Communicating with your employees is a vital piece of the pie when it comes to a thriving company. But it isn’t just communication from management that matters.
The HR department needs to be able to disperse information quickly and clearly, making sure employees know all of their rights and also what’s expected of them. Employees want to feel heard and like they have clear-cut avenues for reporting any issues. Therefore, the communication link needs to be strong and easy to access.
Good communication will:
- Help with employee retention. Employees are much less likely to jump ship when they feel their thoughts and concerns are taken seriously.
- Reduce any lawsuits or employee conflicts.
- Increase employee loyalty, making employees more likely to fight for their company and give their all to their job.
- Help sales in the long run. Employees with more experience who are more fulfilled in their job will do a much better job explaining your products and services to customers.
- Give employees confidence when it comes to discussing inner-workplace conflict, making your company culture more positive overall.
- Be proactive, reducing the amount of time HR employees need to spend answering individual questions.
The problem is that HR communication often falls under two umbrellas: aggressive, as it can deal with conflict or unhappiness in the workplace, and dull, as it can deal with laws, rules, and regulations that the average employee finds uninteresting or unimportant.
If the only way for employees to communicate with HR is to physically come to their office and chat with them or send them an e-mail, you may find that employees don’t reach out about important issues and more communication is missed. Some people may feel uncomfortable doing so, or they may just shrug off questions until some nebulous “later.” But when important information is missed, the workplace becomes primed for conflict.
Here are four simple tools that can be used to encourage and improve communication between employees and HR. Don’t forget to also reach out to your employees and see how they prefer to receive information—it may be a different strategy than you think!
An HR Newsletter
Sometimes, basic is best. A regularly sent newsletter can be a great way to get information directly to your employees. Something like HR isn’t exactly captivating to most employees; randomly sent e-mails are more likely to be missed or ignored. But by compiling all of your important updates into a newsletter, employees will know when to expect new HR information and set aside time to actually go through it. You can try to make the information more interesting by highlighting particular employees’ anniversaries or congratulating them on major milestones.
If your company is larger, creating different newsletters for different departments may be a good idea, as well. HR blogs used to be quite popular, but these days, a newsletter is more effective—people are less and less likely to actually check blogs, while newsletters will wind up straight in their inbox. If you want to make things more engaging, consider creating video or audio newsletters—not everything needs to be written out long form. For instance, if you’re walking employees through a new paid-time-off form, you could do a screen-share video to show them exactly where to find the form and what they need to fill out.
Slack (or Another Instant Messaging Platform)
If your company still doesn’t have Slack or another instant messaging platform, now’s the time to get one. Oftentimes, small questions or issues can be resolved more quickly over something like Slack vs. e-mail. Slack allows for a more dynamic, conversation-based form of communication, while e-mail is more siloed and formal. That makes Slack a better choice for talking through disputes or complex issues. When there are more questions, it can be more helpful to have a bit of a back-and-forth. Slack also allows you to address groups of people in a more effective way.
The key to communication? Transparency. Slack takes the cake when it comes to this compared with other instant messaging platforms due to its searchable nature. Employees can search to see if topics have already been covered or issues have already been addressed. Slack also allows for file sharing so important documents can be easily sent to employees.
An HR Website
Consider making a separate page on your website simply for HR issues that’s accessible by employee password. It can be a place to store important documents and policy information and even have a chat box so employees can reach out to HR representatives. Think of it as a working library that makes information easy to access and consume. This may feel like overkill for small businesses, but larger companies may benefit from being able to share a lot of information in one central place. If the website is public-facing, it could be used for recruitment, as well, but you may then need to limit the number of documents you share so important employment information isn’t leaked.
Regular Video Chats
Consider implementing a “Human Resources Open House.” Once a month, you can host a companywide video chat during which employees are able to ask questions and voice concerns. Someone outside of HR who’s well-liked by employees can serve as the emcee, helping to guide the conversation and filter through any questions. This would obviously be about broader issues, like leave policies and benefits, not employee conflicts. Employees can come prepared with questions instead of just shooting them off over Slack or e-mail. Video chats are always a great way to “humanize” HR employees and help people put faces to names, making them more likely to utilize honest communication. Obviously, these can be in person, as well, if you have an in-office team. Face-to-face communication isn’t a dying art; it’s actually vital in a lot of ways. By understanding body language and seeing facial expressions, you’re able to communicate more effectively and eliminate the potential for conflict or misunderstandings.
Claire Swinarski is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.