5 Employee Communication Mistakes to Avoid

How much time do you and your executive team spend crafting employee communications? It’s easy to minimize this effort, given the need to focus on other operational challenges. But neglecting this effort can lead to some highly undesirable workforce results, including:  

• Diminished morale and productivity 
• Poor retention
• Lack of employee engagement
• Inadequate collaboration
• Less efficiency

Each of these negative outcomes is bad enough. When a company’s employee communications fall short, one bad outcome can lead to another—too high a price to pay for concentrating solely on customer or shareholder communications.

Here are five types of internal communications mistakes to avoid:

1.  Not listening

CEOs and business owners may be skilled in communicating to their workforce, but how well do they listen? As we have noted before, great CEOs “focus on what others are saying, as well as on how they express themselves.” Business leaders become better at communications “precisely because other people feel like you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say.”

How can you enhance your active-listening skills? Practice making (and keeping) direct eye contact. This demonstrates the level of attention you’re bringing to the conversation. Also, “angling your body during a heated discussion reduces tension,” notes Business.com, “and allows you to stand your ground without appearing confrontational.”

2. Wrong Tone

It’s safe to assume your team is always ready to hear from you. However, business leaders occasionally adopt the wrong tone for their specific audiences. They fall back on corporate jargon or otherwise overly-complicated messaging to the workforce.

Instead, remember that “keeping the audience at the forefront of your mind is key,” as Rewards Gateway notes. Adopting the most effective (and accessible) tone “has the power to create a sense of community and unite teams around a common goal.”

This is critically important if you want people to respond favorably to your message.

3. Wrong Communications Channel

These days, there are many ways to communicate with your team. The digital landscape, after all, is full of chat rooms, social media platforms, texting tools, email, and so on. But ignoring to utilize the communications channels preferred by employees only leads to confusion and more trouble down the road.

Find out where your employees “live” online. Once you determine the most effective channels for communications, Bloomfire advises establishing “guidelines with a directory that includes the intended purposes for each channel” and then “connect the different platforms to streamline workflows and avoid information silos.”

In other words, reach out to employees on platforms they are already familiar with, and avoid wordy or complicated messaging. In most cases, what you have to say can be boiled down to a straightforward paragraph or two.

4. Overly Optimistic

In challenging times, CEOs and business owners often feel obligated to dwell on anything positive they can relay to employees. In general, this is a positive approach, but the key is not to overdo it. People quickly grasp attempts to gloss over difficult issues, and being overly optimistic can strike a false note—at just the time when you most want to achieve employee engagement.

As Duke Learning & Organizational Development suggests, it’s best to “play it straight and don’t sugarcoat the facts.” While doing your best to keep a positive tone, “don’t try to shield [employees] by vagueness or making the positives bigger than they really are.” Instead, highlight both the pros and the cons of a given situation, and inspire the team to keep moving forward.

5.  No Call to Action

Most of the time, it’s not enough to convey an important message to your workforce. What’s needed is a call to action (CTA) so people better understand their own roles and action steps to take. For example, notes HR Cloud, “If your employees love working at your company, they can promote your brand … and provide your business with high-quality new hires.” The key is including a CTA for them “to share open positions with friends” and thus encourage your team members to act on your request.

Want to learn more about effective communications for business leaders? Register for our free TAB whitepaper, “Say What You Mean: How to Enhance Your Communications Skills as a Business Leader.”