The Sad Perceived State Of Organizational Communication Effectiveness

It makes sense to fix something that is broken over half the time.

Welcome to the Gazebo! Grab a cup and join me for some tips to help you succeed at the intersection of management, communication, and technology.

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This Week’s Summary:

• Most workers perceive organizational communication as flawed.

• Half of workers are not clear about what is expected of them.

• The problem exists equally for remote and in-office workers.

• This is a fixable problem, but it takes conscious change.

• Fixing communication problems offers huge competitive advantages.

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Last fall I was in Denver to attend the annual conference of the Association for Business Communication, an international group of communication practitioners and professors dedicated to improving business communication.¹ Every time I attend one of these conferences I leave with new information, ideas, and questions, and I am always glad that I attended. The question that stuck with me the most from the conferences was, “With all of these smart people working on communication, why is the state of business communication satisfaction so dismal?” I did some digging around and found an interesting study worth discussing.

A 2021 Gallup² ³ article described one of their studies related to the differences in perceived employee communication satisfaction between remote and in-office workers. Their findings were surprising to me in one respect and troubling yet familiar in another.

Image created by Ed Paulson using Copilot in Windows.

Let’s start with their surprise finding: Levels of communication satisfaction did not appear to be linked to whether a person worked remotely or in the office. This surprised me in that the available communication tools differ between in-office and remote, and greater skill is needed to make remote communication tools equally effective as in-person for many important business circumstances. More on this in a moment.

The troubling findings, unfortunately, were not really a surprise:

• Only 7% of US workers strongly agreed that communication is “accurate, timely and open at work.” (Less than 1 in 10)

• Only 26% of employees believed that their manager’s feedback helped them to do better work. (Around 1 in 4)

• Only 22% of employees believed that their leaders had a clear idea of the direction in which they want to lead the organization. (Around 1 in 5)

Ouch! This means that the vast majority of employees believed that communication within their organization was NOT helpful and/or inspiring. This is particularly troubling when you consider that almost everyone would agree in concept that communication is the glue that holds together high performing teams and organizations.

Unfortunately, as I wrote earlier, I was not surprised by these second findings. In one of my university classes I ask my working adult students (typically ages 25 to 55) to reflect on a time at work when they had to deal with a difficult situation that could have been avoided through more effective communication. Granted, I am asking them to reflect on a problem situation, but they almost always expand the conversation to communication in general within their organization.

The most common comments, by far, are that they frequently heard about something too late or by accident, and that they were often blamed for doing the incorrect thing, or blamed for not doing something that they did not know was their responsibility. It was the rare student who wrote about how well communication was handled in their organization. Far more common was the belief that their organization, overall, communicated poorly.

The same Gallup study reported that about 50% of surveyed workers claimed that they were NOT even clear about what was expected of them, which echoed my students’ claims. Ouch, again! Ponder the sobering productivity implications of that 50% number for a moment.

Companies hire workers so that they can accomplish things that move the company toward a common organizational goal. Yet this report showed that three out of four employees did not believe that leadership knew where they wanted to take the organization, and 1 out of every 2 employees were not clear about what management wanted them to do!

The study authors claim that the study contained some “good news” in that the poor communication perceptions applied evenly across the company independent of whether an employee worked in the office or remote. The implication of this equally bad perception is that it is not a remote/in-office issue, but one that arises from overall poor communication practices, which is something over which we have some control. I guess that is “good news?” It also could explain the finding that remote and in-office communication were equally flawed. If managers are already ineffectively communicating with workers in the office, they will be just as ineffective working with remote workers. Sigh.

My next communication book, due out in the Fall of this year, will dig deeply into ways to use communication as a tool for improving business continuity, problem solving, resilience and competitiveness. An early chapter in the book talks about how important it is to create clarity between employees, leadership, and their workers, and how this can be accomplished through creating a messaging and communication framework that consciously develops clear and specific understanding. I covered this in my February 19, 2024 post within a remote work context, and suggested then that the concepts from that post applied equally to all employees, not only those working remote. Here is an important paragraph from that post related to this week’s topic.

“Notice that without an accurate understanding of management expectations the worker may, with the best of intentions, embark on tasks that are not desired by management. Additionally, without accurate worker progress status reporting and understanding the manager may develop a negative (or positive) perception of the worker based on inaccurate (or no) information. Do you see why effective communication is essential to successful team management? For leaders, managers, and workers, communication should be a core consideration and not an afterthought.” ⁴

At its most basic, effective management is about ensuring that employees understand what is expected of them and also have the resources needed to perform their jobs. On the other hand, managers want to feel comfortable that their employees are performing as expected and moving toward successful project/task completion. When both managers and their workers clearly understand these few important information points their organization is more likely to meet or exceed leadership expectations.

To me, THIS is the really good news from the Gallup study that spells opportunity for those who take it seriously. If we assume that your competitors have the same communication breakdowns and inefficiencies reported in the study, then we can also assume that handling these problems within your own organization would offer you a huge competitive advantage.

Next time we will start to take a deeper look at how to make all of that happen.

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! ☮

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BECOME MORE SUCCESSFUL THROUGH BETTER COMMUNICATION

LEARN A LIFETIME OF COMMUNICATION SECRETS BY READING ED’S “GETTING THROUGH” BOOK

Listen to Ed Paulson explain his latest book “Getting Through.”
(Short 3 minute video)

“Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood” (ISBN: 9798987950807) is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers. It is only 130 pages long and can be read in just a few hours. Those few hours will change the way you communicate forever!

Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood (ISBN: 9798987950807)

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1. https://www.businesscommunication.org/

2. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/351644/communicate-better-employees-regardless-work.aspx?version=print

3. As an aside related to last week’s post about fact and opinion, Gallup is a solid research organization, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and accepted their results as presented when reading their research findings.

4. If this week’s topic caught your attention, a few minutes reading this February 19, 2024 post would be beneficial for you.