How HR Can Improve Employees' Communication Skills

Poor communication is responsible for many business failures, and in most cases, mistakes have nothing do with how "skilled" an employee is. It's a simple case of lack of communication.  

So if you've ever struggled to get results from your team because some of your employees find it difficult to communicate effectively, here are some tips on how to help employees improve communication skills.

3 Key Causes of Bad Communication

• Lack of social awareness and/or emotional intelligence. The employee may not realise they are not communicating  effectively

• Lack of understanding of effective communication techniques. The employee is aware of their communication struggle, but does not know how to improve.

• Lack of confidence. The employee knows they struggle to communicate, understand on what to improve, but lacks confidence to do so effectively.

Ways to Help Employees Improve Communication Skills

Verbal communication skills

For planned discussions, such as meetings, employees can improve their communication skills by preparing notes in advance. This serves as verbal cues that help them articulate their contributions.

It can also help to take notes during conversation as this helps them to remember which points to want to discuss later on, especially if they don't feel confident interjecting. For those who wish to interject, they should pay attention to their timing. A badly-timed interjection can appear rude.

Importance of Body Language

A big part of communication is body language. Clearly speaking and listening are just not enough.

Employees should face the person they are speaking to and make regular eye contact as well as keeping an open posture. This will show that they are listening but also open to opinions. Employees should also allow themselves to express their feelings visually, such as smile when happy.

Though it is good to use hand gestures to add dynamics to what they're saying, one should overdoing it as it can be off-putting to others.

Electronic communication

Some people are fine communicating in person but fall short when it comes to sending emails. It is a whole different environment for these people, because one can't very easily use tone of voice or body language to support what they are saying.

They should consider the following tips:

• Address people appropriately.

• Clearly explain the most important parts of the message right away. The recipient may have trouble reading if the email is too long.

• Follow up with a phone call, or even an in-person meeting. This is especially important if the email is of a more sensitive nature, as it is more likely that misunderstandings will happen due to the lack of social cues.

• If one adds an attachment, mention it in the email to avoid the recipient missing or overlooking the email.

Organise Team Building Exercises.

This is a safe space for employees to practice their organisation skills. Activities should be light-hearted as people learn more effectively if they are having fun.

A perfectly executed team building activity will bring out individuals' strengths, and will help people communicate more effectively due to the reduced pressure of the situation. They can put this to practice when they get back to work.

Communicate Organisational Changes to All Employees

There's a classic case of change management where people at the top fail to tell employees further down. They are either worried about the impact or they don't feel it's important enough.

It's easy for top management to forget how these changes might impact employees at the bottom. The employees who hears it from the grapevine, might listened to a warped view that is totally wrong.

Employees who don't know what's going on get insecure, lose trust, and become disengaged. Employers should not forget to communicate organisational changes with all employees. They could also get some input from the employees when making change decisions.

The employees are the experts of the organisation, so why not consult them?

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This article is adapted from How to help an employee improve communication skills by John Crowley and Simon Kilpatrick