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    Identifying communication barriers in your business

    High effort

    High impact

    Information is the lifeblood of your business. If your team isn’t communicating effectively, you could be missing out on opportunities to win new business, give customers better service or be more productive. Recognising issues and finding where the bottlenecks or problems are will improve the health of your company.

    • 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

    Talk to employees to identify pain points and moments of unexpected collaboration

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Team members have first-hand experience of communication barriers and will be able to share practical examples. Look for positives too. Chance collaborations are a great sign that those teams should be working together more often.

    Conducting one-to-ones with employees

    Using a template for employee one-to-ones, like this one from Bristol University, will help to make sure each meeting is as effective as possible.
    2

    Look at what tools and processes are being used to share information and draw a simplified flow diagram of how they interact

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Auditing the current systems, including how they are being used in practice, gives you a more complete picture of what’s involved and potential barriers. For example, there might be a missing link or duplication of data in two systems.

    3

    Check whether goals, your USP or other key knowledge has permeated your business

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    There’s certain top-level information that everyone in the business should know, such as the USP of your main product or service. Asking team members from across the organisation if they’re aware of a particular fact is a good litmus test of the quality of communication.

    4

    Use the research gathered so far to identify three communication barriers that currently exist in your business

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Identifying communication barriers will help you understand where the problems are in your business and what you need to work on.

    5

    Prioritise which communication barrier you’re going to solve first and plan the steps you will take next

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Once you’ve identified the barriers to communication, it’s time to start fixing things. Start with what will unlock the most value and work with the team to plan the systems or processes that will remove the barrier.

    Implementing a new system in the workplace

    Embedding a new system in your business takes careful planning. This checklist will help to make sure you complete the process in an effective way.

    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.