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    • Action plan

    Creating a culture of effective communication

    Medium effort

    High impact

    Establishing clear lines of communication in the workplace can lead to greater productivity and eliminate unnecessary issues and roadblocks. There are a number of simple actions you can take to improve communication right now, plus wheels you can set in motion to build effective communication into your culture.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline
    What's involved? Ways to use this action plan Measuring impact
    1

    Speak to managers of each department and find out about their team’s preferred methods and tools for communication

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Learning how each department communicates and what works well for them will give you a better understanding of systems you could adopt across the business.

    2

    Send out a survey to employees to learn more about what the business could do to improve communication

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Getting feedback from employees can highlight potential blind spots around communication that you may not have realised existed.

    Developing an employee feedback survey

    Employee feedback surveys can be used to measure engagement or assess processes like onboarding or career development.
    3

    Act on the feedback you’ve received from your employees and collaborate with the HR department to codify changes you’re making

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Including your HR department in the process will make sure changes are factored into resources like onboarding checklists or internal guidelines, which can help to ingrain them into your company culture.

    Resolving internal communication problems brings business benefits

    Good communication is critical. Reboot Online shares how it made sure junior team members had the support they needed.
    4

    Separate internal tools into urgent “need to know” and less important “want to know” communications, then explain these changes to employees

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Dividing up tools by urgency (for example, email for urgent messages, Slack for everything else) will help to prevent crucial messages from getting lost amidst general conversations.

    5

    Schedule monthly meetings to explain what’s happening in the business, so you can continue building a culture of effective communication

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Effective communication needs to come from the top too – holding monthly meetings will help to keep employees in the loop and provide context about how their work contributes to the business’s goals.

    What can I do with this Action Plan?

    Start this Action Plan

    Add some extra information to this plan and we’ll help you get it done.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

    Download and print

    Get a printable template for this Action Plan, fill it in with some target dates, and share it with your team. Pin it on the wall where everyone can see it.

    Get the printable Action Plan

    Learning Groups

    We also run Learning Groups on these topics where you can join other leaders tackling the same challenges.

    Find a Learning Group

    How will I know if my action plan is working?

    Staff satisfaction survey results

    Staff satisfaction surveys help gauge sentiment at regular intervals

    Why this metric?

    Whether gathered anonymously or not, staff satisfaction surveys help gauge the sentiment of your people as changes are made and impacts felt.

    How do I start tracking?

    Use an online survey to get feedback from members of staff three and six months after making changes to see what impact it has had.