The single best problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. ~George Bernard Shaw
Communication between top management and employees is often considered as a challenge. However, clear and ongoing communication between them can open doors of success without any roadblocks like confusions or misunderstandings, delays or failures.
Communication is a necessity when two or more individuals work together. Unfortunately, the lack of communication is a common concern for every workplace, especially when it is between top management and the employees. Fear, doubts, mistrust, lack of proper communication channel, inappropriate timing, etc. are several reasons that create a gap between the upper management and executives. This communication gap creates an adverse effect on employee engagement rates.
Also Read: Level of Management
Whatever the reason, bridging this gap is extremely important for maintaining a positive and healthy work environment with a common goal of success.
Here are a few corrective measures for employers and employees that can drive change in your organization.
TIPS FOR EMPLOYERS
1. Determine the Causes: As an employer or a leader, it is impossible to overlook problems for long around you. Interacting with your employees is as important as assigning them the work and getting it done. Improper communication causes delays or erroneous work. Hence, it is your responsibility to look into the potential causes creating gap between you and your workforce. Identify the factors that led to this gap. You can create a list of questions – Do I have a proper communication channel in my organisation? Which team or employee (s) is responsible for the improper transmission of information? Am I lacking proper communication? Answers to these questions will open doors for solutions towards improvement.
2. Listen More Often: Yes, you’re the boss! It’s your responsibility to assign work, enquire about issues, maintain order, penalize for mistakes and take actions whenever required. But what most employers or managers forget is that they are also leading a team. Hence, they do have responsibilities as a leader.
One of the top responsibilities of every leader is to LISTEN carefully. Have the patience and keep all your ears open and attention focussed to what your employees are trying to convey. Take time to understand them and then speak. This will make them feel they are being heard and that you are genuinely interested in communicating with them. Further, this would enhance a sense of trust among your employees. Plus, you too would be able to understand their situation better and look for the best solutions.
3. Keep Employees in the Loop: In a study, it was found that nearly 25% of the employees feel disengaged from the decisions made by top management. Another survey revealed that over 90% of the employees have no idea about their company’s real time progress.
These stats make it clear why employees hesitate in communicating with their managers. It’s simple! They feel they are being kept in dark and hence do not trust their management which results in a communication gap eventually.
Hence, as a manager, it is your responsibility to enlighten your workforce regularly about what’s going with the company. Remember, employees’ trust is the key to your success, which can only be earned with communication and transparency.
Bonus Tip: Be Vigilant
Remember it’s an organisation and there’d be employees creating an unhealthy environment and disrupting communication channels. Hence, make sure to take corrective actions against such employees.
Tips for Employees
- Know your Employers: It’s pretty simple: the more you know your managers, the easier it gets interacting with them. Often workers consider their managers as bossy, rude, scary and hence resist approaching them. Here, it is important to realize that your manager is an individual like you with responsibilities higher than yours and that their designation has nothing to do with their behaviour. Even an executive sitting beside you can be as arrogant and scary like you believe your boss to be. Hence, the only way to open up with your managers is by getting to know them better.
Also Read: What are the basic management styles?
- Work on your Communication Skills: One potential causes of communication gap between top management and employees is poor communication skills of the employees. When employees are not confident about how they speak, look and present them before their seniors, they often resist standing near to them or interact well. While it is good that you truly respect your managers but considering yourself inferior doesn’t help you in any way. Again the reason behind this inferiority is poor communication skills. As a solution, improve your communication skills by participating more in discussions, opt for grooming classes, enrol to any English speaking course, read more often, etc. Have faith in yourself and awake your confidence. Remember, clear and open communication is the key to building trust with your managers which can be earned through self-confidence.
Understanding communication gaps and strategies to bridge them effectively
Effective communication happens to be among the core skills that help drive an organization. Ineffective communication in a system can lead to a lot of issues in the long term. It is not unheard of even the most efficient teams to struggle when it comes to achieving goals if miscommunication is persistent. Communication can significantly boost productivity and allow for an efficient approach to problem-solving. Making use of different tools of communication such as email, zoom meetings, and more should be prioritized to ensure that information is shared accurately as well as effectively.
A communication gap is essentially a disconnect that might be persistent when it comes to exchanging information within an organization or between different individuals. It can create a significant amount of confusion and impact the overall result, performance and morale of individuals. A communication gap can be caused by various factors, which can create an adverse impact on the outcome.
Communication is relevant when it comes to the growth of an organization because it directly impacts productivity and efficiency. When these gaps are minimized it helps ensure that everyone in an organization is aligned with the goals and policies. This further helps yield a cohesive result and keeps up with the transparency and the work culture.
Examples of a communication gap in internal communication
When it comes to dealing with communication gaps, it is quite important that one identifies these gaps immediately so that one can deal with the situation at hand in a way that is practical, effective and convenient.
A communication gap in internal communication tends to become quite apparent when people tend to miss messages across various communication channels. A common example is employees being unaware of updates that could have possibly been shared via email.
These individuals could either be those who basically rely on their mobile notifications and miss the updates that they are not notified about, or individuals who do not frequently check their emails. As a result, these employees might be inconsistent when it comes to keeping up with updates and compliance measures and might face inconveniences.
As a solution to this issue, a multi-channel approach can be put in place when it comes to the distribution of important information, which allows people to not only receive updates through their email but also be easily able to keep up through different channels.
