by Gary Stover
Navigating through these tough economic times is hard on everybody—families, employees, and businesses. This is a tough time for everybody.
The business landscape is constantly changing because of the economic turmoil, and it is paramount that management needs to be in tune with key issues and concerns. Communicating to your employees during organizational change or transition is heightened. Your employees might get anxious if change is anticipated and it is the responsibility of management to respond accordingly. There are a few things to remember that will aid you when working though a volatile environment:
Open Communication
If you have an open door policy—mean it. If employees have questions, make sure they feel that you are available for questions. Telling them is not enough. Try keeping your door open as much as you can, walk through the operations and speak to employees. Make sure you have given talking points to your management team so they can answer questions. This is when face-to-face communications is paramount. Sending emails and relying on other modes of communication is a great supplement but don’t make it your primary. Circulate among the employees so they feel they can approach you more easily and ask their questions.
Communicate Frequently
I have heard time and time again from upper level management that there is nothing to communicate right now, so they don’t. I encourage you to challenge this theory. When you say nothing, employees start to anticipate the worst. In addition, this is when rumors start to run rampant. If you don’t feed information, employees will start to speculate and speculation leads to misinformation being disseminated. If you make a commitment to communicate once a week—stick to the plan. If you feel you have nothing to say. Open the communication to questions and then put your responses out as your communication.
Make Resources Available
If your management team is going to be tied up handling issues that deal with the upcoming changes, have a group in place to assist employees. Call on your Human Resources, Communications or specific employees to spearhead the outreach efforts to employees. Make sure there is always somebody available for the employees to ask questions.
Employee communication during organizational change is difficult enough. The key is to simplify it as best you can. This will prove beneficial for both the company and employee morale.