Most of us spend 8-10 hours at the office every day. But where do you spend most of your office time? “Working,” we heard you say that. Surprisingly, employees spend 80% of their office time in some form of communication.
Think about it, the formal communication and casual conversation, emails, messages, meetings, and more, all this take up to 80% time of your workday. Don’t be surprised though, as this is a part of the business environment. And establishing and encouraging business communication is critical to your organization’s success.
What is business communication and how it is critical for an organization? Let’s understand.
What is business communication?
Business communication is the term used for sharing information between employees within and outside the organization.
It’s a process of how employees and management interact to reach business goals and be more aligned with the core values of the company.
Now you must have gotten a glimpse of how effective business communication is important for the company. Yet, according to the study done by Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. about 60% of organizations don’t have long-term strategies for their internal communication.
Let’s see the reasons you should encourage effective business communication.
- Improve employee engagement
Among the many factors that impact employee engagement leadership communication stands at the top.
It statistically correlates to how employees engage to achieve shared business goals. Thus, as a thoughtful leader, one should remember the importance of business communication and impose the same through their words and deeds.
- Reducing email overload
Emails, they take quite a chunk of our day at the office. However, only a small fraction of email-related tasks require immediate attention.
Thus, advanced tools to easily manage and filter emails according to priority should be a part of internal business communication.
- Eliminating information silos
Although sharing information is critical to get the work done, too much information at once can create information silos.
This means the actually important information can get lost amidst sharing and consuming too much information. However, organizations can eliminate this challenge by establishing proper business communication and using the right communication tools.
- Increased employee productivity
Have you ever had a feeling that you could have done a better job if the information was correctly shared? You are not alone. More than 50% of employees believe that effective business communication helps them improve their job performance.
Moreover, an employee on average spends 2.5 hours a day searching for information that a peer or superior might already know. So sharing information can cut off unnecessary time spent on research and information gathering which results in quick and quality work.
This in turn improves the productivity of the team as well as the company.
- Improves communication with remote working teams
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and frequent series of lockdowns have highlighted the importance of business communication more than ever.
Now that most people are working from home it calls for a new approach to communication and leadership. Organizations that were already practicing effective business communication struggled less while adapting to the new WFH environment.
Better business communication means improved productivity, team engagement, and employee experience. However, in today’s digital era, every organization needs to have a strong communication strategy combined with professional ethics to support and strengthen your work culture whether it’s completely at the office, digital, or hybrid.
