Most Indian organizations suffer from a communication gap and not absence of communication. Important updates are lost in WhatsApp threads, decision making gets leaked out through informal channels, and frontline or remote workers hear the news late, sometimes weeks after.
With an increasing number of offices, shifts and job roles, the problem escalates, often because there’s no reliable team communication software tying it all together. Here are the reasons why the communication gap is rising across Indian workplaces, and 7 ways to address it.
Why the Communication Gaps Are Rising in Indian Organizations
The hybrid working model has led to increased dispersion of teams across offices, homes and clients, and the informal chats that used to fill in communication needs have reduced drastically. Organizations today have a haphazard system of communication ranging from emails to WhatsApp, from notice boards to informal chats, with no uniformity in who communicates with whom.
A 50-people office may manage with the ad-hoc grapevine that works well enough, but a 500-people company with multiple shifts and a warehouse team may not be so lucky. Adding layers of complexity, like the regional and language barriers most Indian organizations have to deal with, only accentuates the gap. A message may sail smoothly from the head office but gets muddled up by the time it reaches the local office.
Desk and frontline staff face a similar divide. While desk staff may receive communication through formal channels, frontline workers may have little to no communication mechanism at all. This places them at a disadvantage, as they hear the news later, or sometimes never.
Key Signs of a Communication Gap in an Organization
These signs may seem trivial or unrelated but are good pointers to spot communication gaps.
- Employees Are Missing Out on Important Information: For example, an update sent out over email at the end of a Friday goes unnoticed by half the team. This often leads to follow-up questions from these employees over the next two weeks, all because the announcement lacked a central communication channel that every employee was expected to check.
- Teams Have Information That Other Teams Don’t: While it’s healthy for teams to have autonomy over their operations, the absence of centralized communication leads to information being pooled within clusters of teams. Sales teams know things Operations teams don’t, Operations know things Finance teams don’t. No team is intentionally keeping information from the other, but the lack of shared information channels makes it seem that way.
- Duplication of Efforts and Miscommunication: This happens more often than is apparent. Instances of two people following up with the same client, or writing the same report, arise frequently because of miscommunication. These instances may be few for any one employee, but across the organization they add up to hours of wasted effort.
- Delayed Decision-Making: The simple reason approvals take longer than they should: the request passed through three different communication channels before it landed with the decision maker. The requestor now has to spend extra time explaining the background all over again, since the channels were siloed and the decision maker had limited context.
- Low Employee Engagement and Collaboration: When employees stop collaborating and sharing ideas with each other, it’s often a tell-tale sign of poor communication. This behavior may not be visible right away, but over time employees learn to stay guarded with each other on work-related information. It’s often the result of a one-way, top-down mode of communication where employees don’t feel encouraged to share their input freely.
How to Fix Communication Gaps in Indian Organizations
Most fixes don’t require a cultural overhaul, and are relatively simple to implement.
1. Centralize Internal Communication
Select one or two communication channels that serve as central repositories of important information. This may involve email for all employees, a notice board for the factory floor, WhatsApp for certain teams, or a combination of these. The important thing is establishing what the default channel is, so that “I didn’t know” ceases to be an acceptable response once information has gone out through it.
2. Establish Communication Guidelines
Within each team, guidelines outlining what applies to whom should be established. Communication guidelines are vital, as they reduce confusion and help set expectations. For instance:
- Urgent matters are discussed over direct messages or calls
- Announcements pertaining to a team are discussed within the team
- Company-wide announcements are made over a shared channel
- Important discussions are always formalized and documented, rather than left as a series of chat messages
3. Choose the Right Channel for Different Types of Communication
Some messages need the informality of WhatsApp, some require the formality and documentation of email, and others demand a personal one-on-one conversation. Announcements need a channel with universal reach, while quick questions can be left as comments if a documentation system is in place. Matters of a sensitive or personal nature should be discussed over a direct call rather than in a group.
