The Most Common Workplace Communication Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Communication is the driving force that allows small business owners to bring to market superior products and services. How well your employees communicate with each other can help determine the success of your business. When employees have the tools and guidance to collaborate effectively, your business' productivity, customer satisfaction, reputation, and employee retention initiatives benefit.

Challenges in communication can vary significantly in cause and solution. Communication takes place across diverse channels involving multiple parties serving various objectives. With so many parts, it's not surprising that businesses face numerous communication challenges.

Being aware of some of the most common communication challenges and how to solve them can assist you in building a team of confident and productive employees committed to helping you build a successful business.  

The Importance of Effective Communication.

Communication is how employees ideate, share the value of their work with clients and other employees, and solve problems. To accomplish these goals effectively, communication needs to be delivered in a clear and professional manner across a variety methods.  By establishing effective workplace communication practices, your business can benefit in the following ways:

• Employees and managers build trust and encourage collaboration and teamwork.  
• People feel safer and employee retention and morale increase.
• Employees feel confident contacting anyone within the company to solve problems.

Key Communication Methods.

Today’s communication is multi-channel, and each presents its unique communication challenges. Here are some typical business communication methods for remote and in-person workplaces:

• Email
• Video conferencing
• Texting
• Telephone calls
• Live chats
• Face-to-face communication
• Intranet platform
• Press releases, written reports, blog posts
• Business letters, manuals

Most Common Communication Problems at Work and their Solutions

You may find the following solutions to common communication challenges helpful in increasing employee retention and productivity. 

Challenge: Information silos

Information silos occur when groups of people in a company only communicate with those in their group. 

They can have a significant barrier to effective workplace communication because they reduce transparency, collaboration, teamwork, and productivity, which can increase costs and complicate business decisions. They can also incite competition and cause conflict across departments.

Solution

Promote effective workplace communication by encouraging team members to make connections with all employees and put openness first.

Help make the work of teams and individual employees more visible across the organization, emphasizing a culture of open knowledge exchange. It helps to have a rallying mantra to motivate staff. For example, phrases such as “all support no walls” can be an effective reminder.

Formally recognizing those that openly share essential information that facilitated collaboration to build a solution shows your commitment to a no silo environment, and the value of working together.  

Challenge: Poor writing

Poor writing is a significant challenge in communication. It can hurt a company's brand and credibility. It can show carelessness and disregard for quality, reflecting on the company, its products, services, and people. Poor communication often includes incomplete instructions and difficult-to-understand directives, which can cause confusion, delays, and costly errors.

Solution 

Incorporate business and technical writing into employee professional development. Provide employees with access to grammar and proofreading tools such as Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Hemingway, WhiteSmoke, Readable, Ginger and Sapling, to mention a few.

You can also coach employees. Here are some suggestions:

• Have employees start their written communication by asking themselves: "What is the purpose of my communication, that is, what do I want my readers to know, do, or feel? 
• After they have drafted the purpose for their communication, encourage them to ask: Can I say it more simply?  
• Provide feedback on minimizing jargon and superfluous buzzwords and encourage them to edit, proofread, and revise their work before sharing it. 

How well your employees communicate with each other can help determine the success of your business.

Challenge: Inconsistent channels

Inconsistent communication delivery methods can be a barrier to effective workplace communication. Employees can become frustrated if they don't know which communication channels are used to convey specific forms of information. For example, will employee communications be sent via email, text, or instant message? If there is no consistency, important information can be missed.

Solution

Choose a consistent method and inform people where to find important information, whether you use newsletters, quarterly reports, email, chat platforms, or the intranet. Consistently using the same ways to send out company information is an effective workplace communication practice that ensures information gets to everyone simultaneously and that everyone is informed.  

Challenge: Lack of communication

Keeping employees informed about company updates, relevant industry information, and necessary resources helps them feel connected to your business, valued for their efforts, and educated about how they can better perform and grow professionally. Insufficient communication can cause employees to feel disconnected and demotivated. A lack of information can also lead to a lack of trust and cause employees to rely on rumors and miscommunications to fill in the gaps.