A lot of times, one can share different work-related updates in a single email. Expecting that all would be able to keep up with the possible expectations without clearly stating the guidelines. As a result, employees could each interpret the update and its impact differently based on their ideas. And this could create a disconnect.
Iterating the changes and highlighting the ideas through a better communication system that can allow for frequent questions and answers, as well as an accessible approach, can help set reasonable expectations and clarify things for all involved.
Cultural nuances often can create communication gaps. This is quite evident when it comes to various individuals sending out messages using terms and ways of communication that might be common for employees in a particular region. But it is quite disconnected from others who are not familiar with that particular culture.
This could lead to possible misinterpretation, extensive confusion and a disconnect among the employees, who might not only feel left out but also disheartened. In such cases, it is advisable to share messages that might be more inclusive with the help of individuals who are better informed about the language. This will make communication more accessible, thereby allowing for teams to understand things more effectively and be more inclusive.
Messages with an overload of information and frequent updates can easily overwhelm people. Due to extensive information fatigue, individuals can start losing interest and ignore messages. This might lead to them missing critical updates. This can be resolved by properly managing the flow of information that is shared with all and notifying individuals about critical updates, providing them with a summary of all that they need to know.
Extensive use of technical jargon can complicate communication since not everyone understands all the terms that might be particularly associated with a department. As a result of this, employees may feel ignored or simply misinterpret the information that is provided. It can further lead to confusion and delay. Hence, translating complex information into a language that is simple and easy to understand can be quite effective.
Strategies for bridging communication gaps
Some common strategies that might be associated with bridging of communication gap are as follows:
1. Prioritizing a transparent approach
Businesses should focus on conveying important information on priority while clarifying their terms, conditions, acronyms, and various tools.
2. Setting up an extensive communication standard
Putting in place a communication strategy can help keep up with the standard ways of communication. It can help ensure that expectations can be stated explicitly to prevent communication gaps and confusion. It also helps with ensuring that active communication is carried out in ways that are accessible and easy to keep up with.
3. Embracing multi-channel communication
Each individual might be more suited to working with a different kind of channel when it comes to keeping up with communication. Hence, a multi-channel approach to convey important information can be quite helpful and ensure that everybody can be kept in the loop to prevent confusion or delay.
4. Facilitating open dialogue
Employee trust can be developed by facilitating open dialogue. It allows one to not only express but also seek honest communication. It is to make sure that everyone’s voices are heard and respected. It can also greatly help with dispute resolution and diffuse issues before they can escalate.
5. Keeping relevance at the forefront
A lot of information is shared throughout the day. Hence, when it comes to sharing updates with everyone, one should prioritize sharing information that is crucial and relevant for all to prevent confusion, crisis or misunderstanding.
How to identify communication gaps in the workplace
Some of the basic ways in which one can identify communication gaps in an organization are as follows:
1. Seek feedback through surveys
Communicating with employees through surveys, when it comes to overall communication practices, can provide better insight into the various aspects that can be improved.
2. Monitor metrics
The right metrics can help one analyze possible issues and identify the various patterns that can be related to communication gaps. It could be something as simple as an increase in mistakes that can further lead to misunderstandings.
3. Seek one-on-one communication
Regularly seeking one-on-one meetings can allow employees to better discuss their concerns and effectively communicate the challenges that they might be facing.
4. Analyse outcomes of projects
Gathering relevant feedback from different employees after project completion can help one better address the challenges that they might be facing when it comes to the communication aspect.
Reasons that lead to the communication gap at the workplace among employees
The following things can lead to a massive communication gap among employees:
- Physical barriers can sometimes create a struggle when it comes to effective communication. These can be issues such as being closed, doors, background noise, or much more.
- Cultural differences can sometimes lead to a communication disconnect. This can be caused by the way people express themselves, the tone of their voice, their body language, their style of communication, and more.
- Emotional aspects can also hinder effective communication because people can be swayed by their anxiety, distress or fear when faced with a certain situation.
- Contextual miscommunication can lead to a gap and further impact efficiency as well as the outcome of a project.
- Interpersonal issues can further lead to strife in the professional workplace and lead to communication problems.
- Technological issues can further widen communication gaps should employees not be able to keep up with multiple tools and rely on outdated technology.
- An overload of information or excessive spam can hinder effective communication as well.
Communication gaps can usually be detrimental to the progress, outcomes and overall work culture of an organization. There happen to be various ways in which communication gaps can be effectively breached.
Seeking active solutions to this issue can prove to be hugely beneficial in ensuring that the workplace remains harmonious and the environment can be encouraging. When it comes to seeking efficient solutions, results and quality outcomes, making use of technology and proper organization strategies can make a huge difference. Especially when it comes to ensuring that communication gaps can be minimized.
Employees can also be provided with a structured guideline when it comes to ensuring that they are aware of the basic process to effectively communicate and convey their ideas to the other members of the team.
Facilitating proper communication can be crucial to ensuring that staff morale can be upheld and their trust and loyalty to the organization remain undeterred. Keeping up with an innovative strategy when it comes to improving communication and organization should be one of the major priorities for an organization to work on effectively.
Wrapping Up
Communication gap is a serious concern for every organisation and can be resolved through thoughtful efforts only. And since this issue is associated with managers and employees, working together on a solution can truly help. Remember, you are a team and each team member has to play its part to triumph.
Be Clear! Be Interactive!
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