5 simple steps to better internal communication in your organisation

Informal gatherings help better internal
communication. (c)www.morguefile.com

Are you always worried about bettering the internal communications in your organisation? Worry not, think outside the box. Go out of the track to communicate better within your organisation.

Get rid of emails once a week
Can you work without sending mails? Get back to the brick and mortar module once a week. Try doing it once a month first and if you are successful, make it a no-email day once a week. Encourage your colleagues to talk to each other on phone, if it’s face-to-face even better. However, be flexible enough to reply to the urgent mails. Don’t miss a chance to reply to a prospective customer or a donor if you are working for a non-profit.

Try changing work stations and responsibilities once in a while
Have you watched an advertisement where a husband going to office exchanges duties with his wife who manages the home affairs? The husband gets to know how hard it is to stay at home and be a housewife. Meanwhile the wife experiences the hard work her husband does in order to earn the bread and butter for the family. Both end up respecting each other at the end. Similar sort of exercise once in a while will command respect and build trust among staff.

Extended potluck once a year
Bring enough food from your home to share with your colleagues. Ask them to bring their stuff as well. Eat together. Extend the lunch hour by an hour or two. You can add few bottles of beer to the food, especially if the potluck is organised on Friday. You will find people talking in an open environment, laughing, cracking jokes and sharing their personal matters during the eating together. It will help develop better bonds among your employees.  

Organise a monthly hike
Everybody wants to stay healthy and most people like to travel. Combine these two things. Organise a monthly hike. On the first attempt only few will participate. Ask them to post photos from the hike in the intranet, Facebook or Flickr and share them with their colleagues. Request them to talk about the experience with their colleagues. The word-of-mouth and sharing through social media tools will increase the participation in the next hike. Once you get people to join the regular monthly hikes, it will certainly be helpful in breaking the communication barriers and silos in which the different teams work.

Encourage blogging
You must have heard – blogging is outdated; it is dead.   But it can do wonders to share the experiences and progress in your organisation. Create a team of active bloggers. Request them to blog at regular intervals. Encourage others to comment on their jottings. Start writing and commenting yourself. Announce attractive prizes for the top 10 influential bloggers.  And you will see the incredible flow of ideas, the increasing batch of bloggers, and more and more sharing of information within your organisation.