In this lesson we learnt the benefits of internal relationships in the workplace and what they mean to the company and employees, and the different methods available for communication.
Benefits of internal relationships
Below I outline some of the key benefits of making sure that there is a good internal relationship structure in place and people follow it:
- Internal relationships introduce a decentralised approach. This means that key decisions are not made at the centre of a business (senior management), meaning that the decisions are delegated further down the chain, a decentralised approach.
- Internal relationships prevent silo mentality, which is an attitude that some organisations might have. Silo mentality occurs when members of organisations do not wish to share information or withhold information from others within that organisation.
- Motivated employees who more loyal, because we are all more motivated to perform well on a task if we know what we are trying to achieve.
- Cohesive team working, a cohesive team are able to comfortably converse with one another to communicate strengths and weaknesses, commit to decisions and are not afraid to engage in conflict around ideas. Cohesive team work steams from having a good internal communication structure in place.
- Which nicely moves onto the next point of preventing conflict, poor communication is one of the biggest causes of conflict within a company. It leads to misunderstanding and can occur if a manager asks an employee to relay an important message to another employee, but the employee fails to relay the intended message.
- It encourages innovation, because interdepartmental communication encourages people to share ideas about their work outside their usual team and as the ‘pool of ideas’ is larger and sparks innovation for knowledge-based ideas. For example, a sales team will see more success if they speak with marketing who might have more insight into what prospects are reacting well to in terms of marketing content.
- More satisfied customers are a result of an organisation having a customer focus throughout all areas of the company. Departments that talk with one another have much more insight, and better idea of the bigger picture. Once this communication between teams develop, information is easily shared and used to the customers advantage.
- And lastly staff that feel empowered to influence a policy that affects them, creating a vision and sharing it with the team will urge people to help achieve it. Transparency in communication is how you deliver the message to everyone.
Internal communication methods
The methods and tools available today are endless, businesses will use a collection of different tools for different purposes. Here some of the main communication tools that we are using:
- Face to face meetings
- Text
- Notice boards
- Website
- Social media
- Newsletters
- Video conferencing
- Company intranet