Research shows that the largest driver of employee engagement is effective communication between employees and their supervisors. Employees must feel a sense of connection to your company’s vision and purpose, they must feel like their efforts mean something, and they must feel like they have a voice.
Unfortunately, about 25 percent of the revenue you’re working so hard to capture could be slipping right through your fingers – a loss that could be easily prevented if you were to make an effort to engage in direct, open, consistent and intentional communication with your team.
Rea’s Communication Journey
In Rea’s 2016 Employee Satisfaction Survey, the firm asked employees to point out what was working and areas for improvement. The results indicated that in the area of internal communications, we could do better. So a NextGen leadership team set to work to develop a well- researched solution. Their findings revealed that internal communication is directly related to employee engagement, which is directly tied to customer satisfaction and profitability.
After presenting the case, NextGen received a green light to hire an internal communications specialist. Soon thereafter, I was hired to fill this role and to facilitate communication from the top-down, bottom-up and across different groups in the firm.
Improving communication is essential to unite the firm’s offices and regions, ensure we are all rowing in the same direction, give everyone a voice and ultimately develop better leaders and communicators. To build our internal communications program from scratch, I focused on areas that would make an immediate impact, including:
- Eliminating random firm-wide emails and replacing them with “weekly roundup” emails that go out every Friday. Employees know to pay attention to these emails for important updates and action items.
- Starting a monthly video series with our CEO to help team members get to know him and to share timely strategic priorities.
- Sending regular leadership communications, which allow leaders of our regions and specialty teams to share their updates and educate others in the firm.
As Rea continues to grow, enhanced internal communication will play a critical role in protecting and enhancing our culture while ensuring that messages are communicated clearly and appropriately.
Build Your Own Internal Communications Strategy
Even if your business can’t support a full-time internal communications position, opportunities for improvement are still available. Consider building an internal communications framework and strategy for your company’s leadership to follow. Your strategy might focus on:
- Carefully listening to what’s happening throughout the company and picking out pieces of important information, deter-mining who needs to know about it, and how it should be communicated.
- Spelling out the types of messages your CEO, finance team, department heads and other leaders should communicate regularly.
- Encouraging your CEO to provide a short monthly update.
- Creating a standard agenda for all internal meetings.
- Conducting focus groups to gather feedback from your employees.
The key is to start somewhere. Remember: communication affects engagement and engagement affects the bottom line. If you can open the lines of communication in all directions, you’ll be helping to create more engaged employees, more satisfied customers and a more profitable business.
By Abigail Cugini
This article first appeared in the Summer 2018 edition of The Rea Report, Rea’s quarterly print newsletter, as part of “The Business of our Business” series. This special series is dedicated to providing readers with more insight into the inner-workings of the firm. To read past articles from this popular series, visit www.reacpa.com/business-of-our-business.