5 Tips for Fostering a Culture of Open Communication

by Denise Blasevick, founding partner and CEO, The S3 Agency

Employees are talking at your workplace. The question is: Are they communicating in a constructive manner to the parties who can effect change—and finding a way to be part of that change? Or are they grousing and gossiping because they feel there is no other way to express themselves? For companies in the latter group, ignorance is not bliss. In fact, it can lead to significant loss of staff, sales, brand reputation, growth opportunities, and more.

A culture of healthy, open communication doesn’t happen by accident; it must be designed in to the architecture of the business. The good news? It’s really not that difficult to implement. But it does require commitment and consistency.

Here are five ways to foster a culture of open communication with your staff:

1. Be unbrutally honest. Open communication requires honesty—but nothing requires brutality. Ensure that all corporate communications uphold the highest levels of respect, and that employees know this is expected of them as well. Should someone communicate otherwise, remind him or her that his or her feedback is important—but it must be respectfully submitted.
2. Check in weekly. A weekly, one-question survey designed to provide anonymous feedback can help managers stay in touch with what their teams are thinking. There are inexpensive systems that can be used to e-mail the entire staff with a new question each week—and provide management with the compiled feedback for review.
3. Ask for anonymous suggestions. Remember the old suggestion box? It tends to get utilized at first, but then employees often forget about it. Instead, implement an electronic system that prompts people on a weekly basis to make anonymous suggestions. That reminds people that they are empowered to provide ideas for improvement—or at least bring subjects to management attention that they might not otherwise feel comfortable addressing.
4. Act on feedback. Put a system in place to acknowledge, digest, and act on all of the feedback you are going to be receiving. People will only take the time to participate if they see it translate into meaningful results. That doesn’t mean every idea will result in change; but every idea should be heard.
5. Discover their dreams. When people join an organization, they hear all about the company vision. But that’s a very one-sided communication if we don’t hear about their dreams as well. Ask each employee to create a personal vision board that will then hang in their workspace—so they can be reminded of their own dreams and others can learn more about them. After all, the more we know about each other, the better we can communicate. They may even be able to help one another achieve some of those dreams.

Once you have opened up the communication floodgates, you may be surprised at how many insightful comments and new ideas you receive. You will also hear some things that you don’t like, so brace yourself.

Remember that people were making these same negative observations before—you just weren’t hearing them. So when something stings, don’t sulk. Instead, congratulate yourself for having achieved a culture of open communication. Then enlist your team to figure out how to fix whatever is wrong!