Having a solid communication strategy is one of the most important components within an organization. Communication lies at the foundation of any successful business, as it enables proper collaboration, effective customer support, and so much more.
Good communication can even support recruitment and retention as long as you are doing it right. So here are five points about having a solid communication strategy and how it can support recruitment and retention.
Communication is necessary for providing learning opportunities for your new hires. It goes without saying that you need to be communicating clearly with candidates, but once you do hire someone, you need to train them well to be able to join your team without any issues. Effective training is pretty much impossible without sufficient communication throughout the learning process.
According to research, companies that have poor onboarding setups are twice as likely suffer from high employee turnover. Moreover, 89% of employees say they want to be able to train for their job from anywhere, anytime. These numbers solidify the fact that you need to offer provide adequate training during the onboarding process and then continue to provide employees with learning opportunities throughout their time with your company.
Create a program specifically designed for onboarding new employees and clearly communicate how new hires can leverage it. Stress that they can always ask you for advice or feedback or ask questions. They shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to you, but as their employer, you should also be the one initiating conversations and strengthening communication in the beginning of their role.
Appropriate communication is also essential for giving your employees a sense of purpose and meaning. This is particularly important for managers who are meant to lead their respective teams. Employees should feel like they can rely on the person leading them while also feeling like they have some kind of end goal and a purpose for all the work they are doing.
Communication for giving meaning can be done in different ways. For instance, leaders can make speeches to inspire and motivate their teams. If you don’t know how to write such speeches, you can always hire a professional writer from the writing services reviews site Top Writing Reviews to help you. Developing good public speaking skills will definitely help you communicate better with your employees and lead them successfully.
According to this study, only 1 in 3 employees believe that their leaders are able to communicate with them efficiently. Once you start communicating with your team more successfully and inspiring them to work, your they will be infinitely grateful to you. But what’s more important, more of them will want to stay with the company instead of leaving due to dissatisfaction.
Effective communication can also ensure that you make everyone feel heard and valued. As a leader, it should be your goal to make your current employees happy. Here are ways you can do this through communication:
Being flexible is probably one of the most important skills to have in this day and age considering how fast market conditions change. In fact, research has shown that flexibility is actually the most important leadership skill, so leaders and managers alike need to develop this skill if they aren’t providing flexible opportunities already.
Essentially, the point is to integrate strong communication into your company culture and to even make it a part of your internal and external branding strategy. To ensure you are providing flexibility, you need to clearly communicate these policies with your teams and ask for their feedback to ensure their needs are being considered.
Last but not least, don’t underestimate the power of communication to help you recognize and reward achievements. Your employees need to feel like their efforts are not in vain, and celebrating successes plays an important role in making them feel accomplished. Just like that, a simple acknowledgment of their achievements with the entire team present can be great for showing your gratitude for their hard work.
Moreover, research shows that employee retention rates are linked to employee recognition. What this means is that how you recognize and reward your employees will directly influence how many of them stay with you. You can reward them in different ways (e.g. extra vacation days, gift cards for their favorite brands, etc.), but recognition always requires clear and direct communication to be impactful.
To summarize, creating a solid communication strategy will undoubtedly help you in the long term, but it will also be quite valuable for short-term results. Most importantly, good communication will help you succeed in recruitment and will improve your employee retention rate.
About the Author: Lillie Jenkins is a creative copywriter and content writer. She has worked as a copywriter since graduating school, so her writing skills are well-honed. She writes publications in such fields as marketing, business, education, and personal life. More than writing Lillie loves to travel and read professional literature.