Ineffective communication is one of the biggest roadblocks to your employees’ productivity. It restricts your team from sharing innovative ideas, solve problems quickly, and become less productive every passing day. Therefore, every company requires a strong internal communication system that helps the company grow and keep up with the competition.
A recent trend suggests that business chats are most effective for internal communications. As a result, many companies are already using business chat tools to improve communication and increase workplace productivity. Here are a few tips for using business chat tools for your company:
1. Do away with the internal email communication system
You may not be aware, but emails within your workgroup are the biggest barriers to effective communication. Many studies suggest that nearly 40% of an employee’s time goes into dealing with internal emails. Sadly, the time spent doesn’t add value to your business. But you can change that scene if you start using business chat tools.
It doesn’t necessarily focus on internal emails. Business chat tools allow your employees to focus on the task at hand that improves your company’s productivity. Many would say that internal messages often act as a distraction for employees, but streamlining the messaging system can make communication collaborative. You don’t need to wait for a colleague to check his email and then reply. Unfortunately, it’s time-consuming and not a practical idea for most companies these days.
2. Flatten your communication structure
You will often notice start-ups expanding quickly because they can move ideas through their communication chains swiftly. They don’t have complicated communication systems that unnecessarily delay their productivity. Considering the benefits of chat API, bigger companies can learn from this approach and flatten their communication structure using business communication tools. They allow your employees to be a part of conversations to provide inputs about different projects.
Effective communication can provide various ideas that you can shortlist and implement to expand your business. But your employees need to have a dedicated platform where they can provide their ideas. And business chat tools provide that channel that they can use to communicate with some of the company’s board members.
3. Better brainstorming
The more employees you add to a conversation, the more ideas you get. This makes brainstorming easier. You may not accommodate everyone in your conference room. Instead, use the business chat tool to create groups where you can brainstorm ideas. Large conference calls or email chains may not allow you to add a significant number of participants. That doesn’t happen with business chat tools.
Moreover, in-person brainstorming isn’t ideal for introverted employees. They may feel shy to share their ideas in front of everyone. Business chat tools provide much-needed privacy to communicate without worrying about what others will say about them. This allows your company’s top talents to develop innovative ideas that you would otherwise not get if you conduct in-person meetings. Thus, business chat tools open doors for brainstorming on a larger scale.
4. Improved centralized planning
Disjointed communication is another barrier to your company’s productivity. And one of the most challenging parts of planning a project and determining its deadline is limited or discounted communication. For example, suppose you send an email to fifty employees you want to make a part of your upcoming project. What if five or ten employees don’t receive the email? The emails go directly to their spam boxes, where they get deleted automatically. This results in disjointed communication.
With business chat tools, you have an efficient way to improve your company’s centralized planning about projects. It is time-saving, and you have all the employees on the same page as you are. There is no communication gap because everyone gets your message and participates in meetings that you conduct. No one can say that he didn’t get a message because business chat tools come with records and searchable histories. Everyone has access to past conversations for references.
It is high time that you start using business chat tools for effective communication. Otherwise, your company will grow at the pace of a snail. Figure out which tools are suitable for your business and implement them accordingly to improve communication.