Business Communication That Drives Success

Good communication in the workplace is a vital component of a business’ positive performance and its overall internal success. And considering the changing times and shifting realities of the work landscape – telecommuting and outsourcing manpower – it is imperative that businesses also follow suit and employ communication strategies and incorporate mechanisms that are relevant to the times. Much like this, business communication solutions are also changing to accommodate technological advancements and developing technical and commercial language.

Listed below are a few business communication solutions that will help all businesses – large or small, including yours – to achieve and to sustain positive change, in work efficiency and employee commitment:

1. Intranet Software

Got a flexible workforce and do your employees need a central information portal that can be accessed anytime, anywhere in the world? Housing hundreds of employees in a high-rise building with no other way to send each other documents in real time but on-line? Social intranet software not only allows reports, contracts, documents and other relevant information to be easily available in an office-handled data resource hub, but also decreases IT maintenance costs. Using intranet software does not only ensure that your employees have access to the latest announcements and versions of documents, but also solves the problem of business costing by only focusing on the upkeep and security of the portal, instead of paying for physical security as well as digital.

2. Collaborative Spaces and other Chat Tools

A great business communication tool that is applicable to any-size organization is chat spaces, private and group messaging applications and software. These applications are particularly useful for project teams and committees which need to consolidate documents, messages, as well as to input talking points and to track progress in more specific topics or discussions. Slack offers a versatile platform that highlights latest uploads, as well as provides a messaging function, BlueJeans  and Skype offer great quality video communications, while the likes of CampFire and good ol’ Facebook Groups (also: Yammer) allow for uncomplicated instant messaging.

3. Video and Audio Blog Content

Changing the way you report information is not only exciting for your audience but is equally stimulating in the workplace. Most employees – especially in traditional work environments – handle written documents and read texts more than half the time they are at work. These non-traditional business communication solutions are a fresh way to share content and information that may otherwise be put in the backburner along with dragging paperwork. Besides, it has been proven that visual (and even auditory) information is more easily processed by the brain as compared to text. So retain your employees’ focus and shoot training videos, discussions and other spoken lectures, so your employees can learn without feeling the burden of routinary work.

4. Discussion Fora

The last business communication tool in this list is a bit old school, but remains relevant because its purpose still responds to today’s business communication needs. Some employees’ questions go unanswered for a significant period of time when communicated through e-mail or text messaging – where it could easily be ignored due to the sheer volume of input; other times, these questions do not ever get answers because some people are uncomfortable mentioning queries through a face-to-face interaction. What discussion forums do is provide a space where employees can exchange questions and in turn, answer queries that they feel they can respond adequately to. By a discussion forum being open and online to all employees, there is a bigger chance to have your question answered by the amount of people who have access. Additionally, these forums are useful if the employee is personally unknowledgeable of who to ask their question to. Knowledge sharing is effortlessly easy and accurate (when people step in to validate or correct previous answers) in this type of communication tool, where employees are brought together where they can talk and interact with others they may have never thought of to ask for help from.