With so much focus on ensuring the efficiency of external communications, it’s easy to overlook internal communication challenges.
Without a proper way to reach out to your own team members, critical operational factors like employee retention, productivity, and engagement tend to suffer. This is significant given that according to research by the Corporate Leadership Council, “engaged companies can grow profits three times faster than competitors; and highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave the organization.”
Ultimately, failure to address existing internal communication challenges or anticipate potential issues could affect morale and breed workplace apathy. To address this, businesses are turning to Unified Communications platforms to help facilitate better internal communication.
Here are three of the most common challenges that you should take note of:
#1. Managing geographically dispersed teams
It’s common for businesses these days to have geographically dispersed teams. It could be because they have remote teams who are based out of state or out of the country; or the nature of the business itself requires employees to be out in the field. Whatever the case, the importance of a centralized system for communication is critical.
Despite not being in the office, your remote team members should still feel like part of the team. Keep them informed, especially regarding important office-related decisions. You can’t simply rely on colleagues to pass the message along. A more reliable, standardized system has to be in place to avoid errors and miscommunication.
Unified Communications can streamline all communication to ensure that everyone, regardless of where team members are located, is in the loop. You can even select what format will suit you best. Options ranging from instant messaging to voice conferencing features also help facilitate real-time communication.
#2. Staying in touch with hypermobile employees
Robust, mobile solutions are critical for employees who are constantly on the go. Employees who travel a lot may still need to get in touch with office-based business decision-makers to get the job done. Conversely, mobile teams could also be key parts of the decision-making process in the office. Either way, there needs to be a reliable way to get in touch with the mobile team at the speed of need.
Smartphones, tablets, and laptops have certainly helped. However, managing multiple devices across several communications platforms can be confusing and unwieldy. Unified Communications helps you address this by centralizing everything in a single platform accessible by anyone in your team, anywhere in the world.
#3. Overlooking employee concerns
There is no doubt that keeping customers happy and attending to their needs is critical to any business. However, in the interest of ensuring exceptional customer service, internal communications tend to suffer.
Focusing on customer needs should not come at the expense of a manager’s inability to mentor and train new employees, or team members being unable to effectively communicate with colleagues.
With a reliable Unified Communications platform in place, you can leverage multiple communication and productivity tools to ensure information that needs to be cascaded to teams gets sent in real time. It can help facilitate good coordination between team members, so that each one, regardless of how busy things get, is still in the loop and maintains an open dialogue with managers.
Leveraging technology can help manage the inherent challenges of running a business and reduce the frustrations associated with unreliable communications—internally and externally. The importance of a centralized and reliable platform to facilitate good communication with team members should not be ignored. It’s more than just about keeping employees happy. It’s a foolproof way to achieve business growth.
Find out how Jive can help improve your internal business communications with Unified Communications. Get in touch with us today.