Solution

Regular communication via a newsletter or townhall that shares progress about how your business is meeting client expectations, acknowledges employees for their efforts, changes in procedures, relevant industry news and events that provide insights into how your business is leading the industry or how the industry is evolving can help connect employees to your business and create an environment of inclusivity where they are encouraged to learn and grow professionally,  

Challenge: Information overload

Just as a failure to communicate creates challenges for your employees, the same is true for overcommunicating. 

Examples include excessive meetings, emails, file sharing, invitations of all kinds, frequent company-wide messages, phone calls, pings, and chats. Overwhelming employees with information can also slow their ability to make decisions and take action.

Solution

Work requires focus. Consider reducing daily information volume to allow employees periods of concentration. These two questions can help you analyze whether you are contributing to information overload:

• Are employees repeatedly notified about the same issue?
• Does the information they receive have anything to do with their responsibilities?

You may also want to consider sending agendas out with meeting invitations. Assign timeframes to discuss each topic. Limit confusion about meeting outcomes by reviewing tasks assigned during the meeting and don't adjourn the meeting until everyone is clear on next steps.

Challenge: Withholding or sugarcoating negative information.

Workers fearing repercussions may hide or downplay negative information for their own protection and to avoid making an unfavorable impression.

Withholding information can create an environment of fear-based decision making and can set a business up for unwelcome and embarrassing surprises by depriving the company of vital information needed to ensure its growth and success. 

Solution 

This communication challenge can be avoided by creating an environment where it is acceptable for subordinates to speak honestly with you and their managers. This can be accomplished by:

• Having an open door policy where employees can set up time to share concerns. 
• Encouraging those who are typically quiet in meetings by asking them what they think. 
• Leading the way by being open yourself. 
• Thanking your team for their honesty and respecting their candor.

Challenge: Cultural differences

Many businesses today span international boundaries employing workers with a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings. Additionally, professional etiquette and working styles vary across different cultures and can trigger conflict and frustration.  

Solution

Provide training and development programs to educate your employees about the diverse cultures they serve.

Consider the unique characteristics of their culture. For example, cultures have different definitions of funny. Encourage employees to avoid humor in communication until they've built a relationship with colleagues where they are confident that their humor will not be perceived as offensive.  

It also helps to remember that cultures also have different views of hierarchy and authority, which can easily lead to tense situations. To avoid a cultural faux pas, consider informing your staff of the the hierarchy and authority associated with the region of the world they serve and how to navigate it respectfully. 

Challenge:  A lack of a standardized communication structure

As discussed above, lack of structured communication can cause unreliable information to be shared, creates opportunity for misinterpretation to spread, excludes people from discussions, and has an overall negative effect on your employees' ability to help you build a successful business.  

Solution 

A formal, standardized communication structure in a single location can help you address the above challenges. Consider building effective, well-thought-out communication policies. You may want to begin by thinking of this solution as a three-part process.  

Employees:  Provide comprehensive training to new and existing employees about your communication rules and protocols. Monitor employees to ensure they take the required training and be an example of what it means to adhere to the company's culture of open and inclusive communication. 

Construct policies: Centralize your communications policies so they are easily found and include all aspects of your communication policy. Some of the items in your policy may include:

• Proper etiquette when communicating by email, participating in conference calls, or online meetings.
• How to communicate with complaining clients.
• Guidance for social media communication.

Technology: Effective workplace communication requires established guidelines for using communication tools and technology. Examples of policy items to include are:

• Rules for using personal devices in the workplace. For example, company data shouldn't be stored on personal devices or sent to personal email accounts.
• Rules for communicating on personal social media accounts about your company. 
• Cybersecurity protocols.

Challenge: Poor onboarding communication process

When employees join your company and there is no formal communication training, they may be left adrift as how to communicate and where to find the information they need to effectively do their job.  This can cause frustration, slow their progress, and leave a poor first impression of their new job.  

Solution  

Share your communication policy with them as soon as they join your firm and explain the high value you place on effective communication. To ensure all employees operate under the same guidelines, consider mandatory communications training. Show them where your policies can be found and that updates will be communicated via email to all employees. Talk with them about the value you place on open and honest communication and that your door is always open to hear their concerns and ideas.

The Takeaway

Recognizing communication challenges and implementing practical solutions to address them helps put you in a position to avoid the negative effects of poor communication and build a team that can effectively work together to deliver superior products and services to your clients .  

A version of this article was originally published on August 15, 2013.

Photo: Getty Images