With all the tech we have access to these days, it’s become easier than ever to access important information, and communicate with other professionals from absolutely anywhere. Like many modern businesses, you might have employees who are scattered all over the country or even the world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy smooth, effective communication. If you’ve been running into problems which are rooted in poor communication, there are a range of tools which can be leveraged to promote internal communication and streamline workplace productivity. Here are some of the best ways for streamlining internal communications at your business.
Compose a Great Newsletter
From Pixabay
Company newsletters can be a great way to encourage better business communication, but I’m sure you’ll agree that sending them out more than once a month can be a bit much. If you find that you’re sending out letter after letter as you remember various details that you’ve forgotten, it may be time for a different approach. Make sure you’re keeping your newsletters clear and concise, adding in a table of contents and linking headlines to the relevant sections. If you’re including any longer articles, simply add a brief description of the article, and link it to the full article on the web. To get the best end results, you should also be planning out your articles in small doses throughout the month, rather than leaving it for a long time and composing the whole thing in one big rush. Set some time aside every day for organizing any sales goals and progress, press that your business is receiving, important new hires, and anything else that it’s necessary for the whole workforce to know.
Carry Out Conference Calls from A Single, Secure Number
From Flickr
Every modern business past a certain size will need a good conference call tool they can lean on. As a business owner, you’ve probably come across more ads than you can count for various conference call tools. There’ll be a range of prices and subscriptions to choose from, but modern tools will come with more or less the same features. You’ll be able to schedule conferences between several offices, add in remote employees as and when you need to, and schedule calls with clients and vendors. A lot of modern tools will also offer an interface for giving people profile pictures, which will show you who’s speaking at any given time. If you’re running a particularly large business, there will be come people who aren’t familiar with everyone, so being able to put a face to a voice can be a massively handy feature. However, while new software can be a big help with internal communications, it certainly isn’t cheap! You may be able to reap similar benefits from business phone system features for a greatly reduced price, so be sure to shop around.
Choose A Reliable IM Tool
These days, IM interfaces like Google Hangouts, Skype and so on are being used more and more in professional environments. Using one of these tools or something similar will do a lot to build stronger working relationships between all of your workers, especially if they’re remote and don’t have a lot of opportunity for face-to-face communication. When everyone’s able to chat in real-time over an IM interface, you’ll up productivity, and build a forum which will make your employees more comfortable with sharing new, beneficial ideas. The two things you need to be thinking about when you’re choosing a chat tool is how easy it will be for everyone to adapt to, and the security of it all. Find something that will allow you to chat one-on-one, create groups, and invite your big clients into the conversation. It can also be handy to control what individual users can see in the chat threads, so be sure to take this into account as well. Tools such as Slack come with automatic features that will save your conversations indefinitely. This will allow you to go back through the threads and reference details with ease. There’s a range of capabilities and price ranges to choose from, so take your time scouring the market, and assessing the level of security your business needs.
Store Files in One Place
From Flickr
If you’re not using cloud tech to streamline your business’s internal communications already, then you’ve got a lot of catching up to do! Using tools like Dropbox or Box will allow you to share them instantly, all the while enjoying a certain peace of mind, knowing that they’re well protected from the risk of cybercrime. Many cloud storage solutions come with encryption, password-protected links, sophisticated access controls and other reassuring security features. By storing all of these files in a single, secure place, you’ll make workflows much smoother, and have the option to automate them for delivery, reviews and approval.
Carry out Project Management from One Dashboard
If you’ve been operating so far without a good project management tool, then it’s time to start looking into some and weighing up your options. By keeping all your internal communications about a team project in one place, you’ll ensure that everyone involved has easy access to it, and can see immediately how the work they’re responsible for is going to affect others in the organization. Dashboard tools such as Trello, Asana and so on take mere minutes to set up, and are incredibly easy for anyone to use. Some of these dashboards let you manage your projects through a handy calendar function, compose to-do lists, and assign smaller tasks to tags. Various other tools are more visually based, and allow you to compose cards which you can add comments and requests to, upload many types of files and assign individual workers their tasks. The layout that’s best for you will all depend on the kinds of projects you’re tackling at your business, and the communication obstacles you’re facing.
If your business’s internal communications were a little weak, I hope that the points I’ve outlined here have given you a view towards improvement.