Communication

An organization wouldn't be able to function without it: communication. Changes in the workplace have made communication much more sophisticated over the last decades. Not only are people constantly hooked to their devices to exchange thoughts and ideas with others, but remote and hybrid work settings have made employees increasingly dependent on digital communication. Emails, texts, and direct messages lack context or expressions leading to a negative impact on the effectiveness of communication. Understanding what makes communication effective and deploying effective communication methods in the workplace is integral to organizational success.

Challenges around communication are growing. Based on research by Grammarly (2023), miscommunication is costing US organizations $12,506 per employee per year. Organizations and employees suffer from the increased sophistication in communication. Employees are spending 18% more time on written communication and they're experiencing 7% more stress resulting from poor communication than they did the year previous (Grammarly, 2023). On the other hand, leaders have experienced a 12% drop in the effectiveness of (written) communication and a 15% reduction in productivity due to poor communication compared to the year 2022 (Grammarly, 2023). Axios (2023) reports that employees and leaders are more often than not on the same level. While the majority of leaders are confident about their communication style, less than half of the employees agree. When it comes to alignment, 66% of leaders believe they are aligned with employees. In contrast, just 44% of employees agree. Employees believe that insights are not accessible, communication lacks context, and shared data is incomplete. Adding layers of communication complicated the relationship between employees and their managers causing organizations to suffer from poorer performance and productivity.

The dependency of employees on communication keeps increasing. In the United States, the average employee spends 30% of their workweek in meetings (TechnologyAdvice, 2022). The consequence of changes in the workplace, remote and hybrid work is that employees now spend 50% of their working time using digital communication tools (Forbes, 2023). Spending more time on communication tools weighs on workers. While 45% of employees feel more connected to their peers, 58% feel that comes with a responsibility to be available more, and 60% feel increased burnout (Forbes, 2023). The communication channels used by employees differ. 18% of employees give preference to email communication while 17% prioritize video communication and 16% prefer direct messaging (Forbes, 2023). Compared to their remote counterparts, onsite employees overwhelmingly preferred in-person conversations (34%). One could argue for eliminating work-from-home options but the reality is that, now the workforce is used to it, it expects flexibility from employers. When offered to work remotely, 87% of employees take their employers up on that offer (McKinsey & Company, 2022). Apart from differences between people working from home or the office, there are generational-, gender-, and cultural differences in preferred communication methods. As work environments change and turn more diverse, a thorough and frequent review of how communication is facilitated is critical to maintaining its effectiveness. 

Changes in communication have impacted how employees acquire and develop skills. Enabling remote and hybrid work through digital communication has opened up jobs to a broader talent pool but slowed down time to amass important soft and hard skills. The online workplace has made it harder for employees to develop themselves. Employees are progressively dependent on their own ability to consume knowledge instead of leveraging the insights and expertise of their more experienced peers. The latest and growing working generation - Generation Z - is hurt most by changes in communication at work (Insider Inc., 2023). Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, they missed opportunities to connect and learn during a vital period in their lives. The generation is important for the future of work and is expected to make up 27% of the global workforce by 2025 (World Economic Forum, 2023). A study by Salesforce (2022) found that only 32% of Gen Z employees are equipped with the resources to learn (digital) skills and thrive. Without concrete actions to improve the effectiveness of communication and balancing self-dependency and dependency on colleagues, new generations won't function as desired and skills gaps will grow. 

Leaders need to evaluate and finetune their communication strategies, channels, and methods to address uncertainties about the growing impact of ineffective communication. According to Grammarly (2023), 82% of leaders are concerned about how poor communication will affect their organizations in the future. When done right, effective communication raises employee confidence, lowers stress, increases productivity, and results in greater customer satisfaction for the organization (Grammarly, 2023). To guarantee effective communication, leaders must ask themselves important questions about the goal of their message, their target audience, and the best channel to use for the message. In addition, they have to facilitate two-way communication, practicing their active listening skills as they allow employees to communicate feedback and remarks. Furthermore, they need to avoid giving in to tendencies to communicate the same message to every member of their team. Instead, communication must be tailored to the individual employee. To top it off, leaders are required to pay special attention to how courteous their communication is and whether it invites the receiving employee to engage in conversation. Communication can continue to grow over new channels but it's key that messages leave little room for speculation or assumptions. 

Communication challenges are costly. Leaders have work to do to better align their perspectives with that of their employees as the dependency on communication grows and new generations enter the workforce. A lack of action to ensure message effectiveness will progressively harm organizational performance, increase costs, and widen skills gaps. Effective communication requires a more direct approach, led by management, in which the unique characteristics of employees are recognized and respected. More customized two-lane communication will lead to higher productivity, greater employee engagement, and ultimately bigger organizational success.