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William N. Topaz Former President and CEO myownbusiness.org How important are communications with employees? |
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| Small businesses, especially start-up businesses are always concerned about getting customers, building that revenue stream. And there is always that conversation about advertising and marketing, branding, messaging, all that external communication. But don't overlook the importance of internal communications to your employees or within your employees. There's a lot of research out there that shows that well informed employees, employees that know about the company and what's going on are more productive and they're happier. Share with the employees, communicate with them as much as is appropriate, not necessarily all your personal or financial information. But employees need to know if things are going well, if their doing fine, what are some of the plans. You might get them involved in the strategic planning or your budgeting process. People loved to be asked for their opinions. And you find when you communicate like that the employees are more productive, they're more loyal, they're more cooperative and they're better during the tough economic times. If you have to scale back you'll find they can give suggestions or volunteer things that you might not be willing to even ask for. And don't also overlook internal employee communications. Don't let grievances, like if one employee comes in and complains about another. Don't let those kinds of things fester. Communicate; deal with them directly, immediately, right on. So don't overlook the importance of these internal communications. | |