Importance of Communication in an Organizational Context: Value for Businesses

Communication happens inside every organization and inside most organizations, it is generally very formal. Most of you are familiar with the importance of communication in various settings. A lot of the daily business going on inside the organizations depends on the quality of communication inside them. The better the quality of communication, the higher is the productivity of an organization. However, if communication is heavily formal, it may give rise to hindrances, causing loss of productivity. Therefore, organizations must focus on the quality of communication. Quality communication facilitates innovation and strengthens collaboration. Therefore, it must be understood as an important pillar of organizational culture.

Communication is generally understood as an exchange of information, thoughts, emotions and ideas that takes place through verbal and nonverbal methods. Balanced communication helps achieve effectiveness and is important for aligning employees’ personal and organizational objectives. Tons of information and data is exchanged between departments and individuals daily inside the organizations and if managers focus on the quality of communication, it helps eliminate performance bottlenecks.

There are several important things that can be achieved through quality communication:

- Creating an environment of innovation

- Facilitating teamwork

- Better employee management

- Facilitating performance and growth

- Building strong workplace relationships

- Ensuring accountability and transparency

- Managing organizational reputation

1. Fostering innovation: Innovation is impossible if there are barriers to effective communication inside your organization. Unless ideas can flow freely from every corner of the organization, creating an environment of innovation remains difficult. Top organizations invite ideas from every corner. For this purpose, they invite everyone’s participation and build an inclusive environment. However, even if you are trying to build an inclusive environment, it is important to remove the communication bottlenecks first. Encouraging a free flow of ideas is a must for achieving growth. People should be able to think and speak freely. Sometimes, the best ideas come from the most hidden corners of the organization. It is why, you should not overlook the importance of open communication. Do not create a too formal environment because that too will hinder communication and performance. So, open informal channels and let people express their mind. That will encourage people and motivate them to think innovatively. Informal communication reduces pressure which is good for performance and productivity.
2. Facilitating teamwork: Winning is not possible without an excellent team and an excellent team is not possible without excellent teamwork. To achieve a high level of collaboration and perfect teamwork, you must focus on quality of communication. Use training programs to train your managers in communication and facilitating communication between team members. It creates a harmonious environment and removes tension to foster a feeling of togetherness. Teamwork is important for productivity and managers can make their teams win by bringing them together and raising the level of cooperation among the members. To achieve all this, it is important that you must align people and resources using communication. Strong teams exist when people are working together in the same direction and any critical gaps can be filled using communication. So, if communication facilitates teamwork and productivity, would not you use it to build strong teams that perform well against challenges.
3. Better employee management: Managing and engaging your employees gets easier with communication. Organizations are trying several methods to engage their employees and motivate them. Several methods are being used to initiate conversation and bring people together. Social media is also a very effective tool for internal and external communication and using it for employee participation and engagement leads to higher satisfaction. Bring employees together and use feedback and communication for motivation. Let them sit together regularly and discuss and particularly use your feedback mechanisms for empowering your employees. Positive feedback makes your employees feel satisfied.
4. Facilitating performance and growth: Communication can also facilitate performance and growth. In an environment where communication is encouraged, people are able to share ideas and that enables performance. They are able to share information and ideas which creates a positive environment. They can also learn from each other. Implementing policies and strategy gets easier if there is an environment of open communication inside an organization. Even if you need to bring about an important change throughout the organization, communication remains important. If there is a smooth flow of communication between the various levels of an organization, the level of collaboration and speed of work will be great. In this way, communication removes performance hindrances. Apart from internal communication, external communication also needs to be improved to achieve higher productivity.
5. Building strong workplace relationships: Communication makes strong workplace relationships possible. Not just in terms of employer-employee relationships, but in terms of co-worker relationship too, it is important for good communication to happen. Good communication between employer and employees makes their relationship strong and long lasting. It increases the level of trust between the two and motivates employees to work with the company for longer. You can also bring your HR costs low, if you understand the value of good communication. Communication inspires positivity in the environment, keeps motivation and employee morale high and brings the attrition rate low. Employees too must be trained to communicate properly. Using the right mix of formal and informal communication, they can build an environment of collaboration. Managers can design activities that foster communication and collaboration to achieve superior results.
6. Ensuring accountability and transparency: Trust is a central element in employer employee relationships and business customer relationships. To build trust, you must ensure that your internal and external communication inspires trust. Whether you are communicating with your employees or with your customers, your style and quality of communication shows how accountable a brand you are. It also helps you remain accountable to your employees and customers. It helps you prove that your employees and your customers have an important stake in your business, management and leadership. It is why how leaders communicate matters and helps market the business as an accountable brand. Most great leaders use a very responsible style of communication. It is not just a matter of their personal image but also of the kind of trust that the brand inspires in the hearts of its customers and staff.
7. Managing organizational reputation: The organization’s reputation is affected by its communication with its internal and external stakeholders. Good quality of communication with customers and investors does not just ensure trust but can help build long term and reliable relationships. Especially, it becomes visible in situations of crisis. How leaders handle such situations and how they communicate the concerns and allay the fears affects the organization’s reputation. Advertising and market communication too need to be understood in the context of organizational reputation. These forms of communication have an important role in creating your brand’s image and deciding its future. The better the quality of your market communication, the better will be its results and the higher will be your sales and revenue.

In this way, you will see that communication is one of the most important elements affecting organizational productivity. Both leaders and managers must focus upon this element to improve their organization’s performance and productivity. Training the employees at better communication helps build a positive environment that fosters learning and growth. You can use communication to achieve many things and not just higher productivity or better synchronization between departments. It can help you build a great culture of harmony and collaboration.