Your company reputation for communication ineffectiveness has multiple hidden costs
Your organization’s reputation with your employees matters more than you might imagine and believe.
Just like your market of clients, customers and prospects assess and judge you, the people who work with you and for you, as well as your vendors, are evaluating and judging you too.
They can reward the company with consistent attendance, focus, healthy attitude, unselfishness, collaboration, valuable ideas, higher productivity and advocating for your brand and location.
Of course, just as they can do all that, they can punish with their power, such as missing work more frequently, exhibiting less enthusiasm, possessing a weaker attitude, using less focus, doing more job hunting, leaving the company and maybe worse, acting selfishly or unethically.
How is less-than-ideal or substandard communication hurting your organization?
Dynamic Signal conducted a study — Annual State of Employee Communication and Engagement Study — which was detailed in an HR Dive piece, Poor Communication May Cost Employers Workers, Reputation, written by Katie Clarey and Lisa Burden.
Some of the findings, derived from surveying 1,000 U.S. employees might surprise CEOs, COOs, Human Resource executives and middle managers.
“The majority of the U.S. workforce is “unhappy and ready to quit” because of ineffective company communication — a 30% jump from one year ago.”
What’s this say? The sirens should sound on “majority” and “ready to quit.” This reveals just how poorly communication can be and is being done in many organizations.
Why is that an acceptable standard? What could and should be done? If an organization can’t communicate well, how can it expect to be operating at peak efficiency?What are the multiple benefits being forfeited because of it and what are the multiple expenses being accepted and what is impact?
“52% of employees said they have seen bad communication result in bad financial outcomes such as lost sales and damaged company reputation.”
What’s this say? The word “bad” leaves much open to interpretation yet let’s assume people are not grossly exaggerating.
The reality is most of us know that poor communication in romantic relationships and families result in undesirable financial outcomes so it’s no stretch to find it plausible, and likely, that communication deficiencies in organizations and companies are driving factors in frustrating, poor (yes, still vague) outcomes, including lost sales and “company reputation.”
That decline of client, customer, prospect, vendor and public reputation always has to be addressed to be corrected, and successfully, usually producing an uncomfortable situation at best and high costs and crisis at worst.
“70% of employees feel overwhelmed because of “broken communication methods and fragmented information.” Even more respondents said improving employee communication and engagement should be a higher priority for their current employer. Slightly more than half said they don’t feel that their employer communicates with them in a way that makes them want to be an advocate for the company.”
What’s that say? A lot to unpack. Important point number one — 70 %. May we agree that is an awfully large number, to feel “overwhelmed.” I would imagine that would be embarrassing to discover if the number is accurate.
How about the phrasing “broken communication methods?” Then, “fragmented information?”
Clearly, organizations, leaders, departments and teammates are not communicating nearly as skillfully as they would insist they are doing. I’d speculate many would be defensive about it, in denial.
I’d also speculate many people who might be brave and come forward with such complaints would be met with reactive devaluation. What is this costing workers, leaders and the company?
Employees clearly want improvement, want better and are frustrated and weary about it all. Why is there no diagnosis and treatment for the condition, a chronic one? Again, what ongoing costs and risks are present because of the glaring shortcoming and weakness?
“Nearly 70% of those surveyed said they would be less likely to quit if their company had a better approach to communication. In fact, 67% would put extra effort into their jobs if they felt more valued and engaged.”
What’s that say? Notice how much a reversal of stress, job pain and outlook there is with an improved approach to communication that is implemented successfully.
Notice too the almost equal high number of workers who would be intrinsically motivated to invest more energy and cognitive and physical “sweat” equity into their jobs if they felt more valued (a too-frequent and preventable oversight by employers) and more skillfully communicated towards and listened to, understood and collaborated with in pursuing mission and objectives.
Imagine, for a moment, with quality and sustained communication improvement, how that would be the catalyst for the decrease in conflict that would arise, fester and grow and the lesser frequency, intensity of conflict and the needs for managing and mediating it.
Michael Toebe is a communications leadership practice for reputation management, risk, crisis communications and crisis management for companies and individuals.
He has written for and contributed to Chief Executive, Corporate Board Member, New York Law Journal and American City Business Journals. On LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram (reputation_and_crisis).
