowing employees to communicate as they desire may lead to older employees wondering why other employees won’t just pick up the phone and younger employees getting frustrated by a barrage of calls. Having standards in place completely sidesteps this issue.

Using the Correct Technology for your Business

When trying to create a healthy environment for communication, the last thing you want is for your technology to get in the way. The right email provider can make communications far more efficient while the wrong email provider can lead to missed messages, irritation and confusion. Email providers need to be extremely reliable, as the bulk of inter-office business today is done via email.

Email provides a very unobtrusive and dependable form of communication that is very valuable in today’s fast-paced business world. In particular, cloud email hosting services are often incredibly useful for a business. Email providers should have the storage space and speed necessary to respond to all requests.

How Instant Messaging can Improve Efficiency

Instant messaging is one of the best methods of employee communication. It doesn’t require that the employee stop what they’re doing to respond, it can be responded to at any time, it leaves behind logs that can be referenced later and it can be used for instant conversations with anyone anywhere in the world. Instant messaging is also a cost-effective solution. Companies can either use a completely free instant messaging service or use the instant messaging services that are provided with their other technology solutions.

When managing your company’s communication environment, you may also want to consider the fact that there is such a thing as too much communication. There are times when you need to scale back your company’s communication rather than promote it. If too much time is being spent in meetings, instant messages are being sent left and right and more emails are being traded than actual work documents, you may have an over-communication rather than an under-communication problem at hand. As with all things, the key to successful communication is moderation. Communication that is not valuable to the company should be managed and discouraged as is appropriate.