Technology has done a lot for business communication, but it hasn’t solved all our communication problems. While we often run to new tech when we encounter a communication hurdle, sometimes the best solutions are still delivered by human hands.
In most cases, it’s a combination of both (technology and human intervention) that provide the best communication solutions.That’s why, while you may only have one communication problem, sometimes it requires more than one solution to truly resolve it.
If your company is facing a communication issue, we’ve got you covered with solutions for both the technology and leadership sides of the business.
20 Leadership and IT Solutions to 10 Common Communication Problems
Here are some of the most common communication problems in business today, along with an IT solution and a leadership solution for each.
Problem #1: Project Disorganization
Multiple people are working on the same project and it’s hard to keep track of what each person is doing.
IT Solution:
Integrate a project management application. Three of the most popular ones include: Basecamp, Asana and Slack. You can also view more top project management tools here.
Leadership Solution:
Have a weekly meeting with the team. Send out an agenda in advance. Be sure to give everyone a chance to share wins and get positive feedback, as well as share struggles and get constructive advice. After everyone gives their updates, send out a recap with next steps. The IT solution works nicely with this leadership solution because you can assign the next steps in your project management system.
Problem #2: Missed Messages
Employees are not accessing voicemails and/or emails in a timely manner and important information is being missed.
IT Solution:
Install or optimize your phone system to provide unified communications. Use tools like mobile forwarding and voicemail to email to increase the likelihood employees will be aware of all communication.
Leadership Solution:
Get everyone on the same page. Don’t just give people new technology – show them how to effectively use it. Have training sessions where you talk out how everyone should use phone, email and any other communication systems. Establish internal norms for response times, both to co-workers and clients, and how to handle out-of-office messages.
Problem #3: Contact Confusion
Client, customer or prospect communications are not being adequately tracked, resulting in overlap and reduced efficiency.
IT Solution:
Implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to make it easier for your team to manage contacts. You can view 25 of the most-popular multipurpose CRMs here.
Leadership Solution:
Reward your employees for their tracking wins. Almost everyone responds well to an incentive. Have a friendly competition in the office for the most leads tracked or customer service cases closed, with multiple opportunities to win small prizes like a coffee shop gift card.
Problem #4: Department Disconnect
Different company departments, offices or branch locations are not effectively communicating with one another, causing problems.
IT Solution:
It may be a matter of syncing technology between locations by putting everyone on the same phone system. You also may want to look into using your employee intranet to facilitate cross-location communication, or adding collaboration apps like Trello. Another possibility is integrating a video conferencing system to give employees more face time.
Leadership Solution:
Organize events that bring the different teams together. Build a culture of communication. If locations or departments exist on their own island, help your team see and get to know the actual faces, people and personalities on the other side of things. By building relationships with their teammates, employees will be more willing to collaborate.
Problem #5: Remote Isolation
Your remote teams are disconnected from the company and in-office workers, resulting in lower productivity.
IT Solution:
Tools like Google Hangouts and GoToMeeting can be handy ways to quickly connect with remote workers. For something more substantial, cloud-based phone systems are a great way to give remote employees access to all the communications technology they would get in the office.
Leadership Solution:
Make an effort to build company culture virtually. To keep your remote workers productive, it’s important they are informed and involved in what’s going on with the company. Make video conferencing the standard. It may feel easier to just dial in the one remote team member when everyone else is in the conference room, but take the extra step to use video conferencing. They’ll feel more valued and it’s harder to tune out when everyone is face-to-face. And make sure that your remote workers are as much of the team as everyone else, even if that means sending a birthday gift basket instead of a cake in the break room. Here are more tips for building culture virtually.
Problem #6: Ineffective Meetings
Your meetings are eating up critical work time without ever accomplishing anything.
IT Solution:
There is tech to make meetings more engaging—like connecting a projector for showing visuals or using tools like a digital whiteboard. But these won’t necessarily make your meetings more productive.
Leadership Solution:
Effective meetings require a strong leadership presence. You have to organize and drive the meeting. Set a clock to keep meetings to a specific time. Let everyone know what you will be discussing during the meeting and send out a recap afterward. Most importantly, always end every meeting with action items. View more tips for effective meetings here.
Problem #7: Lost Files
Employees file sharing is all over the map, with many employees digging through emails to find what they need and files frequently getting lost.
IT Solution:
Give employees the tools they need to make file sharing easy and uniform. Maybe it’s integrating a tool like Dropbox. It could also involve training people to use tools like Google Docs or Quip for group editing of documents.
Leadership Solution:
Create the process and communicate it to employees. Create a quick guide for saving, accessing and sharing files so everyone knows (or can reference) how to do it and what is expected of them. Lead by example by always adhering to the process yourself. It might be a bumpy road at first, but having a consistent process for file sharing with save a lot of time and trouble.
Problem #8: Email Overload
Your employees are wasting tons of time each day on email. Worse yet, because of the email overload, important messages are being missed.
IT Solution:
Make sure spam filters are effectively working to remove junk. Consider integrating apps like HipChat, Slack or Campfire to relieve some of the burden from email. View more popular internal communication apps here.
Leadership Solution:
Set ground rules for email. Let employees know when and when not to use email. Are email inboxes getting jammed up with messages about cookies in the break room? Show employees another way to communicate that information, like using some of the apps listed above, or even going analog with an office bulletin board. Make it clear what is actually email worthy.
Problem #9: Mobile Separation
With employees constantly on the go, communication has become disjointed. Your team feels disorganized and disconnected.
IT Solution:
Phone system mobility features can be installed to enable calls to be forwarded from work to a person’s mobile phone. Consider a cloud-based phone system for wider communication access or a BYOD policy to better integrate mobile devices in the work mix.
Leadership Solution:
Schedule weekly audio or video conferences to keep your team connected. Give employees a convenient forum for communicating with co-workers miles away. Show the team how to set mobility features on their phones to stay better connected. Also, when everyone is around, seize the opportunity to host a fun event. Don’t let your team forget they are a team.
Problem #10: Too Much Tech
Everyone is using different programs, devices and apps creating a technology cluster without any glue to bind everyone together.
IT Solution:
Eliminate the non-essential and focus on a specific set of tools that the whole team uses. Make sure you get employee and management input to find out what communication tools are needed and which ones are most effective.
Leadership Solution:
Find out why your employees have gone tech-happy. Are they in search of the perfect app that will solve their organizational issues? Do they feel pressured to respond to phone calls and emails 24/7? There may be underlying problems you can work through with your team members that will eliminate the need for the technology clutter. But even if there isn’t a serious issue, with all of today’s business tech, it’s pretty easy to become overconnected. Limiting options and helping employees unplug can in some cases be better for business and productivity.
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