Incorporating internal communication strategies is vital to business success in today's fast-paced world. It’s commonly seen that poor communication between team members impacts key performance indicators (KPIs) negatively.
This is even more critical when it comes to the frontline workforce working out of dispersed locations. They often feel disconnected from the organization without proper communication, which influences their productivity, job satisfaction, and loyalty.
More here: How Can Internal Communicators Improve Retention of Frontline Workers?
Estimates suggest that 11 million frontline jobs remain unfilled in the US today. Moreover, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies have increased wages by 7 to 10% for frontline workers to retain them. A recent Harvard Business Review article states that the solution to this could be as simple as improving the communication and relationship between managers and frontline workers.
This blog explores four internal communication strategies you can incorporate to navigate optimum frontline performance and ensure high employee morale.
Here Are Four of the Best Internal Communication Strategies You Can Follow
#1 Develop Your Frontline Employees’ Communication Skills
Your frontline employees may lack the proper soft skills to interact with different stakeholders and effectively report what is happening. Consequently, objectively monitoring their performance and productivity can be challenging for you as an employer to improve productivity. The easiest way to overcome this gap is by implementing a training and performance appraisal program that trains your frontline employees to communicate better.
Read More: Investing in People for Business Growth
#2 Communicate Regularly to Enhance Employee Experience (EX)
Employee experience (EX) as a metric is critical as customer experience for your organization’s success. To enhance the EX of frontline workers, you must ensure they are not left in the lurch. For that, you must implement processes to regularly brief them about their tasks and duties while providing positive reinforcement through rewards when they attain any milestones. Being readily available to respond to their queries when they face difficulties is also a great internal communication approach to boost their morale and your EX metric.
#3 Train Frontline Managers to Communicate Effectively
Interestingly, companies with large frontline workforces often have close to 40% of frontline managers in their first year of leadership. This lack of experience necessitates a well-developed training strategy for them to communicate better as well and create an open, transparent culture.
Thus, you must prioritize training your frontline managers to communicate effectively with the dispersed frontline workforce while also creating a safe and accepting environment for them. This often requires initiating diversity training and implementing inclusive policies. It also requires teaching them how to make workers comfortable in sharing their opinions and providing feedback.
#4 Use Tools to Increase Accessibility for Your Frontline Employees
Finally, along with training, you must ensure you have the infrastructure to enhance accessibility for your frontline employees in real-time, regardless of where they are. Even though physical communication is not always practical, you can use tech tools to ensure round-the-clock connection and collaboration, irrespective of location.
A good employee communications app helps you personalize every interaction with your employees. From onboarding to communicating with frontline employees daily to answering queries, it can securely facilitate conversations and manage internal communication smoothly.
Internal Communication Strategies Are Critical to Organizational Success
Ensuring your frontline feels valued and accepted directly impacts their performance. To that end, incorporating effective internal communication strategies helps to create a more productive, happy, and result-oriented workplace.
While training the frontline employees and their managers is one aspect, providing them with the necessary tools to communicate efficiently in real-time is essential.
Employee communication apps such as Speakap are designed to enable smooth internal communication with the frontline workforce. It can be easily integrated with your HR system, allowing seamless communication across different content formats. It also provides rich insights and enables you to run events and polls to engage employees. Get in touch to learn how an employee app can help you implement better internal communication strategies.
