Were there gaps in employee communication in your company last year? Did you probe and understand reasons to get to the crux of the issue to rectify the significant gaps? What type of employee communication strategy should you adopt this year to roll up your sleeves for employee retention efforts in 2017?

Aristotle, a great philosopher, once quoted that humans are social creatures. It means that nobody can live by themselves without socialising or getting in touch with others. Due to this nature, it is inevitable that communication is essential in every aspect of life, and the same goes for business relationships.

Effective communication internally within an organisation is the key for successful business and happy employees. When employees are happy, it will improve productivity and boost company gains in return.

Furthermore, effective communication is beneficial to reduce stress from unhealthy work competition, eliminate conflicts among co-workers, as well as build stronger bond between teams.

On the contrary, failure in constructing open communication lines would result in failure of implementing overall business plans. Poor communication strategy can be seen as a ‘red-flag’ signalling poor leadership within the organisation. If a company cannot meet their employees’ satisfaction, then how will meet the customer requirements?

See: Gift Your Employees Work-Life Balance this Year

To improve better employee engagement, below are changes in employee communication you should make as a 2017 resolution:

Evaluate your communication method

If you have to deal with number of clashes and conflicts among co-workers in 2016, then maybe there is something wrong with your strategy. For better achievement in 2017, you have to evaluate the company’s communication method. Arrange a schedule for habitual communication that requires everyone to meet and report their latest project update.

Whether it is face-to-face meetings, calls, emails, chat and messaging, or memos, you need to assess the practicality and efficiency of those methods in bridging communication gaps between employees. For example, if you find that exchanging emails is no longer sufficient to meet the need to communicate, you might need to use other media such as social intranet software.

Encourage open dialogue

Good communication is never a one-way street. Rather, it should flow from both ways. Establish a company culture where everyone can speak their mind freely and give feedback to others for more information sharing as well.

Encourage company-wide dialogue. This allows every team member to voice out their opinions on a particular issue. Through this method, it is expected that everyone should understand their roles and responsibilities, to avoid any confusion working together in a team.

Reduce redundant meetings

Many workers waste their time on unproductive meetings, that talk about repetitive topics and similar reports from time to time. While you cannot neglect the importance of regular face-to-face meetings, you need to reduce the number.

Avoid interrupting employee’s workflow and manage proper communication plan for more efficient meeting sessions. Rather than talking about trivial and minute details you can check by yourself, it will work in better interest of business to make use of reporting tools available online. If necessary, you can even use social media to simplify the process and make it easier for employees to report their work.

Ask for feedback

When you have employed new change in communication strategy, you have to know whether it works or not. Therefore, you should ask for regular feedback from employees by conducting surveys or questionnaires regarding company progress and development with internal relationship.

Not only assessing the communication strategy, running survey enables you to recognise the most crucial issue within an organisation such that you can take immediate action.  Do not just focus on business achievements. As a leader, you should be able to demonstrate that you care for employee’s personal development as well.

Read also: How to Be More Organised and Confident in Your New Job Role in 2017?