How
communication can improve productivity
Managers can improve
their organisation’s performance significantly by communicating with their
staff and involving them in decisions. This also improves overall
employee satisfaction and productivity.
Research conducted with over 10,000 employees during 1999 and 2002 across 10
organisations indicates that staff do not feel trusted, nor valued, nor
respected as responsible employees. This perception is based on the large
communication gap that exists between managers and staff. Staff feel they
are not involved in decisions and important developments within their
organisation, nor are they recognised for their achievements. Consequently,
staff represent a large untapped resource and managers need to undertake
two-way communication to optimise this resource to further improve the
organisation’s performance and employee productivity.
In
this article we will be looking at the importance and effectiveness of
communication between management and staff and impact on employee
satisfaction.
In describing their ideal
workplace and employer, employees consistently rate “effective communication
between management and staff” in their top 5 expectations. Also in their
top 5, is their expectation of “feeling valued, trusted and respected”.
When we probed this expectation further, we discovered that communication
plays a significant role in helping staff feel valued. In their own words,
staff feel valued when:
-
Their
opinions, expertise and experience are recognised through an open two-way
channel of communication between management and staff
-
Staff
feel involved and empowered in decision making processes relating
to their jobs.
-
Staff
contributions and efforts are openly recognised.
-
Good
and bad news is openly communicated, letting them
know what is really going on in the organisation.
Staff
feel totally undervalued and not trusted when:
-
They
are kept in the dark about important developments in the organisation
-
They
are not asked / consulted about their expertise or experience in a
particular job or field
-
They
are not consulted about important decisions
-
They
do not receive any feedback about positive things they have done
When we examined how well organisations performed on communication, it
became clear that there is a large gap between employees’ expectations and
perceptions of managers’ performance on communication. The actual result
was a performance gap of –32%, where a gap of 0% means that employees are
totally satisfied with management communication ie. management performance
matches employee expectations of communication.
It
is interesting to note that in most of the organisations surveyed, there is
extensive use of communication tools in the form of email, Intranet,
newsletters, and Team Briefings. These tend to proliferate one-way
communication and certainly do not impact on employees’ sense of value given
their high level of dissatisfaction with communication.
We also
assessed the impact of communication on the overall Employee Satisfaction
Index (ESI). The table below outlines the top 5 correlation coefficients
between the ESI and the performance means of the different attributes.
|
Correlation Coefficient |
Feeling valued and respected |
0.915 |
Effective communication between management and staff |
0.816 |
Sufficient equipment, facilities and resources to do their job |
0.796 |
Enough information to do their job properly |
0.734 |
Customer focus |
0.650 |
A
correlation coefficient >0.3 indicates a positive relationship; +0.6
indicates a strong relationship.
These
results suggest that effective management communication can play a
significant role in improving overall employee satisfaction by giving staff
a sense of value, respect and trust.
Effective management communication requires a two-way process through which
staff experience and expertise is used for day-to-day decision making in
areas that relate directly to their own work.
Sample
of organisations researched
Our
findings are based on research conducted between the beginning 1999 and end
of 2002 with over 10,000 employees across the following organisations:
Organisation Type |
Industrial Business-to-Business Service & Product Provider |
Commercial Business to-Business service & product providers (3) |
Education Service Provider |
Internal Shared Service Providers (2) |
Public Service Providers (3) |
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© The Ryder Self Group 2003 |