What is business communication?
Communication is the exchange of information between two people. So, business communication is any exchange of information between two people, but related to business. This type of communication can be external or internal.
You need to define how efficient your business communication is. Why? It will define how you achieve your company’s organizational goals. Business communication always concerns goals in contrast to normal communication. Effective business communication keeps employees up to date on the business, improves organizational performance, and reduces errors.
The different types of business communication
In all businesses there are two types of business communication. Internal communication and external communication. See below to understand more about how they affect your business.
Internal communication
Internal communication is the transfer of information within the company. It’s the communication between the company’s employees, like between team members, managers to teams, or peer-to-peer.
Strengths of internal communications
- Helps in problem solving and sharing knowledge
- Happens quickly and easily without the need of any approvals
- Encourages employee productivity
- Reduces conflict between teams
External communication
External communication is the transfer of information between two companies. You can also communicate between a business or a company and an individual outside of the company. This individual can be a customer, a dealer, etc. External communication also comprises your customers’ feedback. Using external communication, a business invests to improve their image to their customers.
Strengths of external communications
- Help promote your company’s growth
- Forms a positive reputation for your company
- Encourages positive relationships between your customers
Categories of internal and external communication
- Sharing Information–It’s the communication that includes presentations and giving someone instructions to complete a task. If wrong information is shared, it can lead to many problems.
- Giving and receiving feedback–Giving and receiving honest feedback is very important and plays a huge role in a company’s growth and success. It can be verbal or non-verbal feedback, like body language. Feedback allows your employees to fix their work habits and provides them the tools to better themselves.
- Announcements–They usually come after meetings that resolve a certain problem, announce a new policy, or to change a current policy.
- Receiving directions – It’s all the communication of giving or receiving instructions or assignments at work from one person to another. You can send these instructions by email or during a meeting.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement is how much your employees invest their energy towards a better outcome for your business. The more your employees are engaged, the more they are productive. They more productive, the more dedicated to make your business succeed.
Some businesses have an incorrect understanding of employee engagement. They sometimes mistake it for employees’ well-being and satisfaction. Although these are also very important factors, they do not show if something fully invested the employees in your business’ success. Making your employees happy is important, but it doesn’t make them more engaged.
What’s the difference between engaged and disengaged employees?
Engaged employees are loyal to your company and work towards your company’s vision and success. They work hard to make the company reach its goals. Engaged employees work over what you expect from them and work optimistically. They are very passionate about their work and are fully committed towards their job.
Disengaged employees do whatever is expected from them, but with no extra effort. They don’t really feel a connection towards their job or the company. Those employees never really communicate at work as they don’t have positive feedback to express.
Benefits of employee engagement
Increases employee productivity
Engaged employees work harder and be more productive in their work, as they believe in the company’s values and goals and work towards them. According to The Social Economy, productivity increases by 20-25% in the modern workplace when you engage employees.
Increases employee satisfaction rate
It is very important for employees to feel satisfied in their work. When employees are highly engaged, they have more satisfaction towards their contribution at work, as they feel connected to the company.
Improves customer service
Customer service is one of the most important aspects in any business. As all businesses rely on maintaining and having more customers, customer service is vital to their success. Employee engagement is very important for customer service teams, as they will improve your business’ customer service. That will lead to keeping more customers and getting customer referrals.
How is effective business communication important for employee engagement?
Communication is the core of employee engagement in any company. Your company needs to have the proper channels for your employees to communicate with each other regularly.
Having good business communication is crucial, as it allows every employee to be heard and creates an engaged workforce, which will push your business forward. According to workplace communication statistics, the employees lack of effective communication mainly caused 86% of workplace failures.
Business communication is the foundation of having engaged employees. It can also increase your employees’ productivity, which will cause the growth of your business. Encouraging peer-to-peer communication in your company will cause better interpersonal relations, which will lead to more employee engagements that will make your teams work better.
Also, recognizing and appreciating your employees can really improve the communication flow in your business, which will lead to better employee engagement.
Tips to improve employee engagement
These employee engagement tips will help you drive your employees to be more productive.
Encourage communication
Communication is very important in all businesses. It also is a critical factor in developing more employee engagement in the workplace. Both formal and informal communication is very important, it depends on who you’re communicating with. It’s very important to provide the right tools and platforms to allow your employees to connect and communicate. That will give everyone the chance to give and receive feedback, that will improve their work.
Reward your employees
Putting rewards for the good work or actions that your employees make, will drive them to be more engaged and excited to do better.
Measure engagement
If your employees are performing well, measure their engagement rate frequently. You might have to change your strategies, depending on their engagement level. You can send your employees anonymous engagement surveys or meet with each employee individually. You can also track engagement for outside activities.
How to improve communication with remote working?
Communication is especially much more important when working remotely. As it can help your team, build a sort of connection and trust especially when working remotely with no face-to-face communication. Here are some areas to consider working on when improving communication.
Stating the expectations
Have clear and honest expectations, and make sure to state them well. Always make sure the other person you’re communicating with understands. Because when communication is not face-to-face it can be understood differently.
Give roles in communication
Working remotely can make your employees easily disengaged in their work. Try to come up with more creative ideas to give your employees roles in communication. Ask more questions and use some games to make your employees interact with one another.
Face-to-face interactions
Without face-to-face interactions, employees can misunderstand communication, as the person’s facial and body expressions, tone and voice are not seen. Try not to only communicate through text, try to have more video calls and meetings. These video calls can establish better connections between your teams.
Create meaningful communication
When working remotely, people are more aware of their time, as they spend it all alone and in front of screens. Create live events that are well organized for your employees to have more meaningful communication. Before the event, send out an agenda for people to be more prepared and ready to have a meaningful communication.
Informal communication
Sharing cultures and having daily communications is very important. Working remotely takes that away from your employees. Therefore, having a platform like Slack where everyone can have an informal conversation will benefit your employees.
Be genuine
You need to always remind yourself that behind those screens you’re texting are actual people. You need to spend some time and check on them and make some personal communication. Because everyone is going through some life challenges every day. So try to be genuine and build some personal connections and trust between your team.
How can CRM increase employee engagement?
CRM tools can handle customer data making it much easier on your employees. It also reduces your employees’ workload, allowing them to finish more work and be more productive. When you provide the CRM tools to make your employees’ work easier and push them to perform better, it will give them a sense of appreciation and confidence to give their best to your company.
Conclusion
Now that you know all about the impact of business communication on employee engagement, the different types of business communication, and how to improve employee engagement, you should immediately consider applying it to your business.
Want something specific to be covered about ways to improve your business? Reach out to us at marketing@dyl.com
