Every fulfilling and long-lasting relationship is built on a foundation of communication. It's a statement that applies as much in the workplace as it does in the home.
Workers want clarity and transparency. They want to know what is happening and why it's happening. They want to feel heard, and as though they have a stake in the business.
In order to retain top talent, you need to communicate effectively. But this is easier said than done, particularly if you offer remote work, or employ a particularly diverse workforce with a range of communication skills, habits and preferences.
Nevertheless, there are a range of techniques that can help you to increase employee retention, by making your employees feel like more than just numbers or cogs in the corporate machine.
In this guide we'll walk you through how to improve your internal communication with easily implementable techniques, to create an open and transparent environment that will keep your best workers around for longer.
Why Communication Matters for Staff Retention
Good communication, whether from the C-suite, team leaders or human resources, fosters a sense of belonging, trust and engagement within an organisation. A focus on effective communication can enhance talent retention by:
Building trust: Open and honest communication creates trust between employees and leaders. Keeping staff informed about decisions, goals and changes makes them feel more valued and secure in their roles. It also stops rumours from spreading.
Enhancing employee engagement: Regular, meaningful communication helps employees understand how their roles contribute to broader goals, making them feel more involved in the organisation's success. As a consequence they can develop a stronger connection to the company.
Encouraging feedback: When employees feel comfortable voicing ideas, concerns and feedback, issues are fixed and opportunities are identified and capitalised upon.
Supporting professional growth: Clear communication about expectations, career paths and development opportunities helps employees more clearly see their future with your organisation.
Building a positive culture: Effective communication leads to better collaboration and teamwork, which in turn builds a cohesive, supportive work environment.
And the benefits of good workplace communication can extend far beyond employee retention: a 2012 McKinsey report found that improving communication and collaboration can raise worker productivity by 20-25%.
Effective communication strengthens team bonds, improves job satisfaction and demonstrates care for your employees. It makes talented workers feel seen, heard and valued. It makes your team more productive, and with the average cost of hiring a new employee sitting at $23,860 in NZ in 2022, it can ultimately save you serious money too.
Challenges in Workplace Communication
There's a reason why truly transparent and collaborative workplaces are rare - if clear and effective communication was easy, everyone would do it. Challenges come thick and fast, including:
Individual and cultural differences: Diverse teams are better for business, but do present opportunities for misunderstandings due to differing communication styles across personalities and cultures.
Remote work: There's no substitute for in-person interactions. Remote workers are at risk of misinterpreting the tone and content of communications, particularly written messages. They can also feel disconnected from their colleagues and workplace.
Organisational hierarchies: If your organisation is too stratified, workers can be hesitant to communicate with higher-ups. If it's too flat or informal, it can be hard to know exactly who to communicate with on a given issue.
Generational gaps: Communication preferences can differ between generations - older workers might prefer email, younger workers might prefer instant messaging.
Resource constraints: Between training and technology, establishing good communication will require an investment of time and money that may stretch some SMBs (but you can expect to eventually generate a return).
Work-life balance: Many employee retention strategies focus on letting staff leave their work at the office, but this can create issues if your business operates beyond the traditional 9-5 and you need to get in touch with someone after hours.
Identifying these challenges is the first step to addressing them. Once you do, you can begin to affect the change that helps you keep employees, by developing a new approach to communication.
Effective Communication Strategies
Establishing clear and effective communication strategies is one of the best ways to attract and retain employees. Leaders and HR teams should work to understand the needs of both their workers and their business, the current communication challenges that they face, and the incentives that will ensure any new communication strategies will be fully implemented and utilised by the team.
What do these strategies look like? Here are a few that businesses can adopt to improve workplace communication:
Feedback loops: Establish opportunities for employees to give and receive feedback: a regular team meeting, a suggestions box, formal and informal performance reviews. Ensure that all solicited feedback is constructive and actionable, maybe by developing a feedback form for workers to use.
Transparent communication: A lot of businesses are needlessly cagey about the information they share with their workers. The cost of this secrecy is often trust. Wherever possible, employers should be open with employees about business goals, challenges and big decisions.
