How to Encourage Communication and Organisation in Business

Communication is vital in every aspect of our lives. From relationships to workplaces, being able to articulate and explain what we need and expect from others is vital. Alongside this skill, we also need to be great organisers, taking charge of our time and energy to make sure that the great ideas we have get implemented and managed right through to completion.

So, how do you encourage communication and organisation in a business setting? Here are a few ideas…

Make core information accessible

Whatever the size of your organisation, you’ll have a bank of core information that you need every single employee to understand. This could be anything from preparing client-facing documents, to filing documents in the correct way, to understanding the company’s core values and goals for the year ahead. To help employees do this, collate information within internal documents that are easily accessible: shared folders, notice boards and regular meetings will make communication and organisation a straightforward matter.

Provide a platform for communication and organisation

A great way of encouraging communication and organisation is to provide your employees with a platform for knowledge sharing. Allow employees to ‘pin’ key pieces of information about industry news and trends to a virtual board, and give them a way of engaging in conversation around it. This will create energy and motivation to do their jobs with enthusiasm and passion, but above all, get people talking.

Give employees online management tools

We use social media and email every day to facilitate communication. So why not use it in the workplace too? Use software tools to help teams communicate with each other so they can provide continuous feedback on the tasks they’re working on. You could even use plugins for management tools (such as in the plugin for Jira called Upraise) to help on the organisational front too: performance reviews and objective setting can all be done using technology so that nothing important gets left out.

Appoint owners and share processes

One of the biggest problems in organisations is that people have excellent ideas, but struggle to actually turn them into real things. So, make sure your processes are well understood by all your employees and appoint individual ‘owners’ to tasks to make sure that good ideas actually get implemented. Project managers are an obvious way you can charge people with responsibility for organisation and communication at work, but strengthen these skills in your wider workforce by giving individuals their own projects to drive forwards.

Create a culture of communication and ownership

Keep employees up to date on what’s happening, and make sure they have a way of voicing their ideas and experience at regular intervals throughout the month. For instance, you could hold a weekly company-wide meeting to deliver briefings and give people a chance to raise organisational issues that need addressing. You should also ask managers to have monthly one to ones with members of their teams, and it could be a good idea to give employees a feedback form or a digital platform for sharing their ideas - especially if they’re reticent about voicing their opinion in person, or struggle to articulate their thoughts on the spot.

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