In the age of remote working, communication within your organisation is more crucial than ever. While working from home and hybrid working structures have huge advantages, it’s important to recognise that not always having a centralised work hub can sometimes lead to some vital messages being missed, or even a sense of community missing.
While there has been a lot of discourse around returning to office five days a week, it won’t necessarily solve this. Even if your team is working together every day, communication breakdown can still occur as a result of teams being siloed, meaning that teams or individuals can still feel separate from the rest of the organisation.
We know through our Economic Value Study, a breakdown in communication can lead to feelings of isolation, drops in productivity and an overwhelming lack of appreciation felt by employees, as HR initiatives fail to have their intended impact and employee engagement becomes an uphill battle.
Understanding what your employees need
Our engagement experts applied their findings on employee needs to Maslow’s famous ‘hierarchy of needs’. The result is an adapted model that sets out five different levels of employee needs to define the total employee experience (EX).
And it comes as no surprise that communication is right at the heart of the pyramid. In our Total Employee Experience Pyramid, Maslow’s ‘social’ needs aligns to ‘Communication, Culture and Connection’ for modern workforces.
To fulfil the highest possible version of themselves, people need to feel like they are being communicated with openly and honestly. This is the way to bring a workforce together, to keep them motivated and organised, and to make them see themselves as part of something larger than the individual.
Strong communication is one of the cornerstones of a successful business. If a business leader or HR team fails to see this, they risk creating a ‘communication gap’ which can have serious consequences for the organisation.
Why the communication gap is so important
Through our Economic Value Study, we discovered that only 12% of organisations place communications in their top three HR priorities. This poses a huge risk to businesses who want to get the best out of their employees.
Our study found that while all businesses need to place importance on their internal communications, frontline organisations in particular cannot afford to ignore it.
One of our clients, a UK healthcare organisation, said: “Our employees are spread across the country, so it’s hard to connect them to the company and keep them engaged in our strategies and mission.”
This demonstrates one of the most basic requirements of internal communication – keeping your workforce informed about your top-line objectives. Without this your team can start to lose both direction and motivation.
Another healthcare organisation we work with said that lacking proper internal communication has led to “confusion and misunderstanding”, demonstrating that a communication gap can have negative consequences, both in terms of top-level aspects like employee motivation, and lower-level issues like deadlines being missed.
How to bridge the communication gap
It’s important to create a sense of community in your workplace, allowing your team to satisfy their ‘love and belonging’ needs on Maslow’s hierarchy.
A workforce that feels valued and a sense of belonging within their organisation will naturally be more collaborative, hold a higher expectation of themselves and their peers, and demonstrate more creativity.
Here are some ways to do that:
- Account for multigenerational differences
With the workforce changing, make sure to consider that baby boomers no longer make up the majority of the workplace. With Millennials and Gen Z coming in, think about their communication preferences and culture so everyone is equally involved and represented in your organisation.
- Prioritise two-way communication
You cannot communicate with your employees effectively if it’s a one-way stream. Make sure there’s a way for employees to share their thoughts, feelings and concerns. This ensures they feel heard, while also providing valuable insight into employee sentiment within your organisation.
- Be consistent
Employees are more likely to have a sense of belonging if they know they’re working towards a common goal and shared values, which is where consistency is key. Whether it’s quarterly meetings or weekly email updates, having regular communication breaks down barriers but also helps build feelings of trust and respect within the workforce.
By ensuring you have a well-oiled internal communication system in place, you can focus on your company’s primary mission, safe in the knowledge that your team feels connected to this mission.
Don’t neglect the rest of the pyramid!
While communication is an essential part of strengthening a workforce, ‘social’ isn’t necessarily the most important part of the hierarchy of needs. True, it’s a hierarchy, which suggests the top need is the most vital, but our research found that all the employee needs have to be fulfilled in order to achieve positive results for your organisation.
A successful business or team leader will make sure every one of their team’s needs are being met – right from their self-actualisation needs being satisfied by a culture that highlights employees are appreciated for who they are, and not just their results, down to their physiological needs being addressed through your employee benefits programme.
Hannah Power is a wellbeing expert at Reward Gateway and CIPD-qualified professional, holding diplomas in Human Resources Management and Strategic People Management.
She has over 5 years of experience in the industry, with a focus on employee engagement, relationship-building and wellbeing.
