Are you looking at your team and wondering how to make them more productive? Simply shouting at them to work more won’t work, and it will only make the workplace a more tense place to be. Instead, you should look at where many of the misunderstandings and mistakes can begin: with communication. Here, we’ll look at how a change in how we get in touch can also change how we work, for better and for worse.

Ensure everyone can stay in touch easily

To make that employees don’t miss the opportunity to contact one another, or messages that are directed to them, it’s wise to standardize certain methods of communication. Emails can be messy to track after a while and it’s easy to lose conversations within direct message software. However, team communication software could be precisely what the team needs, able to contain and track conversations amongst multiple groups, with the ability to pin and note down whatever messages turn out to be important to the group.

Make sure everyone stays informed

If there are any changes that have to be implemented by multiple people across a team, or across the whole business, then ensuring that every gets the message is crucial. Simply sending out one email that everyone has to read isn’t enough. You should also take to other means to ensure they’re informed, such as announcing it over a buzzer vs speaker, or even going from department head to department head, or room to room, and personally informing them so that the word spreads. If there’s any change in direction or method decided from the top, it’s on you to keep the team informed.

Give them a reason to pay attention

Feel like your team isn’t as engaged in the conversation as they should be? Are they missing out on details because they’re not paying as much attention as you want? You can’t force them to be more interested in team meetings or strategic planning sessions. You can encourage them to be more engaged, however, by encouraging them to contribute more often. You can help encourage the kind of thinking that helps any business and thus they will be more likely to listen and contribute.

Invest in communications training

You might think of training and courses as something specifically for hard skills, but it can be just as important for softer skills, as well. Communications training can help establish ground rules for how your team talks, making sure that they are making the facts of any conversation clear, communicating with a clear goal, and less likely to make the little mistakes that can lead to misunderstandings and bigger errors along the line. If communication is truly important to your business, then finding communications training for your team should be a top priority.

Improving standards of communication across the office isn’t guaranteed to suddenly shape up the office. There can be other obstacles in the way of the efficiency and productivity you want to see. However, it should show a marked improvement.