5 Tools to Help Office Communication
The world of office life is for some treacherous, and for others it is something to embrace. Either way communication in the office is vital. Sometimes people are in meetings, or are busy but an urgent message needs to be passed to them. One way to address this urgent message is to physically go to another person’s office and potentially disturb an important meeting or something of that nature. Phone systems are the same thing: potentially disturbing, and emails often get lost in the fray. The best option is a messaging system that everyone is necessarily familiar with.
Communication is not just a digital solution, it is the means for information to flow. Knowing how to communicate can keep a good flow of work and keep negative emotions out of the office.
The following will consider five different tools that can help office communication:
5) Duh, Google Chat
When people say Google Chat they know this is the industry standard. Using this line of communication is fast, easy, and can grab the attention of a party that is busy. It is also directly connected to the business (often times) and as such can be a little scary to use if you don’t want a superior knowing what you’re up to.
4) Develop Code Words
(This guy knows codewords)
Look, sometimes there is confidential information that needs to be passed along in a public space… like an office. It may be impolite to ask someone to leave, so one way to get around it is with fun codewords. The goal is to maintain privacy, but also to do it in a fun way. So if a big client is waiting in the lobby and you need to tell the representative that is meeting with him to drop everything, you can say ‘Big Kahuna on the line.’ Whatever works.
3) Avoid Telecommuting.
Last year, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer sent out a memo to her employees that barred them from telecommuting. Telecommuting is the process of not working in the office, be it at home or the coffeeshop. For obvious reasons there are issues with communication and Mayer may have been right all along.
Improving the productivity and communications in an office starts with all the employees being in.
2) Enforce Transparency
People would assume that less communication is worse, but often times less communication can be a sign a of everyone being informed. How can this be? If there is a sensible project management system and everyone is on this system then the boss doesn’t have to constantly repeat and bark orders.
1) Consider an Internal Newsletter
Big corporations have newsletters of what’s going on inside the office. Sometimes SME’s don’t do them because the funds aren’t there and time is not available.
With an internal newsletter people can catch up on what’s going on in the office instead of watching it all pass by.
By: ParadigmNext http://paradigmnext.com
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ParadigmNEXT, Inc. is a digital agency headquartered in Chicagoland. We provide branding, identity, integrated marketing, social media strategy, art direction, web-design & development, startup incubation, commercial video production, product development, and commercial storefront development services to a wide array of clients ranging from bootstrapped startups to successful longstanding companies.