Articles tagged "Communication in the Workplace"
Drink a Cup of Coffee or Develop a Team Member?
I recently came across a 2018 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that noted companies with fewer than 100 employees, on average, spent only 12 minutes of dedicated training time per employee – during the employee’s entire tenure with them! As pathetic as that is, it’s even more depressing because it dropped from a whopping 13.4 minutes of dedicated training time per employee in 1995. The 2018 report also noted that companies with 100-500 employees invested less than 6 minutes of dedicated training time per employee.
Listen. Stay Engaged. Stay Relevant.
Every one of my clients is experiencing the same thing: It’s almost impossible to recruit and hire strong team members. Because of this, retaining strong team members has become critical to enable on-going operations. So what can a leader do to not only retain, but excite strong team members? Listen to them.
Communicate Changes Before Implementing Changes
Managing change has become a never-ending but essential part of every leader’s job. It’s become ubiquitous. It’s something we, as the ‘recipients’ of change, are begrudgingly accepting more and more often, and it’s therefore something we, as leaders and often the ‘instigators’ of change, need to improve upon. Why? Because we’re still too often forcing our team members to ‘just deal with’ the never-ending changes instead of helping them absorb and adopt the changes.
It’s Not ‘Return to Work,’ It’s ‘Return to Us’
You have no doubt heard or read others proclaiming: “Stop saying: ‘Return to work’. We’ve been working this whole time! And, we’ve been working longer, harder, and in more challenging ways than ever before!” You know what? They’re right. If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that this past year, regardless of industry, profession, etc., we’ve all had to work harder and more creatively than ever before. So it’s simply wrong to now focus on how to ‘return to work.’ Instead, we need to focus on how to work productively and collegially again whether it’s in-person, in a hybrid format, or in a refined remote format.
Piloting Change Communication
As you well know, the most brilliant change initiative will fail if it’s not implemented well. A brilliant change initiative will also fail – or at least not go as seamlessly as it could – if there is no intentional communication strategy – before, during, and after the change. With clear communication before, during, and after, the likelihood of team acceptance and implementation improves drastically. Without clear communication, acceptance and implementation is much more difficult.
