Do your staff complain about the lack of communication? That the left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? Maybe the one doing the complaining, is you? Or perhaps, as many businesses do, you conducted an employee engagement survey and “lack of communication” emerged as a top result.
Apart from hiring, we can all agree that the most important thing managers do at work is communicate with their team members. Communication is like shaving if you do not do it well, it shows.
When something has gone wrong at work, people may feel that they did not have the information
they needed to make a decision. That information might be details about the health of the business, the status of progress, or the quality of their work. When people sense that they are missing information required for a particular task, they blame the lack of communication.
If leadership, at the most basic level, is getting the job done through others, then effective communication is one of the leader’s essential skills. So, if this is the case, the reverse is also true; problems in communication result in poor leadership or management practice.
During our work with Clients, we often find that issues resulting from poor, or lack of communication is at the center of most management problems. These can be can be defined on two basic levels.
We tend to see two types of Managers; the one that thinks that everything should be a secret and communicates too little, in this case, your staff do not know much about your business, quality or work, etc. and on the other hand the one who likes to communicate every detail of the business; in this case your staff tend to worry about their job and the business in general.
The gap between these two positions for most Managers is where the opportunities for improvement reside. Closing this gap will generate an improvement in communication and increase positive outcomes in management practice.
When taken literally, as a communication problem, managers look for new modes of communication
to ensure information is provided. They create new email systems, newsletters, meetings, or bulletin boards. This can improve things, but let’s remember that best practice in communication is to ensure people can access the information they need when they need it. In other words, they need access to the right information, at the right time and in the right format so Mangers need to be mindful of this concept.
Here are our top five tips for improving communication in your pharmacy:
- Engage regularly with your employees on a one to one basis, to understand the problems and barriers preventing them from performing their job better. Produce a document for each of these meetings with outcomes and results expected for both parties.
- Produce formal communication on a regular basis, that is accessible to everyone when they need it. For example, standard operations procedures, company information or an internal newsletter. Have all these documents in a physical or digital folder with easy access available to everyone at all times.
- Conduct regular group meetings, remembering that meetings fulfill three key functions: general communication, finding solutions to problems and gaining buy-in for new projects and initiatives.
- Regularly communicate employee achievements or those of the organisation itself. Use common areas to display this to allow everyone to see and participate in the news.
- Finally, you should ensure that there is a system for tracking whether communications are received and for capturing feedback that staff do not want to raise aloud: for example, you could provide a confidential e-mail address or regular web-based surveys. Where communications are concerned, follow President Reagan’s maxim:trust, but verify!
These simple communication tips will improve your management practice and as a result, you will have a better happier team and a better business. Remember that the best way to lead is by example.