What is it that makes businesses succeed year after year? Top performing companies have these six things in common:

Focus on the Customer

This should be the number one priority of all businesses and organizations. You can support a “customer first” culture through communications. Customer stories that reflect the company mission or strategy are especially inspirational to employees.

Engage Employees Using Two-Way Communication

Employees receive a lot of information from their manager, function, business unit and corporate — emails, quarterly meetings, team meetings, etc. Listening is key to keep employees engaged. It’s crucial to have formal and informal ways to get feedback, through surveys, meetings or skip-level meetings. And as important as listening is, make sure you show employees that you hear them and tell them what actions were made based on their feedback.

Train Managers to Communicate Effectively

When it comes to making the connection of strategy to getting the job done each day, managers and supervisors can build alignment and deliver results with the essential everyday communication skills that make a difference.

Involve Internal Communicators in Managing Change

Change is here to stay, and to a certain extent, it is always disruptive. The key is to apply communication skills and processes to compress the transition and minimize the disruption.

Measure the Performance of Communication Programs

Goals should be tied to metrics that matter — employee engagement survey scores, the number of employees who have adopted some new system or process, or the number of times articles are read or links are opened.

Brand the Employee Experience

In our experience, an organization has one brand — to be used inside and outside of the business. Remember that often times, employees are customers, too.

How does your organization stand up in these areas? For more information on leader communication, communication training and change and engagement programs, email me at kerrigan@on-the-same-page.com.
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