4. Encourage Cross-Functional and Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Even a monthly cross-functional meeting can suffice, especially if it addresses a pressing matter that needs collective attention. A customer support team that meets with product monthly is a good way to address customer pain points directly and keep support aware of upcoming developments. A system like this can prevent many mishaps that stem from miscommunication.
5. Make Leadership Communication More Transparent
Does leadership communicate directly and frequently enough? Do employees feel connected to the decision makers? Regular leadership updates and transparency, even if brief, help establish greater trust with the rest of the employees. A scarcity of such communication, on the other hand, tends to invite speculation and rumor-mongering, which rarely turns out well.
6. Maintain Regular Communication with Remote Team
These groups of employees are the most affected by communication gaps and the least able to address them themselves. They might not even be aware that the gap exists, since they’re the ones bearing the repercussions: an update that comes too late, or doesn’t reach them at all.
This fix is non-negotiable for companies with remote and frontline staff. Any mobile-based communication channel that reaches them directly, without relying on a middleman, is useful, be it an app or SMS. At a minimum, even a printed notice that’s read before leaving for work suffices.
7. Dedicated Internal Communication Platforms
Guidelines are a good start, but they only go so far before the need for a centralized, comprehensive communication repository becomes clear. Certain communication needs are better handled by a dedicated internal communication tool, one that consolidates everything in one place rather than relying on a disparate set of tools.
Platforms like this typically offer real-time messaging for informal communication, team channels for organized chatting, company-wide announcements, email integration, document sharing, mobile accessibility for remote and frontline staff, employee directory access, role-based routing of announcements, and notifications. A tool with these features can prove enormously valuable to desk and frontline staff alike, since it becomes a single source of truth everyone can refer to instead of relying on scattered emails or notices. Organizations that have relied on a haphazard set of tools over the years often see the most value in a consolidating tool like this.
What to Look Out for in an Internal Communication Platform
Multiple tools are available, but not all of them suit every organization. It’s important to identify your organization’s most basic requirements and choose a tool that fits them well. Certain features stand out across most organizations:
- Real-time messaging for informal internal chats
- Team channels for organizing communication
- Company-wide announcements that cut across teams
- Document sharing within teams or across the organization
- Mobile access for frontline and remote staff
- Employee directory for finding the right person to communicate with
- Routing of updates based on an employee’s role
- Notifications that employees actually trust and engage with
By choosing a tool with these features, organizations can get the most out of their internal communication platform. Without them, a tool designed for desk staff may fail to address the unique issues of frontline staff, and vice versa.
Best Practices for Creating a Communication-First Workplace
While most tools and guidelines address the “how” of communication, the most critical aspect is habit building. A few best practices for developing a communication-first workplace:
● Encourage Feedback: A workplace culture where employees are encouraged to voice concerns and bring up ideas works wonders. It helps identify gaps early and addresses issues before they snowball.
● Limit and Optimize Meetings: Any meeting that could have been a message or an email negates the benefits of consolidated communication, and instead creates another channel to track.
● Document Important Information: Information stored exclusively in people’s memory runs the risk of being misplaced or forgotten. Always document important information and decisions, and route anything that needs formalizing through the appropriate channel.
● Review and Reevaluate: It’s important to periodically review the entire communication setup to make sure it still serves its purpose. A system that worked well for a 50-employee company may not hold up as well for a 500-employee organization.
● Train Managers: Most problems in communication stem from mismanagement at the manager level. Communication guidelines and best practices should always be reinforced there first.
Conclusion
Communication gaps rarely announce themselves, and are often the reason behind several other issues before anyone traces them back. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but rather a host of simple guidelines, communication channels, and tools that together enable effective communication. Businesses looking to Improve Workplace Communication with Collaboration Tools can benefit from adopting centralized platforms that make conversations, updates, and file sharing easier across teams. For Indian organizations, this includes accounting for scale, dispersion, and the divide between desk and frontline staff.
A communication guideline that works for a two-office sales team may not work as well for a five-state operations team. Tools and guidelines are necessary, but it’s always a good idea to start small and pick two or three simple fixes before moving to the next set. Communication gaps tend to see improvement within a few weeks of implementing fixes like these.
