Great Steps to Set Up Your Business Communication Management Process as a Manager or a Professional

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A solid business communication process is essential for the happiness of your employees and customers. Ultimately, this leads to financial stability.
One report discovered 29% of employees believe their current internal comms tools aren’t working.
Here are some of the reasons they listed:

Irrelevant information, exclusion, dishonesty, and lack of access to key information is something your own workforce likely experienced, too.
A study by Salesforce found that 86% of executives, employees, and educators consider inefficient communication to be the reason behind workplace failures.
We can no longer ignore the importance of teamwork and chemistry and their impact on employee productivity, engagement, and advocacy. Here are the steps you can follow to ensure a successful business communication process.

1) Audit your current state of business communication and set goals

No matter the stage of your business, you need a business communication plan in place.
However, you will make it the most useful if you focus on the areas that need the biggest improvement right now, and work your way to all other areas later on.
For example, these might be some of the reasons your communication needs revisiting:

Low employee satisfaction or high turnover
Lower than expected outputs across the company
Fast growth which leads to losing track of information
Lack of information transparency due to remote work

You might experience more than one of these, or a completely different scenario. Identify it and set goals for your business communication process based on it. For example, your goals can include:

A specific employee turnover or satisfaction rate
Customer satisfaction rate
Number of projects completed
Number of interactions between departments

…and more.

2) Identify core groups in your organization and their relationships with each other

Look into the structure of your organization and all the groups involved in its ability to function.
Take note of every group that requires information to function. This should include:

Horizontal classification, i.e. departments (operations, marketing, design, human resources, sales, customer support, finance, and more)
Vertical classification: professionals in teams, team leaders, department managers, executives
External groups: customers, suppliers, partners, and more

From here, considering the work they do on an ongoing basis and the results expected of them. Map out the way they need to communicate in order for their jobs to get done.
Depending on your company size, this might be a large task, so give yourself plenty of time. Some of the main questions to answer are:

Which teams and people have to talk to whom on a daily basis? What about weekly, biweekly, and monthly?
What communication happens only when there’s an ongoing crisis?
How are managers and team leaders maintaining progress in their departments? How does reporting work?
Is there a knowledge library that has the potential to reduce unnecessary meetings and conversations?
Which projects and processes need approvals from other people in the company? How are approvals requested and facilitated?

At a minimum, these answers should give you an insight into the necessary amount of emails, messages, calls, meetings, and documents for everything to happen in the designated time frame.

3) Define methods of communication

Next, choose the methods of communication that align with your business communication goals, as well as the interactions between core groups in your company.
Review the list of methods of communication we discussed earlier and make sure to add any unique to your company:

Web-based communication
Telephone meetings
Video conferencing
Face-to-face meetings
Reports and official documents
Presentations
Forum boards and FAQs
Surveys
Customer management activities

Which ones of these are essential for your organization to reach its goals? What’s optional and might see resistance in adoption? Which ones create the risk of adding too many tools and should be simplified?
Be realistic about your specific needs.
For example, a five-person startup where everyone works in the same office will likely focus on:

Web-based communication
Face-to-face meetings
Customer management

A 50-person company that is fully remote will invest more resources into:

Phone and video conferencing
Document organization to be able to diligently track their processes

A large global enterprise will probably use all of the listed methods of communication and have dedicated teams for many of them.

4) Choose the right tools

There’s no handbook that defines which tools are absolutely best for each purpose.
Gmail versus Outlook. Google Drive versus Dropbox. Slack versus Nextiva Chat.
The battles go on, but your choice is entirely up to the preference of you and your workforce.
While we can’t give you a list of software tools and leave you be, we can share these tips when it comes to selecting the right tools:

Use cloud storage to preserve important documents and other data. Enable automatic sync and backup to avoid human error and forgetting to manually save information to it.
Use a single platform for emails and calendars.
Use a single tool for chat messaging. For example, if some people are using Slack and others Hangouts in their Gmail, it will create friction and slow down communication.
Implement an easy-to-use, reliable VoIP phone system if many of your meetings happen remotely.
Develop brand and editorial guidelines that detail the tone of voice and use of brand elements. This way, all communication is unified, internally and externally.

5) Document the process

Finally, take note of everything you do throughout this setup and turn in into a shared document visible to the entire organization.
This way, each employee can refer to an intentionally developed communication plan and decide on the best action for the situation they’re in.
The document will also help newly on-boarded employees easily grasp all the tools and best communication practices.
You can create a recurring calendar reminder for yourself and your team to revisit the document once a quarter. This way, you will ensure the plan is still serving its best purpose and update it if necessary.

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