Effective communication - part 5

I'd like to hope it's obvious what the benefits of effective communication are. Yet if they were that obvious my question would have to be "so why don't more managers plan for effective communication?" (Postscript: A recent HBR blog suggests less than 51% have a communication plan in place with internal stakeholders.)

The benefits are, as the picture I hope demonstrates, the ability to achieve your organisational goals. These goals are achieved because the right resources, are in the right place, at the right time, to do the right things to achieve your goals. Ineffective communication not only stops these happening but can put hurdles in the way that will prohibit any further progress.

I won't labour the point further - expect to surmise - that if employee opinion polls measure opinions that an organisation believes are helpful to successfully achieving its objectives. Then the actions taken to improve communication in my role as communication and personal development manager in Procurement at HBOS, just after the merger between Halifax and Bank of Scotland, were successful.

As a result of actions taken improvements in employee satisfaction within the department in one year were:

• Feeling motivated in present job: from 61% to 73%,
• Feeling valued: from 46% to 61%
• Satisfaction with Communications: from 49% to 72%.

That is we went from one of the poorest performing departments to one of the best - bearing in mind an increase of 1 or 2% is generally considered good in these polls.

What action can you take to improve your communication? and when will you take it? Of course letting me know if I can be of any assistance to help you.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out - in procurement and business more widely.

So far in the series on effective organisational communication I've considered the excuses we give for not communicating effectively, the need to plan and think about the communication plan, the different types of information that need to be communicated and the the different methods of communicating. There's also insights using the wisdom of nature applied to communication too.

Blog 20/31 in July for Ultimate blog challenge.
Picture courtesy of Pixabay.