Active listening: Communication is a two way street, and effectively receiving a message is every bit as important as effectively delivering one. Highlight this fact, and train your team on avoiding interruptions and working to understand different perspectives.
Inclusive, accessible communication: Use culturally sensitive language and practices, incorporating diversity and tikanga Māori where relevant. Avoid jargon and use simple, clear language.
Clear expectations: Avoid confusion around where certain communications should be directed by ensuring all roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.
Tailored communication channels: Ensure your team knows which communication platform should be used for which message: e.g. emails for formal updates, instant messaging for quick questions, and in-person meetings for better collaboration.
Celebrating wins: A pat on the back for a job well done - it's a simple gesture, but the effect of regular recognition can be incredible. By acknowledging achievements you incentivise others to follow in those footsteps. When a team member does something great, let everyone know.Follow-up processes: After meetings or announcements, summarise key points and next steps. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and that people remain accountable.
Ultimately a comprehensive communication strategy will feature a mix of the tactics listed above. The specifics of your strategy will depend on a number of variables: your goals, the size and structure of your organisation, the needs and preferences of your workers, your available resources and more.
Tools to Enhance Communication
While communication is inherently human, technology has a role to play in facilitating this interaction, whether by connecting remote workers or helping to record and manage communications. Some of the most useful tools to encourage, manage and enhance communication include:
Collaboration, video conferencing and messaging tools
Slack: Real-time messaging and file sharing.
Microsoft Teams: Messaging, video conferencing and document collaboration.
Google Chat/Google Meet: Instant messaging and video conferencing for teams using Gmail and Google Workspace.
Zoom: Virtual meetings, webinars and team collaboration.
Project management tools
Trello: Visual task boards for project tracking and team collaboration.
Asana: Track the progress of projects and assign tasks to more effectively meet deadlines.
Monday.com: Customisable workflows and project tracking for teams.
Notion: A platform for note-taking, task management and team documentation.
Employee surveys and feedback
SurveyMonkey: Customisable surveys for gathering employee feedback.
Qualtrics: Advanced survey tools for in-depth insights into employee engagement.
Officevibe: Pulse surveys that can deliver insights on team morale.
Recognition and team engagement
1Team: Reward your staff for their loyalty and nurture your employer brand by offering workers a range of benefits.
15Five: An app to maximise employee engagement and performance.
Measuring the Impact of Improved Communication
It's all well and good developing a communication strategy and implementing helpful technologies, but how do you know whether these efforts are bearing fruit? Ways to evaluate success include:
Retention rates: If your aim is to keep more of your best employees, the most relevant metric for your communication strategy is employee retention and churn rates, although keep in mind that there are a wealth of other factors beyond communication that can affect these numbers.
Employee surveys: Use surveys to understand how team members feel about your efforts to improve communication. Take the opportunity to ask for feedback too.
Performance reviews: Work to understand whether your communication efforts enhance individual and team performance, such as by monitoring task completion and project timelines.
Tool adoption: Track the use of new communication platforms (Slack, Teams, Asana, etc.) including whether employees eventually revert to old tech and processes.
Conflict resolution: Track the frequency and resolution times of workplace conflicts to see whether they reduce over time.
Employee well-being: Assess stress levels and well-being through surveys or pulse checks.
Qualitative signs: Keep tabs on informal indicators like increased levels of collaboration and positive workplace morale.
Communication: the key to employee retention
Good communication helps you to keep more talent, by making your workplace a nicer place to be, and by helping you to identify employee issues and misgivings early. But while 'good communication' is simple in theory, it can be rather tricky in practice.
One of the easiest yet most effective ways to enhance your workplace interactions - and retain your best employees - is to recognise and reward great work.
With the help of 1Team, your business can offer high performing team members a range of perks, such as savings from New Zealand's leading retailers (Torpedo7, Dulux, Pita Pit, Hirepool, Repco, Warehouse Stationery) delivered through an app with your branding.
Ready to recognise, reward and retain your best workers? Get started today.
