How is employee communication at your organization? You may think you’re reaching your employees in the right way, but it’s possible you have team members who feel they’re not getting the info they need.
In an increasingly digitized world, access to information is becoming a topic of major concern for many companies, especially those in the manufacturing and industrial space.
As a result, both the lack of information and information overload can be challenges for organizations.
Recent studies show that 36% of managers say they’re suffering from health issues because of the large amounts of information they have to process at work. According to another study done by Researchscape International, despite employers’ efforts to boost the ease of information access for workers, 41% of the information organizations provide to employees is “irrelevant” to their jobs.
Here’s what you need to know about employee communication and how to ensure you’re not misinforming or frustrating your employees.
What Employee Communication Issues Are Bothering Workers the Most?
Both the lack of relevant information and the overload of irrelevant questions can be an issue for employees. For example, 82% of workers believe that poor information management can hamper their productivity.
According to a Forbes article, employees receive approximately 115 emails per day and end up missing one-third of the information exchanged via emails.
However, this is no surprise considering the massive amount of data that is being generated by organizations, their employees, and their consumers in today’s digital era.
To summarize, an information issue can be connected to:
- Too much information shared in the organization
- Lack of information in the organization
- Inadequate time for workers to process the information they receive
- Missing alignment between different discussions happening in the workplace
Nevertheless, while it’s difficult to avoid information overload in today’s virtual work setting, organizations can easily tackle issues around the lack of information.
How Information Issues Can Impact Employees
Information issues can negatively impact the overall experience of employees in your organization. It can lead to:
- Reduced employee productivity
- Lower employee satisfaction
- Lower workplace collaboration
- Weak workplace relationships
How Organizations Can Tackle Poor Information Management
Most of the information-related issues in organizations can easily be managed with a robust information management strategy.
Different functional leaders can collaborate to build strategies around managing organizational information. Also, information systems leaders can play a vital role here as they have access to a variety of information management tools.
With the right information management tool, organizations can:
- Reduce irrelevant information
- Distribute relevant information to all the employees
- Provide employees with quick access to all the organizational information in one place
- Clear communication with employees
In some organizations, the IT function is solely responsible for managing information. In such cases, HR leaders can work with IT teams to identify information management tools (for example, cloud-based information sharing platforms) and train employees to use them. Moreover, they can also include learning these tools as a part of their onboarding plans.
Comprehensive information management systems can play a critical role in eliminating irrelevant information flowing across the organization. Not only this but they can also make it extremely convenient for workers from different departments such as marketing, sales, and so on to access all the required information in one place.
